City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME I
Beyond Instruction: Additional Support for Basic Skills Students. While this case study has focused
primarily on instructional practices, the support that students received through a variety of support
structures outside of the core focus on basic skills has also been found to impact student performance.
Such support structures include the following support programs: African American Scholastic Programs,
Disabled Students Programs and Services, Extended Opportunities Programs and Services, the Homeless/
At-risk Students Program, the Latino Services Network, the Learning Assistance Center, Math Bridge,
the Puente Project, and the Writing Success Project. As documented in the “Pre-Collegiate Basic Skills
Accountability Report, Part 2,” students enrolled in support programs almost always achieved higher rates
of course success in both lower- and upper-level pre-collegiate courses when compared to students who
did not enroll in these programs. Program impact varied by subject and course level. This finding suggests
that forging stronger ties between these programs and instruction may prove beneficial. 5 This in part
underlies the College’s justification for an interdisciplinary approach that not only encompasses the
traditional academic areas of English and Math but also connects to College-wide initiatives such as
the Basic Skills Subcommittee and Diversity Committee whose membership includes representatives
from the support programs listed above.
In addition, the reinstatement of caseloads within the New Student Counseling and Continuing Student
Counseling Departments shows great promise of supporting basic skills students such that they are less
likely to “slip through the cracks.” In particular, a “Back on Track Initiative” now targets students who are
in their fourth semester of academic or progress probation and requires that they sign a contract that provides
the College with greater enforcement power to limit the number of units a student on 4th-semester
probation can enroll in or to refer them to noncredit courses. Emerging alongside initiatives such as this
is greater two-way collaboration between counselors and instructors, including the integration of a counseling
component into coursework.
Where Do We Go from Here In general, a greater focus beginning in 2005—in addition to the activities
noted above within English and Math, primarily funded by Koret—will be placed on synchronizing the
activities of the English and Math Departments with those of the ESL Department, Transitional Studies
Department, Learning Assistance Department, and the Basic Skills Subcommittee and Diversity
Committee, in large part through funding from the Carnegie and Hewlett Foundations as noted earlier.
The Transitional Studies Department offers free, noncredit instruction in Adult Basic Education, including
adult high school diplomas and preparation for the General Education Development (GED) test. The
Learning Assistance Department offers peer collaborative tutoring, college success courses and workshops,
and an open-access computer lab. Basic skills instruction has been somewhat fragmented, and the
College’s aim is to bring all parties responsible for basic skills instruction and support into closer alignment.
What the Carnegie/Hewlett application did not specifically address was the integration of these
activities with ESL, and this is an oversight requiring attention.
Professional development will become a key mechanism for integrating activities among departments from
this point forward. With Carnegie/Hewlett support, faculty and staff will participate in a series of monthly
conversations that utilize external and internal resources to address classroom learning, tutoring support,
and diversity. In this way, faculty and staff from all basic skills-related departments (English, ESL, Learning
Assistance, Math, and Transitional Studies) and the two Shared Governance committees (the Basic Skills
Subcommittee and Diversity Committee) will come together to address issues common to all disciplines.
In particular, these issues include teaching and learning in an increasingly multicultural environment
given the ties between race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and basic skills, as referenced earlier in
this essay.
5 Note that a new support program, the Asian Pacific American Student Success Center (APASS) emerged after this study was
conducted. APASS will need to be included in the effort to align support program activities with those of classroom and
lab instruction.
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