Higher education officials tout the need for developmental education

LJWorld.com,  November 28, 2013  Sometimes state leaders complain about providing remedial education to college students, but a recent report says that basic instruction is crucial to the progress of thousands of Kansans and the state in general.  For many, remedial or developmental education provides a path to higher education and out of poverty, said Brian Inbody, president of Neosho County Community College.  "It is at the heart of the community college mission," Inbody recently told the Kansas Board of Regents.  "If you are ready to make a change in your life, we are going to meet where you are in your life. And if you can prove yourself, you can move on," he said.

Developmental education refers to coursework offered at a post-secondary institution that usually involves intermediate algebra, fundamentals of English or reading. Students usually enroll in the classes to prepare for more rigorous college-level courses.  In academic year 2010-2011, the most recent for which statistics are available, 38 percent of first-time, degree-seeking students attending Kansas community colleges enrolled in developmental courses during their first year at college. Seventeen percent of university students enrolled in developmental courses during their first year. The most common remedial course taken is math.

Developmental education is crucial for student success, Inbody said.  A typical community college class may include a mixture of recent high school graduates, older adults who haven't been in a classroom in more than 15 years, and students who scored low on the ACT.  Inbody said many students in community colleges are struggling to overcome poverty and haven't had the family supports that other college students have had.  "The idea of setting a goal of five years down the road to get into college is a foreign concept to a lot of families," he said.

Regents agreed with the need of developmental education to help increase the number of Kansans who have a post-secondary credential or degree.  "Too many people think developmental education is a dirty word. It's not," said Regents Chairman Fred Logan  Community college officials are planning a more in-depth study of developmental education needs to be completed by June.  "If there are policy issues that need to be changed, please bring them forward," Regent Kenny Wilk told Inbody.  Regents President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Tompkins said developmental education is key to helping people succeed. It would be easy to write off some of these students, but he said that wouldn't be right.  "We have set this system up where we do have a place where you can get into post-secondary education," he said.

Originally published at: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/nov/28/higher-education-officials-tout-need-developmental/

Transforming Remediation: Understanding the Research, Policy, and Practice (Webinar)

Transforming Remediation:  Understanding the Research, Policy, and Practice was a webinar conducted October 4, 2013  highlights research into the problems of remediation, along with promising practices from community colleges across the country. Speakers include Complete College America’s Bruce Vandal, the California Acceleration Project’s Katie Hern, North Carolina’s Cynthia Lyston, and researcher Michelle Hodara. The webinar was co-sponsored by the American Youth Policy Forum and the American Institutes for Research. Through the California Acceleration Project, the state is seeking alternatives to traditinoal approaches of developmental-level courses for meeting the needs of the students and the state.

History of Learning Assistance Programs in the Mid to Late 1800s

As a historian, I have been interested in the history of learning assistance and developmental education.  Listening to the rhetoric of today as some argue for the elimination of developmental-level courses, a listener might think that such courses are a recent creation.  A careful review of the historical record reveals they have been embedded as part of American higher education since the start.  Below is the first of three parts of an examination of the 1800s.  These are excerpts from my 2010 book published by Jossey-Bass, "Access at the crossroads:  Learning assistance in higher education."

Recruitment of Academically Underprepared Students

After the U.S. Civil War, students who were considered academically under-prepared were aggressively recruited. Economic and social changes throughout the United States fueled by the Civil War significantly influenced expansion of learning assistance at more colleges. Many male students did not seek admission or left college to join their respective armies. Many colleges in the North and South replaced them and their tuition payments through expanded academic preparatory departments that supported underage students who were too young to enlist. Examples from the North include Valparaiso University in Indiana, which replaced college students through a rapid expansion of the academic preparatory department. Although the liberal arts college and theology school at Bucknell University closed temporarily in 1865, the academic preparatory school at the same college significantly increased its enrollment. Offsetting enroll­ment decreases saved many institutions from closing. Southern colleges followed the same pattern of Northern institutions through extended academic prepara­tory departments and acceptance of applicants formerly denied admission. In 1861 the University of Alabama created an academic preparatory department for boys twelve years and older. In 1863 the University of Georgia created Uni­versity High School and suspended rules prohibiting admission of boys younger than fourteen to the university. The Faculty Senate of South Carolina College in 1862 voted to admit young students to replace revenue lost by former stu­dents who had left the institution to join the Confederate Army (Rudy, 1996).

