By Jennifer Gonzalez

Seattle

A project led by the American Association of Community Colleges to develop common, voluntary standards of accountability for two-year institutions is moving forward, and specific performance measures are being developed, an official at the association said.

Kent Phillippe, director of research for the community colleges' group, gave an update on the project during a session on Monday at the association's annual meeting here. He said the project, which began in 2008 and is financed by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is now its second phase. The project's advocates have begun pushing a public-relations campaign to build support for the accountability effort among colleges.

"We need to get the buy-in from the community colleges that they want to do it," he said.

By using common reporting formats and measures that are appropriate to their institutions, community colleges can provide a more accurate picture of their sector, the project's supporters have said. Many community colleges keep track of their students' progress already, but what data they measure, how they collect it, and how they communicate it varies widely.

Community colleges have been criticized because their sector has not been able to produce common measurements for graduations rates and other criteria, and, therefore, they cannot accurately track the progress of their students. Two-year college officials have argued that developing meaningful sector-wide performance standards would be difficult because students come to their colleges for many different reasons, including to take a single class, to fulfill specific job-training programs, or to complete a two-year associate degree.

Mr. Phillippe said one area of college performance the voluntary accountability system will measure is student persistence and completion, including retention and transfer rates. Student progress toward completion may also be measured by tracking how many students reach certain credit milestones.

Other areas that will be measured include colleges' contributions to the work force and economic and community development.

Financial Aid

Too many community-college students who might be eligible for financial aid do not apply for it, according to a report released at another session of the conference on Monday by the College Board and developed in cooperation with the American Association of Community Colleges.

There is not one clear answer to why it happens. The report cites several reasons that may contribute to the trend, including that low tuition may make students think they can afford the cost without financial aid and that community colleges do not always have enough staff members to provide the guidance and help with applications that a diverse student body needs.

The report found that low- and middle-income students who attend community college and would be eligible for need-based federal financial aid are less likely than their peers at all other types of institutions to file the necessary form, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

In the 2007-8 academic year, 57.8 percent of students eligible for the Pell Grant who attended a community college either full or part time applied for federal financial aid, compared with 76.8 percent of Pell-eligible students at public, four-year colleges, the report says.

Not filing the federal student-aid application form and, therefore, not receiving assistance reduces the chance of a student completing a degree, the report concluded. That's because those same students often end up attending college part time to save money or working more than 20 hours a week while attending full time. Both of those actions reduce the chance of a student completing a degree.

The report recommends that community colleges re-evaluate their policies and procedures to help students better understand the financial-aid process. Specifically, two-year colleges could distribute materials explaining financial aid in both English and students' native languages, offer evening and weekend office hours at their financial-aid offices, encourage students to fill out the federal financial-aid application during the college enrollment or registration process, and support state or regional efforts to improve application rates.

"This is a high priority for my association," said David S. Baime, senior vice president for government relations and research at the American Association of Community Colleges. "We want our community colleges to do everything they can to get their students to apply for financial aid."

Dearth of Black, Female Presidents

Black, female community-college presidents make up less than 5 percent of the nation's 1,200 two-year college presidents, even though more than a quarter of those leaders are women, according to the results of a 2010 survey released at another conference session on Monday by the Presidents' Round Table, a national network of African-American chief executives of community colleges.

"We are moving in the wrong direction, especially given the growing diversity of our nation," Thelma Scott-Skillman, president of Folsom Lake College, in California, said of the failure to keep pace with rapidly changing demographics.

Ms. Scott-Skillman said one of the reasons there are so few black, female community-college presidents is that they tend not to be in the academic-vice-president position, often a catalyst to the president's job. Rather, they are in student services, she said.

The report also provided a profile of the average black, female community-college president. Of the survey respondents, 95 percent hold doctoral degrees; 80 percent said they wanted to become a college president to change institutions; 60 percent wanted to serve as a mentor to aspiring higher-education professionals; and 55 percent held academic-vice-president positions immediately before becoming president.