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In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

The guided pathways model, comprising 14 different practices, is a framework for comprehensive, whole-college reform undertaken by community colleges to help all students choose, enter, progress through, and complete a program of study that enables them to secure sustaining-wage employment or transfer with junior standing in a major. Since its introduction in 2015, it has been adopted by hundreds of community colleges across the United States. This paper asks whether guided pathways practices implemented at 62 community and technical colleges in three states--Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington--are associated with improvements in student outcomes during the first year of college. Specifically, using institutional survey and rich administrative data, we construct measures of adoption of guided pathways reforms to examine the association between guided pathways practices and fall-to-fall persistence, college credits earned, college math credits earned, and STEM credits earned. Our study reveals substantial variation in the adoption of guided pathways reforms across the states and across community colleges within the states over time. While we cannot establish a causal relationship between guided pathways adoption and student outcomes, we find significant positive associations between the statewide adoption of guided pathways reforms and early student outcomes in Tennessee. The observed improvements in that state are likely the result of concurrent reforms--guided pathways and others--implemented simultaneously, rather than of guided pathways reforms alone. We do not find evidence of improved student outcomes in either Ohio or Washington following the launch of statewide guided pathways initiatives. Our findings suggest that complementarities among adopted practices within and across areas of practice--rather than the adoption of individual practices or the intensity of adoption--seem to drive larger improvements in early academic success across the three states. Our study is the first of its kind to explore the potential of guided pathways reforms in contributing to improved early academic success, representing a significant descriptive contribution given that whole-college reforms in higher education are understudied.

It is now well established that the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating and unequal impact on student achievement. Test score declines were disproportionately large for historically marginalized students, exacerbating preexisting achievement gaps and threatening educational and economic inequality. In this paper, we use longitudinal student-level NWEA MAP Growth test data to estimate differences in test score declines for students at different points on the prepandemic test distribution. We also test the extent to which students' schools and districts accounted for these differences in declines. We find significant differences in learning loss by baseline achievement, with lower-achieving student's scores dropping 0.100 SD more in math and 0.113 SD more in reading than higher-achieving students' scores. We additionally show that the school a student attended accounts for about three-quarters of this widening gap in math achievement and about one-third in reading. The findings suggest school and district-level policies may have mattered more for learning loss than individual students' experiences within schools and districts. Such nuanced information regarding the variation in the pandemic's impacts on students is critical for policymakers and practitioners designing targeted academic interventions and for tracking disparities in academic recovery. [Additional funding for this report was provided by Kenneth C. Griffin.]

In 1993, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dramatically overhauled its K-12 education system and created a new school finance formula, building an educational accountability structure to ensure every child has access to a high-quality education. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) established academic standards in core subjects, mandated assessments to measure student outcomes on those standards, and established a system for holding schools accountable when students failed to meet basic expectations. This system has helped Massachusetts' public schools become the highest performing in the country. Student outcomes in all tested subjects and across demographic groups have improved steadily over time, but disparities in achievement and attainment exist between the Commonwealth's most privileged students and their less privileged counterparts, many of whom are black or Hispanic. Without the MERA and its requirement to assess every student and publish aggregate academic outcomes, policymakers may not understand the extent of disparity or how to address it as student outcomes data are integral to understanding where Massachusetts' public schools have been, where they are going, and how they can get there. This paper illustrates the importance of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act and how it has positively impacted students over time. It explains why the current accountability system evolved as it did and why preserving the most important aspects of that system is critical if the state is going to fulfill its constitutional obligation to educate all children to a high common standard.

Each year, more than a million high school students nationally take college dual enrollment courses, which have been shown to increase college access and success among participants. Yet racial/ethnic and other equity gaps in dual enrollment participation are widespread. To broaden the benefits of dual enrollment, the state of Ohio passed legislation in 2017 establishing the Innovative Programs (IP) policy, allowing waivers to test-based eligibility requirements--a frequently identified barrier to equitable access--for specific high school-college partnerships providing expanded outreach and support for students underrepresented in the state's dual enrollment program. This paper describes a multiple methods study of IP we conducted to examine how these partnerships were implemented to address the needs of underrepresented students and to evaluate whether the partnerships were successful in broadening access to and success in dual enrollment, as measured by course participation, pass rates, and college matriculation after high school. We find that the IP increased participation in dual enrollment among Black and Hispanic students. And while the implementation of the policy broadened access without changing course outcomes, the impacts on college enrollment after high school were mixed. Our results underscore the importance of pairing increased access to dual enrollment with adequate financial, advising, and academic resources to promote student success in and beyond dual enrollment courses.

In this position paper, the authors lay out the imperative for equitable artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting the essential role of access-oriented institutions and calling on technology companies (both large and small), foundations, and local, state, and federal regulators to consult with the newly convened Complete College America Council on Equitable AI in Higher Education. Their belief is that equitable AI spans far beyond the risk of mis-trained data. How schools adopt or reject these tools, the priorities of AI vendors, access to resources that enable the use of these tools, and the systemic integration of historically underrepresented and underserved voices will shape whether technology amplifies privilege or fosters inclusivity. A three-fold framework is presented for understanding Equity in AI, considering not just the quality and unbiased nature of the data used to train generative AI machines but also who has access to conversations around policy and product, as well as which institutions have access to the resources and safety nets that enable innovation and experimentation in the field of AI. A disruptive new advisory council is proposed, the Complete College America Council on Equitable AI in Higher Education, composed of representatives from historically excluded institutions and, by extension, students. The authors urge policymakers, technologists, and funders to proactively consult the Council and disrupt systemic inequities by integrating AI into higher education rather than continue to perpetuate them. [This paper was created in partnership with T3 Advisory.]