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Access Is Equity: A Call for More Accurate Community College Assessment

In 2009, Community, the TV show aired on television. The show, a weekly comedy series, was based on the writer’s experience of attending a community college. For many people, their first view and understanding of community college was watching Community from the comfort of their living rooms. In reality, community colleges are serving more and more students, diverse students, and becoming even more relevant today. As Arthur Cohen and Florence Brawer (2008) noted in The American Community College, community colleges have been in existence for over one hundred years and, until recently, have been in our peripheral vision. They have served a diversity of post-traditional students including adult learners (25 and older), veterans, adults who are pursuing a new career due to layoffs, and traditional-aged students who were unable or uninterested in pursuing a university degree. In 2012, the number of 18to 24-year-old students attending community colleges reached an all-time high. Thirty-eight percent of all community college students were traditional-aged students compared with 58 percent of all university students. Over the past 10 to 15 years, as the nation has discussed the high cost of a college education and the worth of the college degree and experience, community college has become a first-choice experience for many traditional college-aged students. As more and more students, both traditional and post-traditional, choose community college, stakeholders have become increasingly interested in how community colleges are performing and contributing to student learning and success. Students and family members are using the posted and published information about student learning and success, garnered through assessment measures, to make decisions about enrollment and continued education at community colleges (Executive Office of the President of the United States, 2017). As we know, assessment and accountability occupy center stage in current discussions of higher education. Holding community colleges accountable is reasonable. What is not reasonable is to hold community colleges accountable using university-based assessments. When state and federal assessments are developed, we need the voice, perspective, and mission of community colleges to be thoughtfully included. When the community college voice is missing from the conversation, we contend that in the end, both the student and the community college that serves them are marginalized and undervalued. When we link these inaccurate assessments to budget dollars, this quickly becomes an equity issue. In an effort to understand whether current tools accurately rate the effectiveness of community colleges, we developed the Perceptions of Community College Assessment survey. The survey was sent to community college employees in the United States who had the