El estudio fonológico de los sonidos

A. Initial Licensure Education

Strategies to increase the number of initial licensure graduates address the two major challenges of increasing enrollment capacity and improving student graduation rates.

Meeting Statewide Targets for the Number of Graduates through Regional and Local Collaboration

In recent years, the THECB has promoted educational partnerships and the sharing of scarce resources through regional coordination or collaboration. Many of the grant projects funded through the Nursing, Allied Health and Other Health-Related Education Grant Program have supported a limited range of educational activities that require collaboration among nursing programs and between nursing programs and their hospital affiliates. A list of current grant projects is included as Appendix L.

The THECB is now recommending that regional and local coordination play a greater role in increasing the number of graduates at the institutional level. In A New Curriculum Model for Initial RN Licensure Programs, the THECB proposes implementing a common curriculum that would be modified to

incorporate best practices at the regional level. The proposed plan promises to offer efficiencies in nursing education without losing the benefits of adapting the curriculum to regional differences. The curriculum may help institutions increase the number of graduates by institutionalizing best practices in nursing education as well as better leveraging institutional and faculty resources.

Regional and local coordination could also help nursing programs focus on specific graduation targets. This strategy would require that the THECB calculate each region‟s and each institution‟s share of the statewide projections for new graduates, and include the subsequent targets in each institution‟s data profile within the Higher Education Accountability System. Nursing programs could use those

performance targets for developing a “business plan” with their institutions‟ administrations, build community partnerships, and solicit support from local and regional health care providers.

Reward Programs that Meet Graduation Rate Targets or Show Improvement toward those Targets

Nursing students face a number of challenges in completing their degrees. Unlike many students who have difficulty in their first year at a community college or university, nursing students have previously demonstrated academic success in required prerequisites (ADN students) or prerequisites and core curriculum courses (BSN students) before being admitted to an initial licensure program. Despite that early success, research shows that various challenges exist for these students and for nursing faculty to ensure that these students are successful in completing their degree programs. In its 2006 report, Strategies to Increase the Number of Graduates from Initial RN Licensure Programs, the THECB identified many of these challenges:

In 2005, the average entering nursing student was considerably older (26 years) than her or his counterparts in comparable associate and baccalaureate degree programs (20 years). The age difference suggests that these students have more family commitments, financial demands, and work-related issues than the average student.

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Survey responses from nursing students who were in their last semester of an initial licensure program indicated that 38 percent of ADN students and 21 percent of BSN students worked more than 20 hours a week during one or more semesters while they were in the program. Only 69 percent of students (from a 2003 enrollment cohort), who previously had shown academic success in higher education, graduated or were persisting in the initial licensure program.

Students who received financial aid for two or more years were more likely to complete or persist in the program (83 percent).

Nursing programs did not have a systematic way of identifying at-risk students and had little evidence to show which of the various academic services provided to these students were most effective.

The findings led the THECB to a number of recommendations directed specifically at nursing programs, including setting a target for graduation rates in initial licensure programs, developing work-study programs between nursing programs and the health care industry, increasing financial aid for nursing students, and creating a staff position dedicated to providing assistance to students during times of financial and personal crisis.

In response to the 2006 study, the 80th Texas Legislature directed the THECB to calculate annual graduation rates for the state‟s initial licensure programs and to establish a program to recognize schools that had an 85 percent graduation rate or higher. The THECB established rules for the

program, the Nursing Education Performance Initiative, and calculated the first year of graduation rates in 2007. Those results are shown on page 13.

For schools to be recognized through the Initiative, a school must have an 85 percent graduation rate or higher and an 85 percent pass rate or higher on the national licensing exam. It must also

demonstrate that its high graduation rate is a result of specific strategies to retain at-risk students in the nursing program and provide a plan for disseminating information about those strategies.

Despite the requirement that successful schools show how those rates have been obtained, some schools may have a distinct advantage in being recognized for their high graduation rates. Schools with the highest graduation rates in 2007 (Appendix F) often have the most competitive admission criteria, and thereby, the best-prepared nursing students. For other nursing programs to achieve similar graduation rates, they will need additional support to improve or expand their student retention efforts. The THECB recommends that the Texas Legislature provide funds so that both nursing

programs that meet the qualification for recognition and nursing programs that have shown significant progress toward higher graduation rates receive incentive funding for those accomplishments. To qualify for funding without reaching the 85 percent targets, a program would need to have a

graduation rate above 50 percent and an increased graduation rate from one year to the next of more than 10 percent.

THECB estimates that if 26 nursing programs were eligible for incentive funding each year and

incentives were set at $15,000 per eligible program, the state would need to appropriate $780,000 to the Initiative for the 2010-11 biennium.

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