Over the past two years over 100 Child Development Basic Certificates were awarded from Truman College to Child Development students who have not taken any courses at Truman.
Based on this information, the District-wide Child Development faculty team is calling for an investigation of CCC’s reporting on completion rates for all Child Development programs. Completion rates are used for a variety of purposes for internal decision-making, but also for external accountability so it’s important that they are accurate.
The Child Development faculty team urges FC4 and any other faculty groups to act now and call for a full investigation.
The Harold Lounge 
This has been a very interesting week. Since Reinvention began, many of us in the CD program have questioned the data coming out of the district office as it has never aligned with what we know to be true on our campuses. We have raised these issues with our Presidents, District Officers, and the people in charge of the consolidation of the CD program to Truman College. I nearly got to the point where I accepted the fact that “data” is a loose concept for those in power positions at CCC.
However, when our community partners and other stakeholders began questioning the numbers that were being presented to them, I knew we had to dig deeper. In the words of one of our partners, “No matter how I compute the data, the numbers just don’t add up.”
These new revelations are startling. How can students who have never attended Truman College receive certificates from Truman College? Moreover, how can the district use these numbers to defend the decision to consolidate CD? Imagine if UIC took credit for students who graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign and then claimed that 60% of their graduates come from southern and western Illinois?
It is unconscionable.
I’m too disgusted to formulate thoughts. Just wanted to say #istandwithchilddevelopment. For misleading data to be presented to meet an agenda of decreasing access to our institutions is gross negligence and poor leadership. Do we even get into the problems if this data has been reported or influenced funding decisions?
Yet another entry in district’s “we’ll make the numbers say what we’ve decided they should say in order to justify our enormous salaries even if it screws over huge numbers of our students and violates our true mission” folder. Disheartening and infuriating, as always, but so far from surprising at this point.
This just demonstrates (again) that they know full well that their decision to make Truman the one and only child development hub couldn’t be justified by any legitimate data.