Mariachi band gives a warm Dallas welcome!
On February 25, I presented a session with my colleague, Erin Fukuda, at the College Board’s Southwestern Regional Forum in Dallas, Texas. This is one of six conferences that the College Board conducts from Seattle to Orlando. We shared insights from research that EPIC has conducted with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a session entitled Setting the Bar at College-Level Expectations.
The research project analyzed college syllabi, assignments, and assessments from first-year college courses across the country. What better place to find out what students are expected to know and be able to do when they get to college? With the data from that study, EPIC was able to make some generalizations about the skills and course content that students will be required to have and know during that first year.
On the morning of the session, we were astonished to see the assigned meeting room full to overflowing when we arrived–clearly college readiness is a hot topic, particularly that important transitional first year. Over 120 educators and administrators participated eagerly as we discussed the implications of college requirements for high school students.
The session participants had the opportunity to preview three performance tasks that EPIC developed as a result of the research study. Those tasks were in Physics, English Composition, and Psychology. All together, EPIC has written performance tasks for thirteen content areas in the fields of English Language Arts, Science, and Social Science. We’ll be posting the tasks to the Resources section of this website in Spring 2016—stay tuned!
Greg Hopper-Moore, Research Associate
