ACC not ranked in top 50 community college list

Washington Monthly magazine published their latest ranking of the top 50 community colleges in the country in August and Austin Community College did not make the list. When the periodical released their first ranking of community colleges in 2007, it was the first of its kind.

Several Texas community colleges are ranked among the top 50, such as the Texas State Technical Colleges of West Texas (at 28) and Waco (at 41).

Whether or not this is significant is a source of contention. In fact, the validity of the rankings themselves has been subject to national debate.

Washington Monthly derives its rankings using data from two sources: the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), which works out of the University of Texas at Austin, and graduation rates published by the U.S. Department of Education. The data is put through a formula devised by the magazine, which assigns different levels of importance to an assortment of different factors. For example, "active and collaborative learning" accounts for 29 percent of the score, while "support for learners" accounts for 12 percent.

The majority of the data weighed, about 85 percent, comes from the CCSSE's survey instrument, The Community College Student Report, and the remaining 15 percent comes from the Department of Education's graduation rates.

According to CCSSE's website, The Community College Student Report "provides information on student engagement, a key indicator of learning and, therefore, of the quality of community colleges." It's described as a benchmarking instrument, diagnostic tool, and monitoring device, but never as a rankings tool.

Dr. Angela Oriano-Darnall, an Associate Director at CCSSE, had this to say about the Monthly's rankings; "The colleges featured in Washington Monthly's rankings are doing important work—CCSSE's focus is on two-year community colleges and technical colleges—stressing the importance of student success, outcomes, and retention. This is the case with ACC and other Texas community colleges. Their participation in our surveys has been very productive."

When the Washington Monthly published its new rankings, the CCSSE immediately issued a news release voicing its opposition to the use of its data for rankings purposes, citing its own literature; "CCSSE does not support the use of student engagement survey results for the purpose of ranking community and technical colleges. Such uses would obscure complex dimensions of institutional performance and student behavior."

Kevin Carey, the policy director of Education Sector, a Washington think tank, worked with the periodical on the recent ranking. He spells out the intentions behind the rankings in an article accompanying the rankings.

"We believe that ranking community colleges is important," he writes. "There is little demand for national rankings of [community colleges]. That means that students, educators, and policy makers have no comparable, consumer-friendly information when evaluating two-year schools ... The more we know about community college excellence, the better the case for investing in the best institutions and holding the rest accountable for improvement."