Leveraging Policy for Equity in Community College: Call for State and Local Community College Partners

To realize the nation’s business, economic, and human potential, the U.S. must close equity gaps by gender, race and ethnicity, and special population status in high-skill, high-wage, in-demand programs and programs of study. The Perkins V legislation aims to strengthen CTE programs in all 50 states and territories, ensuring that programs are rigorous and that academic and technical content is linked across secondary and postsecondary education. With its new requirement – to conduct a comprehensive local needs assessment (CLNA) and update it at least every two years – community colleges will need to build their capacity in conducting this new analysis of special populations and subgroups, particularly around how to look at data to identify root causes in performance gaps. Local leaders will need to build the skills to have equity-minded conversations with their faculty, staff, other administrators and students, both in planning and implementing their local application for federal CTE funds.

This is where PIPE comes in. The Program Improvement Process for Equity™ (PIPE) is a proven year-long professional development and technical assistance program model. The essence of the PIPE intervention is the implementation of five integrated modules, operationalized for delivery in college settings. These modules challenge and address the culture, climate, policies, and practices that hinder and fail to support underrepresented students.

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) supports STEM and CTE education through partnerships between academic institutions, industry, and economic development agencies to promote improvement in the education of science and engineering technicians at the undergraduate and secondary institution school levels. NAPE will be submitting a proposal to the NSF ATE program for a grant to build upon our successful PIPE professional development course with the goal of creating an updated PIPE curriculum incorporating a more robust equity training with tools directly aligned with common state CLNA processes.

Bringing an equity lens to the CLNA process is an important advancement in the analyses required of LEAs by Perkins V. The current transition period represents a unique opportunity where educational leaders can begin to place equity at the center of their work, and institutionalize access and opportunity for underrepresented groups. NAPE asserts that the CLNA can be a transformative process if an equity principle guides every component of the process. We know you agree.

Get involved

• Identify your community college as a potential pilot site in FY2024 to test the new PIPE curriculum
• Volunteer to serve on the Advisory Committee and help guide the curriculum development and pilot implementation

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity or want to express your interest in partnering with NAPE on this project, please contact Programs Specialist, Freja Joslin at fjoslin@napequity.org by Wednesday, September 29^th.