Giving Compass' Take:

· This issue focus from MDRC discusses lessons learned from the Los Angeles College Promise Program and how programs can be improved by listening to and including students' voices. 

· How can schools focus on improving programs by listening to their students? Why is student feedback so important in improving school programs and education? 

· Read more on the importance of listening to students and what they have to say.

The Los Angeles College Promise program aims to increase college access and success among students in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) by offering on-campus support services and a scholarship that fully covers students’ tuition and fees during their first two years. The program has a large student population to consider, as it operates across all nine LACCD community colleges (which together serve over 200,000 students) and is available to all high school graduates in the Los Angeles Unified School District (the largest public school system in California and the second largest in the United States). Like many postsecondary student success programs across the country, LA College Promise is making program changes to provide more effective support that helps students stay in school and graduate.

Establishing a Cycle of Continual Improvement
In 2017, LACCD partnered with MDRC to (1) assess the Los Angeles College Promise program’s first year of implementation and (2) establish an effective cycle of continual improvement rooted in the diagnosis and design practices employed by MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science. Over the course of two years, staff members from LACCD and its nine colleges were trained to identify challenges preventing students from meeting program goals, diagnose the causes of each challenge, and ultimately design solutions that serve students’ needs.

Staff members from the district and each college embraced the student-centered cycle outlined in the graphic to the right, as well as the use of process maps (visual tools that represent the steps of processes from start to finish, often used to identify opportunities for improvement). Other student success programs looking to reimagine their improvement cycles and expand the ways they engage students can use these strategies as a general guide.

Read the full article about improving programs with students' voices by Andrea Vasquez and Madeline Price at MDRC.