Barstow Community College wins 'Student Success Award' for English, math improvements

Barstow Community College has been named the 2021 "Student Success" award winner by California's public system, which includes 115 other community colleges.

The California Community Colleges system (CCC) honored BCC this year for having logged a 29% increase in "students completing transfer-level English and math courses within one year of their first attempt," CCC said in a statement.

Transfer-level courses give college credit to students who pass, which they can translate to their transcript and for financial-aid if they subsequently enroll at a University of California or California State University campus. Alternative English and math classes offered by community colleges consist of remedial coursework, which does not provide college credit.

CCC is "the largest system of higher education in the nation" covering 116 colleges statewide with more than 2 million students enrolled each year, according to its website.

BCC's superintendent-president, Eva Bagg, said one key to more students completing transfer-level English and math courses has involved cutting down on the amount of remedial work they must complete to reach those higher-level classes.

She said she was shocked when she learned that among all BCC students placed in the lowest level of remedial English work, only 3% went on to complete transfer-level English in six years. By placing more students directly in transfer-level courses, "with appropriate support, they were doing very well."

"We weren't harming them, we were actually setting them up for better success," Bagg said. "To get faculty to feel comfortable with that, it was a big change, but we had a lot of administrative push and we're really trying to look at the data and adapt."

The California system's statement touted BCC's "vibrant Teaching and Learning Support Center, faculty-led workshops, enhanced tutoring and improved early-alert tracking" as central to its English and math improvements.

CCC decides its "Student Success" award winner by looking at which college sees the greatest improvements in transfer-level English and math completion rates.

CCC's Vision for Success is an initiative, adopted by the Foundation for California Community Colleges, focuses on using data, workforce development partnerships and students' "end goals," according to the system's website.

The initiative, which is supported by The James Irvine Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and College Futures Foundation, sets goals for 2022 that include a 35% increase in CCC students transferring to state-university campuses, and a substantial increase in "Career Technical Education" students getting hired in their respective fields.

A law that took effect in January 2018, part of a state Assembly Bill signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, set requirements for community colleges to "maximize the probability that a student will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a one year timeframe," as CCC's website describes it.

CCC gives top honors to two of its schools each year via the Dr. John W. Rice Awards. In addition to "Student Success," colleges also vie in the "Diversity and Equity" category. This year, Merritt College in Oakland won the latter award.

The namesake of the awards, Dr. John Wesley Rice Jr., served on the CCC Board of Governors from 1992 until his death in 2000 and advocated "equal employment opportunity and nondiscrimination in" the state system, according to BCC's statement.

Rice retired from a career as a minister and educator in Alabama before moving to California in 1985, according to an Associated Press obituary.

Among other things, he "helped create a tutoring program at Stanford University and worked to provide parks and playgrounds for children," the obituary states. His daughter, Condoleezza Rice, served as former President George W. Bush's national security advisor during his first term and U.S. secretary of state in his second.

CCC began honoring schools with the "Diversity and Equity" award in 2001. The "Student Success" award was added in 2019, BCC said.

Charlie McGee covers the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities for the Daily Press. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.