Column Misstated Scholars’ Research

To the Editor:

In a recent opinion piece (“College Programs Fail to Meet Their Goals,” September 6), Roger Nozaki and Bob Shireman discuss the problems and challenges that college-preparation programs face. Since the authors cited our work, we feel compelled to respond.

Certainly the authors make valid points. However, there are two striking errors in their commentary.

First, the tenor of the column suggests that college-preparation personnel are trying to pull the wool over foundation officers’ eyes. We totally disagree. In separate analyses, we have examined programs throughout the country and have found hard-working, underfunded, and exceptionally dedicated personnel who are attempting to improve the lives of at-risk students. If the data that college-preparation programs have provided foundations are in error or lacking, it is in large part because foundations have not paid attention to outcomes. In fact, we have been struck by the extent to which our calls for funding better evaluations often fall on deaf ears.

Second, we are at a loss why the well-respected Fulfillment Fund is singled out for criticism when our research has shown that virtually every program faces the same evaluative problems, and program attrition is an endemic problem. We suggest that Mr. Shireman and Mr. Nozaki consider ways to work with programs like the Fulfillment Fund rather than cast them in a negative light.

Patricia Gándara
University of California
Davis, Calif.

William Tierney
Linda Serra Hagedorn
University of Southern California
Los Angeles

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To the Editor:

Mr. Nozaki and Mr. Shireman make several errors in facts used to characterize the Fulfillment Fund as an example of a program that is failing. Contrary to the article’s title, our programs do not “fail to meet their goals.”

The authors’ attack on the Fulfillment Fund’s credibility flies in the face of our many accomplishments. In 1998, the Fulfillment Fund’s Mentor Program was awarded the first-ever Spirit of Mentoring Award by the California Mentor Initiative, as the best community-based mentoring program in the State of California. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the award. The Los Angeles Chapter of the League of Women Voters recently honored the fund with their 2001 Community Service Award. The Fulfillment Fund was also recognized by the White House as one of 177 Promising Practices, according to former president Clinton’s Initiative on Race. The fund is also cited as a model program in a recent U.S. Department of Education publication entitled “Yes, You Can,” designed to assist organizations and schools across the country in developing their own mentoring program.

Perhaps the most gratifying support for our work comes from the very researchers whose data the authors cite, Dr. Patricia Gándara at the University of California at Davis and Dr. William Tierney at the University of Southern California. We are disappointed that the authors chose to single out our work as an example of conduct that can undermine sincere efforts to remedy the inequities in access to higher education and in academic achievement. Their concerns are misplaced in our case. We share their concern for the issue, and are working to the best of our ability to become a leading example of the solutions needed in the field.

On some of the specific errors in the opinion piece, we found it troubling that representatives of two highly respected foundations would single us out on the basis of a single data point, and without providing clear criteria or any substantial evidence for portraying us in such a negative light. The report from which the data were cited was not “an independent review,” but a survey of the literature on K-12 intervention programs. The report, though recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics, is three years old, and it is not known how many, if any, of the citations come from primary sources. While Mr. Nozaki and Mr. Shireman raise important questions about long-term effectiveness, the Fulfillment Fund program referred to in the article had only been in operation for two to three years at the time the data were collected. The program had not yet graduated any students from high school, and therefore could in no way make any claims relevant to the primary focus of the article, long-term success rates.

Finally, the data cited in the article are incorrect and taken out of context. The passage in the National Center for Education Statistics’ report that Mr. Nozaki and Mr. Shireman cite begins, “While the program has not been formally evaluated, it has been studied by the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis (CHEPA).” The passage continues, “… but (CHEPA) found difficulty confirming the findings because of inadequate record keeping.” This difficulty in managing evaluation data is a common challenge faced by programs just starting out. In fact, it is because of those difficulties in capturing reliable outcome measures that we had refrained from publicizing any performance data until just recently.

We were particularly disturbed by the authors’ insinuation that the Fulfillment Fund was engaged in a version of “bait and switch” with our donors. The Fulfillment Fund is one of the few organizations maintaining its commitment to students in the “academic middle.” It is probably truer that, to the degree that we deal with attrition and transiency within our programs, we are indeed serving the most needy students in our community. And on the rare occasions that we provide services for higher-performing students, as in our partnership with the Children’s Defense Fund’s Beat the Odds Program, we clearly identify those students to our board and our donors.

Phaizon R. Wood
Vice President of Programs
Fulfillment Fund
Los Angeles