Creating Common Assignments: The Impact of Teacher Designed Instructional Units

The United States has made progress in increasing postsecondary attainment – rising from rising from 38% in 2008 to over 53% today. There’s still work to be done, and this effort requires alignment across philanthropy, policy, and practice around a shared goal: ensuring more students complete credentials that lead to meaningful opportunity and mobility.

The “four-year college vs. everything else” frame around postsecondary education is both binary and unhelpful. A more helpful frame is to think about programs in terms of their purpose and payoff. A recent report from Excel in Ed shows a more holistic way of thinking about programs that expose students to a range of education and career options and outlines some essential ingredients for a quality, structured pathway.

At SXSW EDU, we talked about how real progress in higher education doesn’t happen overnight—it takes time, persistence, and commitments to long-term change. Developmental education reform is a great example: states are making smart updates to placement policies and support systems so more students can start—and succeed—in credit-bearing courses right away.