California community colleges - Two years after California passed a law requiring community colleges to "optimize" the chances of students, having just completed transferable math and English courses to 4-year universities in their freshman year. All but 3 community colleges in the state are non-compliant, a new study finds Pasadena City College, Porterville College, and College of the Sequoias are exceptions.
As a result, thousands of students across the state are lagging behind in English and maths, and skin students are disproportionately denied access to transfer-level classes, according to study authors at the California Acceleration Project, a nonprofit that tracks performance. student community and advocates of remedial education reform.
However, more students are taking and passing transfer-level courses, the research found. If a community college is required to maximize the likelihood of a student passing a transfer-level course, it sounds intuitive. After all, many students enroll in community colleges with the intention of transferring to a 4-year college or university.
However, the California Community Colleges system has long placed students on non-transferable remedial courses. Prior to the ratification of the 2017 Assembly Bill 705, more students started studying in remedial mathematics and English classes than in transfer courses in these subjects. according to information from the California Community School Chancellor's Office, Assembly Bill 705, which was implemented in 2019, seeks to change that.
AB 705 gives students the default right to enroll in transferable college-level courses. It also requires California universities to "optimize the likelihood that a student will enter and complete a transfer-level course in English and mathematics within one year" and use high school courses or grades rather than standardized tests to ensure student placement in English courses. and mathematics.
Questions about standardized tests for placement
For decades, students who had struggled with English and math in high school were placed into remedial courses based on standardized placement tests, which the CAP called “inaccurate and unfair.”
Such tests have since proven inconsistent in predicting students' chances of successfully completing transfer-level courses, according to a growing number of well-reported studies.
They have also been criticized for bias against black and Hispanic students, for nonpartisan study organizations including the California Institute of Public Policy and the California Acceleration Project.
Since the 2010-2011 school year, the earliest information in any state is available online, black and Hispanic students enrolled at California Community Colleges have successfully completed transfer-level English or math classes within one year of trying English or college math classes. they are first high at much lower rates, often nearly twice as low as white and Asian students.
Observers say it's because dark-skinned and Hispanic students haven't been given the same opportunity to enroll in transfer classes.
“We use a completely bogus and racially unfair standardized test that doesn't tell us about a student's skills. After that, based on that, we might as well put them in a 2-year remedial math course,” says Katie Hern, co-founder of CAP. “The horror of the system is why AB 705 is needed and unanimously passed the Legislature. It's a broken system."
Transfer rate course completion rate is soaring but still low
In the first year after AB 705 took effect, transfer rate completion rates across states in English rose 5 percentage points, and transfer rate completion rates in mathematics rose 15 percentage points, according to information from the Office of the Chancellor of California Community Schools.
Biggest alibi for revision? Thousands of students fewer are placed into remedial courses.
On the contrary, they are given the opportunity to succeed in the transfer tier class, and many do so. often with the help of extra tutoring services or by enrolling in English and math support classes that require extra credit, allowing students to focus more time on the subject. critical subjects.
While the states are making progress toward better transfer-level course success rates under AB 705, there is still a long way to go to achieve full implementation of the law.
In June, Public Advocates, a not-for-profit law firm, petitioned the Office of the Chancellor and the California Community College Board of Governors to report concerns that current regulations are not optimizing the success of student transfer rates as required by law.
The petition calls for an amendment to the California Education Code that would:
• Limit enrollment to not just placements in remedial courses
• Require colleges to proactively distribute concurrent support at the transfer level to students who need it
• Reflects that the intent of AB 705 is to maximize not only increase student enrollment and completion of transfer-level courses
“Current information shows that too many community college students continue to be enrolled in remedial courses and do not complete transfer-level math courses in one year. This is partly due to significant inconsistencies and deficiencies in the regulations that allow tertiary institutions to fulfill their affirmative task of optimizing the completion of transfer-level mathematics and English students in one year,” the petition reads.
In August, the Chancellor's Office responded to the petition disapprovingly:
"We respectfully disagree that the existing regulations are inconsistent with Education Code section 78213, and refuse to recommend this revision to the current California Community Colleges Board of Governors. The Chancellor's Office continues to evaluate the implementation of AB 705 in the community college district to determine the legislative objectives will be met. ."
In 2019-20, the last school year for which information has been reported, thousands of students across the state continue to be enrolled in remedial classes, more in math than in English.
Transfer-level math classes can range from pre-calculus to calculus, statistics, or mathematics for the liberal arts, depending on the student's major and where they plan to transfer.
However, no college can reliably justify placing students in remedial mathematics, the CAP reports.
To do so, a college needs to ensure that remedial courses will maximize students' chances of passing transfer-level courses in one year.
Similar to how success in French I is believed to be a marker of French II readiness, remedial mathematics classes have been considered a stepping stone to success in transfer-level mathematics courses.
However, observers say the information does not support this claim. Less than half of California Community College students who begin a major course in just one course at college-level foundations will pass transfer-level math or English classes.
Other variables such as financial pressure and family encouragement may also affect outcomes, but Hern believes remedial classes lower the chances of college success.
