PDP: Identifying Equity Gaps

Transcript
Our institution is undergoing the planning process to create its next 5-year strategic plan.
In preparation, Elise, our institution’s provost, asked Joshua, our Director of Enrollment Management, and Ram, our Director of Academic Advising, to make recommendations for ways our institution can improve student success.

Joshua and Ram meet to review their institution’s PDP dashboards to better understand the current state of student success and identify where the institution should focus their improvement efforts over the next five years.

Because their work is intended to create improvement efforts, they focus their attention on early momentum metrics which are leading indicators of academic momentum and student success.

First, they select the Credit Completion Ratio Institution-Level dashboard.
This dashboard reports the percentage of attempted credits that first-year students successfully completed within an academic year.

Focusing on the line chart, he sees that the Credit Completion Ratio has declined from a high of 75.9% in 2015-16 to 72.8% in 2019-20. Our institution has determined what amount difference in percentage indicates an equity gap might exist and/or be problematic but understand each institution might differ, especially when setting their goals or considering their accreditation.

Next, Joshua applies the Race and ethnicity dimension to determine if there is an equity gap. Because there are several race and ethnicity categories, it’s challenging to interpret the chart. Since nearly 90% of their students are Black or African American, Hispanic, or White, he applies a race and ethnicity filter to include those three categories. Now the line chart is easier to read.

Immediately Joshua and Ram see an equity gap between these populations because there is a noticeable gap between the lines representing the student populations. The credit completion ratio of white students has fluctuated some from 2015-16 to 2019-20 but is approximately 80%. Hispanic students had a credit completion ratio of 74.5% in 2015-16 which dropped slightly to 72.4% in 2019-20. This decline widened the equity gap between white and Hispanic students.

But the largest decline occurred within the Black or African American student population. In 2015-16, their credit completion ratio was 69.9%. But in 2019-20, it had dropped to 63.4%. So, not only was there a 10-percent gap between white students and Black or African American students in 2015-16, that gap grew to 15.6 percent by 2019-20. If that trend continues, the gap will continue to grow.

Joshua closes the dashboard and returns to the PDP dashboard home page. Next, they select the Credit Accumulation Rate Institution-Level dashboard.

The dashboard reports the percentage of part-time students who completed 15 credits in an academic year and the percentage of full-time students who attained 30 credits in an academic year. They could lower the credit threshold to 12 and 24 but choose to keep it at 15 and 30.

They focus their attention on the line chart and see that the overall credit accumulation rate declined 8 percent from 25.8% in 2015-16 to 17.4% in 2019-20 for a loss of 8.4 percent.

Again, they apply the Race and Ethnicity dimension to identify if there is an equity gap. Then, they apply the Race and Ethnicity filter to include Black or African American, Hispanic, and White students.

The credit accumulation rate of white students has declined from 29.4% in 2015-16 to 18.1% in 2019-20 which is an 11-percent drop.

Looking at the line representing Hispanic students, they find that their credit accumulation rate in 2015-16 was 24.4% which declined to 20.5% in 2019-20 which was a 4-percent drop.

And, looking at the line representing Black or African American students, they find their credit accumulation rate was 24.1% in 2015-16 and was 11% in 2019-20 for a 13-percent drop.

Now, let’s look at the equity gaps between these three populations. In 2015-16, the gap between white and Hispanic students was 13.6 percent and that dropped to 4.6 percent in 2019-20. Comparing the credit accumulation rate for white and Black or African American students, the 7-percent gap remained consistent during that time frame. However, the gap between Hispanic and Black or African American students grew. In 2015-16, the gap between these two populations was less than 1 percent but, by 2019-20, the gap had grown to nearly 10 percent. And it appears it will continue to grow unless the institution intervenes.

Joshua and Ram summarize their findings. They learned that,

[click] for the credit completion ratio, there was a decline in the average ratio among Hispanic and Black or African American students while the average metric held relatively constant for white students.

[click] There is a substantial equity gap between white students and students of color and the gap has expanded each year.

[click] For the Credit Accumulation Rate metric, they found a decline for all student groups.

[click] While there is a consistent equity gap between white and Black or African American students, the equity gap is growing between Hispanic and Black or African American students.
Based on those results, Joshua and Ram share their work with the Student Success Council. After much consideration, the Council drafts recommendations for improvement which include:

Ask each academic department to analyze course success rates with disaggregation, and create a plan for courses of focus.

Require one mid-term advising appointment, in which advisors focus on understanding barriers students are experiencing and refer students to resources that can help students deal with those barriers. Those results can then be tabulated and shared.

Redesign the open advising position to require a person with extensive experience in working with Black or African American and Hispanic populations.

Revitalize the student affinity groups for Black or African American and Hispanic students to enhance their sense of belonging.