Content area
Full Text
Thomas Bailey and Vanessa Smith Morest (Eds.). Defending the Community College Equity Agenda. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 328 pp. Cloth: $45.00. ISBN: 0-8018-8447-0.
The research contained in Defending the Community College Equity Agenda, edited by Thomas Bailey and Vanessa Smith, won the 2007 Outstanding Research Award from the American Educational Research Association Division J-Postsecondary Education. This tribute is a testament to the important contribution this volume makes about the continued role of community colleges in educating half of all college students.
The book relies primarily on data collected via field work for the national field study at 15 community colleges throughout the country. The states selected represent those with large community college enrollments and variety in their state governance coordination. States in the study included California, Washington, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and New York. The colleges themselves were in rural, suburban, and urban areas.
The recent focus by both state and federal government on community colleges as a critical lever in economic development and for individual improvement calls into question the role of open access. Indeed, the editors' claimed goal for their book is to "assess the role played by community colleges in promoting student success and equity in higher education, analyze the strength and implications of emerging challenges to the equity mission, and make suggestions that could be used to strengthen that role" (p. 4).
Over time, shifts in educational goals occur regarding open access versus quality and accountability of student learning. This volume explores this tension, with its various authors centering on the shift of student success from an input model based on student enrollments to an output model that measures student graduation rates and learning.
The first chapter, authored...