I saw a new report on retention for freshmen students at CUNY recently. This chart of CUNY Guttman (formerly the New Community College) retention rates, 2014-2022, wonderfully highlights a perpetual cycle in attempts to improve education:
When it starts, a new method is given to a small experimental group of students. Results are great (here, 73% freshman retention)! But this is in direct contact with instructors who have "drunk the kool-aid", put in heroic extra effort, and are also careerwise incited to juice the scores.
Since the initial results are so great, we expand the program to more students, and more instructors. And at this point the results collapse (here, down to 45% freshman retention). In this case, Guttman went from first-place to last-place in retention among CUNY community colleges in just a few years.
This happens over and over again in all educational research. It's extremely predictable.
Side Note #1: My colleague Emily Schnee sounded the alarm about practices at Guttman a decade ago, after spending a year there during its first organization.
Side Note #2: The Guttman Foundation is currently suing CUNY for the majority of its $25 million grant money back.
