2024-25 Strategic Initiative: Annual Report Monitoring

The AR currently captures data related to institutional strength, stability, and student achievement, including headcount and enrollment; program growth or decline; distance and correspondence education counts; direct assessment program information; certification exam pass rates and employment placement rates for career technical education programs; and the College Scorecard¹ graduation rate. Currently, no additional analysis or scoring is conducted with data submitted by institutions. The AR does not require institutions to disaggregate data. In addition to data submitted by member institutions, ACCJC also imports Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)² enrollment and graduation data by student ethnicity and gender, as well as aggregate retention and “transfer out” data³.

                                                
¹ College Scorecard Graduation Rate is calculated with IPEDS Outcomes Measurement (OM) fields.
² IPEDS is data collection system conducted by the US Department of Education for all schools participating in Federal Financial Aid.
³ Imported IPEDS disaggregated success data represents the graduation rate for the colleges’ first-time, full-time students at 150% of normal full-time completion duration.

Call to Action: Creating an Institutional Success Advisory Team, Developing a Rubric for Effective Institutional Outcome Transparency, and Enhancing Annual Monitoring Processes and Supports

Federal regulations require that ACCJC effectively apply monitoring and evaluation approaches that include collecting and analyzing key data and indicators, including measures of student achievement⁴.

In addition, ACCJC Standards require that member institutions have missions that articulate a commitment to ensuring equitable educational opportunities. Additionally, institutions must regularly review meaningfully disaggregated data to evaluate progress and inform innovation. The Standards further require that institutions regularly communicate internally and externally their progress toward achieving their mission and goals⁵.

To fulfill ACCJC’s regulatory requirements and facilitate the ongoing support and annual monitoring of its institutions, ACCJC is creating an Institutional Success Advisory Team. This Team will evaluate annual reporting criteria, analyze all members’ results, and identify and support underperforming institutions according to the finalized scoring criteria. The current Annual Report will be revised to capture institutional data more consistently and provide a mechanism for institutions to specifically demonstrate ongoing compliance with ACCJC Standards 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, and 2.9.

Revisions to the AR will include creating an opportunity for institutions to reflect and report on their disaggregated student success data and stories as part of the annual reporting process. Since the Standards allow for member institutions to disaggregate student achievement data in the context of the institutional mission, standard disaggregated success numeric reporting would not be possible. However, the Advisory Team may develop other mechanisms to capture disaggregated student achievement information.

The Team will also collaborate on developing a Rubric for Effective Institutional Outcome Transparency, whereby the institution will provide a self-score during the annual review process. The rubric will provide institutions with the opportunity to self-assess on outcome data transparency, with proposed categories on data type, location, provision of context, recency, and storytelling. The rubric will also incorporate Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) guidelines for data transparency.

The Institutional Success Advisory Team will serve in an advisory capacity throughout the development of the Annual Report Monitoring process.

Proposed factors for consideration that would aid the analysis and lead to monitoring would be refined in collaboration with the Advisory Team and presented to the Commission for approval in January 2025. Initial staff recommendations for elements of monitoring include:

• Trends of institutional performance declining consistently over three years in any category
• Greater than a three percent reduction in course success rates
• Institution-set standards being lowered or stagnant institution-set standards when benchmarks are consistently exceeded
• Single-year increase in distance education headcount enrollment of greater than 50 percent
• Single-year increase in correspondence education headcount enrollment of greater than 50 percent
• Below threshold college self-score on Rubric for Effective Institutional Outcome Transparency
• Below threshold IPEDS student graduation and transfer-out rate, or a combination of the two: first-time, full-time
• College Scorecard Graduation rate below 18 percent

If you would like to serve on the Institutional Success Advisory Team or participate in the development of the Rubric for Effective Institutional Outcome Transparency, please complete the following survey. Interested individuals will be contacted this summer by Vice President Melynie Schiel (mschiel@accjc.org) and opportunities for additional engagement from the field will be included on this webpage. For those interested in serving on the Institutional Success Advisory Team, please submit your survey by Friday, July 12.