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First and foremost, we hope this newsletter finds you and your families healthy and safe. It’s hard to fathom all of the changes to our daily lives that have occurred over the past couple of weeks. As we continue to face the challenging days, weeks, and even months ahead, it is so important to us that we provide what support we can to our Iowa LCANs.
In our role as a collective impact funder, we want to emphasize that we recognize that the needs of our communities may very well change. We want to remain as flexible as we can in terms of supporting efforts to put grant funds to work in support of our LCAN communities. We will talk about this in more depth at our upcoming webinar on April 9th, but here is an example: if your budget included funds for transportation, etc. for now-cancelled training opportunities, you might consider repurposing those dollars to address emergent needs in your community. We have also approved the use of grant funds to pay for the Zoom video conferencing platform; please do not hesitate to let us know if your team would benefit from this tool. If you have any other ideas, please feel free to reach out to us to discuss.
We are including below some resources that may be helpful as we adjust to our new reality, and we look forward to (virtually) seeing everyone on April 9th. In the meantime, everyone, take good care.
- Megan Sibbel, Iowa College Aid
Donna Loewen, our Dubuque LCAN coordinator, featured prominently in the Telegraph Herald earlier this month. Her editorial focuses on the importance of opening postsecondary pathways for all young people and DCAN’s role in that process. Congratulations, Donna, we appreciate your hard work!
If you have any good news to share out, please either let us know or post it on Chatter! We would like to elevate positivity where we can during this time.
- Visit this webpage at Iowa College Aid for student-centered resources related to the impact of COVID-19.
- Another shout-out to one of our LCAN coordinators: Cecilia Martinez, the LatinosCAN coordinator, has started this fantastic Google Drive folder containing COVID-related resources for Iowa. Thank you, Cecilia!
- Many of you are familiar with FSG and the resources provided by the Collective Impact Forum. Last Thursday they held the first in a series of weekly webinars entitled “Managing Change in (Rapidly) Changing Times” (view here). Last week’s webinar was excellent and offered some great suggestions for collective impact initiatives during the COVID-19 epidemic. To learn more and view upcoming events, follow this link.
- The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has a page on their website dedicated to COVID-19-related resources for organizations that work in college access.
Among the wide range of articles appearing about the impact of COVID-19 on higher education, we wanted to draw your attention to a handful of particularly impactful pieces:
Our agency’s contact with College Board shared the following update regarding AP Exams:
- We will offer AP exams on their scheduled dates in May (May 4-15) plus a second round of date offerings for those who are sick or just need to test later for any reason
- Instead of taking them in high schools in large groups, the exams will be offered at home
- Exams can be completed on computers, laptops, tablets, and cell phones (no internet needed)
- We are working with external partners to get technology to those who will need it
- The exams for each subject will start at the same time around the world and last 45 minutes
- Students will be able to access outside resources so these are like open book
- The test is much shorter to prevent a student from sharing content/collaborating and still being able to complete the assignments
- We will use security measures such as plagiarism checking software
- Most questions will require students to read primary and secondary sources, analyze data, and solve problems – making it difficult for them to confer with other students and still complete the exam within the allotted time frame.
- Accommodation details are not available yet but students who require time and half will be granted the extended time and other accommodations are being worked on.
- The exams will not cover the final 25% of content as instructional time was halted, in many cases
- For students who want to refresh on the 75% of content, free online classes will be available to complete the course content
- AP subjects that do not normally have a final exam (Capstone and Art) will have extended deadlines for students to turn in portfolios and still no final
- If students choose not to test, they can get a full refund
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