Transforming America's Community Colleges

The Brookings Institution has released a report calling on the federal government to invest heavily in America's community colleges. Saying that America's community colleges rely primarily on state and local revenue for support, and these sources are under tremendous strain in the current budget crisis, the only solution is for a massive federal influx of money.

They list four major goals for the federal government:

• Establish national postsecondary goals and create a performance measurement system to support the effective use of federal resources
• Double its current level of support in order to account for more than 10 percent of community colleges’ budgets, ultimately awarding three quarters of these funds based on colleges’ performance in meeting key goals around student credit, credential, and degree completion
• Stimulate instructional innovations and practices to increase the quality of community college education, by devoting half of the administration’s proposed $2.5 billion state-federal partnership fund to improve and evaluate practices enhancing sub-baccalaureate education
• Support the improvement of student data systems necessary to measure and track college student outcomes, guide funding, improve accountability, and promote continuous improvement in educational quality

The whole report is worth reading. You can find the PDF here.