Sorry I haven't jumped back into the discussion sooner.  My data responsibilities brought me away from my office many more hours than I had expected this week.

 

A few posts ago, Luanne spoke to her concerns with retention particularly as students entered at the later portion of the fiscal year.  Luanne, you mention a student retention rate of 0% for those entering after March 1st, I am curious, what is your benchmark beyond which you expect students to remain in programming.  Is there an hour allocation or are you basing your calculations on a completion of the session only?

 

Also, I wondered if Massachusetts employed any distance learning for students leaving a program for employment.  Larry, I am sure you have heard New York voice our concern previously regarding our data indicating what appears to be a disincentive for programs encourage students to enter employment as that often results in the student leaving the literacy program prematurely and not showing educational gain.  Have other state's data shown this trend?  

 
Rosemary I. Matt
NRS Liaison for NYS
Literacy Assistance Center
12 Meadowbrook Drive
New Hartford, NY 13413
315.798.1026

________________________________

From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Cornellier, Donna
Sent: Thu 4/19/2007 3:06 PM
To: 'The Assessment Discussion List'
Subject: [Assessment 770] Re: Using Student Goals as Data



Hi,

In Massachusetts we just developed a goals cube in Cognos, our third party
reporting tool. This cube allows teachers/directors to look at class level
data as well as site level data so teachers can review the goals set by
their students and incorporate the goals into the curriculum. Teachers have
requested this information to help them better meet the needs of their
students.

Donna Cornellier


-----Original Message-----
From: Marie Cora [mailto:marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:46 AM
To: Assessment at nifl.gov
Subject: [Assessment 753] Using Student Goals as Data

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
  So rich and full of great ideas,
interesting comments, excellent questions, and thoughtful challenges.  I
usually contribute more myself but I'm just reading and soaking it in at
this point.  I am cutting and pasting the discussion into a user-friendly
document, which I will make available once our Guest Panel concludes
tomorrow. 

We are really covering a lot of ground here!  Just curious (because it is a
focus on mine within the realm of accountability):  a number of folks have
discussed issues of retention and the types of strategies that they employ
in their programming, but I don't think that anyone has mentioned if they
use student-stated goals to track retention, trends in learning or program
offerings, etc.  Perhaps the use of student goals is more easily applicable
at the classroom/teaching level (not sure!), but I just wanted to know if
anyone out there makes programmatic decisions based in part on the reasons
why students come to your programs.  I am not referring to learning gains
(reading, writing, math, ESOL, etc), but rather to students' ultimate
purposes for attending, like getting a better job, helping kids with
homework, buying a home, becoming a citizen, etc.

Thoughts on this?

Thanks!

Marie

Marie Cora
 <mailto:marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com> marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com NIFL
Assessment Discussion List Moderator
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment
Coordinator, LINCS Assessment Special Collection
http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/assessment/



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