"There's an impenetrable belief that remedial classes help students or that students aren't ready for transfer-level classes and shouldn't be there," Hern said. "I haven't seen any empirical data to support that belief. facts against it."
Hern, a professor of English at Skyline College in San Mateo County, was interested in remediation because he saw many students over the years in his freshman composition courses who lacked the institutional drive for college success.
In 2010, he and Myra Snell, a mathematics professor at Los Medanos College in Contra Costa County, founded the California Acceleration Project to advocate for remediation reform.
Since then, more and more studies and information have shown that students with even lower high school GPAs are more likely to transfer from community colleges when they avoid remedial classes altogether and instead enroll immediately in transfer-level courses with conditional encouragement, a kind of embedded tutoring.
"Structurally, it's a guarantee that any remedial courses on a student's path reduce their chances of completing transferable courses and making progress on degrees," Hern says. acts as a screening apparatus through which students are about to demoralize and disappear.”
However, the CAP found that by fall 2020, there were only 17 community colleges where 90% or more of their introductory mathematics courses were transfer-level. The other 75 colleges, including College of the Desert, still offer more remedial courses than cost-boosted transfer-level courses.
How does College of the Desert compare?
Prior to AB 705, approximately 4 times as many COD students began studying in remedial mathematics classes as in transfer-level mathematics classes. Most start 2 or more tiers below the transfer level, making it nearly impossible to complete a transfer-level class in one year. Approximately 2 times as many students start remedial English courses as transfer-level English courses.
The college's 2016 strategic plan says: "Nearly 90% of College of the Desert's first-year students are unprepared for post-secondary coursework. These students are required to take remedial courses in English, reading, and/or math. College readiness gap This high level is the main trigger for low success and completion rates. Improving college readiness is an important part of increasing student success."
This PowerPoint slide from the 2017 College of the Desert presentation shows that in the fall of 2015 6 times more students were assigned to math classes 4 levels below transfer-level than to transfer-level classes.
Since AB 705 was passed, Amanda Phillips, dean of COD counseling services, said the college has "significantly reduced" the number of remedial classes it offers.
"If you look at our agenda for fall 2018 versus today, it's a completely different world," said Phillips. "The number of repair sections decreases with each mention."
In the first year following implementation of AB 705, 60% more students passed transfer-level math, and 20% more passed transfer-level English in their initial year since taking classes in that subject at COD.
However, the rate of successful completion of COD transfer-level courses in English and mathematics lags behind the state average, although they are close to catching up.
COD continues to be one of the dozens of California community colleges that continue to offer a large number of remedial courses.
applications that, while not illegal, are “inappropriate” for CAP and “disproportionately impact” on black and Hispanic students.
"(Colleges) often interpret the law as It says we can't require remedial classes, but we're not saying we can't offer them," Hern said. "After that, they just drove a convoy of Mack trucks through that gap."
Until 2019, COD used a standardized placement test series called ACCUPLACER to evaluate incoming students' reading and math skills.*
Researchers at Columbia University wrote in a 2012 working paper citing nearly 500 times that the ACCUPLACER and COMPASS, another placement test, "do not make solid predictions about how students perform in college."
In 2015, the ACT, the testing agency that administers COMPASS, brought the entire product model off the market and acknowledged that empirical evidence shows that the test "does not contribute as effectively to student placement and success as before."
Currently, COD uses ALEKS, McGraw Hill's "artificially genius education and evaluation system" to guide students towards coursework they feel safe to take.
Phillips, the dean of COD counseling services, thinks that placing students in classes based solely on standardized test scores is wrong. But he also believes that universities should not force students into transfer classes if they feel safer taking remedial classes first.
"We give students information, and they make decisions that work for them," says Phillips. "What's more if it's not a decision that we think is best, it's 100% a student decision."
On November 18, the Chancellor's Office of California Community Colleges issued a memorandum prohibiting evaluation tests for self-directed and guided placements unless a college has received an exemption from the Chancellor's Office and only if the student's high school performance information is not available.
The Chancellor's Office previously tolerated the placement test for college advice under "temporary approval."
In 2019-20, 461 COD students have enrolled in remedial mathematics as well as 243 students in remedial English.
How COD will become fully compliant with AB 705 remains to be seen, and that is something that counseling staff and faculty are currently working on.
Philips said the increase in transfer success rates was partly due to the EDGE program, a summer seminar the college set up a few years later that offered new applicants a quick overview of English and math and introduced them to support services such as dedicated counseling, financial support, and student success workshops.
COD also provides one-on-one or group tutoring for students enrolled in remedial courses. However, the college doesn't offer additional unit-value math and English class support for fear that students who struggle with these courses in high school will associate college with negative experiences, lose attention in school and drop out, according to Phillips.
“It could be that you didn't enjoy high school, and now you associate college with math endlessly it's hard," he said.
"I think there's acceptance that the community college system's method of doing remediation doesn't work," Phillips added. "Right now, the debate is: What will work?"