History of Learning Assistance Programs in the Mid 1880s

As a historian, I have been interested in the history of learning assistance and developmental education.  Listening to the rhetoric of today as some argue for the elimination of developmental-level courses, a listener might think that such courses are a recent creation.  A careful review of the historical record reveals they have been embedded as part of American higher education since the start.  Below is the first of three parts of an examination of the 1800s.  These are excerpts from my 2010 book published by Jossey-Bass, "Access at the crossroads:  Learning assistance in higher education."

Academic Preparatory Academies

In 1830, New York University created an early prototype of an academic prepara­tory academy. It provided instruction in mathematics, physical science, philoso­phy, and English literature (Dempsey, 1985). The focus, however, was acquiring basic academic content knowledge, not the cognitive learning strategies that are often prerequisite for mastery of new academic material. These academies were a necessary bridge for many college aspirants as a result of the lack of formal sec­ondary education for many. The U.S. education movement started from the top down. First, colleges and universities were established and then public elemen­tary and secondary schools were developed. Some colleges functioned essentially as both high schools and rigorous colleges. The academic preparatory academies supported the rising academic rigor of postsecondary institutions and provided an access conduit for those seeking a college education. The academies expanded with surprising speed in a short time. By 1894, 40 percent of first-year college students had enrolled in college preparatory courses (Ignash, 1997).

Academic Preparatory Deparments Become Part of the College Curriculum:  Late 1800s

Since the beginning, tutorial programs were the most common form of aca­demic enrichment and support at most prestigious institutions such as Har­vard and Yale. Many college administrators responded to the high number of students academically underprepared by creating a special academic depart­ment that was essential to meet their academic needs. In less selective institu­tions, the number of underprepared students outnumbered those not requiring additional support. For example, the University of Wisconsin in 1865 could place only forty-one of 331 admitted students in “regular” graduation credit courses. The majority of the new students admitted were restricted to remedial courses (Shedd, 1932). Quality of primary and secondary education was uneven or missing in most of the United States. Most colleges provided instruction in basic skills of spelling, writing, geography, and mathematics, as they were the only venue for such instruction (Brier, 1984). Instruction in basic content areas lengthened the undergraduate bachelor’s academic degree to six years or more (Casazza and Silverman, 1996).

In 1849, the University of Wisconsin established the first modern learning assistance program. Instead of offering remedial courses through an external academic preparatory academy, Wisconsin created an academic department for these courses and hired a separate faculty to teach them. The Department of Preparatory Studies instructed students through remedial courses in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Because of an insufficient number of tutors to meet the academic needs of most admitted students, the institution quickly responded by establishing the new academic department. Of the 331 admit­ted students, 290 enrolled in one or more remedial courses in the preparatory studies department. These courses were similar to those offered at a public high school (Brubacher and Rudy, 1976). Many institutions across the United States implemented the Wisconsin model of learning assistance (Brier, 1984). The department persisted until 1880. Continuous internal political battles among the department, campus administrators, and the rest of the university faculty served as a catalyst for its demise. Faculty members from outside the depart­ment demanded its elimination because of the fear of stigma for the university. College administrators tried to appease critics through strategies such as renam­ing the department. New campus administrators finally closed the department after its short and contentious history (Curti and Carstensen, 1949).

Academic preparatory departments emerged at more than 80 percent of all postsecondary institutions (Canfield, 1889). These departments bridged the gap between inadequate academic preparation of high school graduates and college-level curricular expectations (Clemont, 1899). Review of college admission documents indicated that the farther west the college was located, the lower the entrance requirements for the institution as a result of insuffi­cient preparation in high school. As the public school movement spread from the Northeast farther south and west, college entrance requirements of the institutions eventually rose. After a half century of use, however, remedial col­lege credit courses were entrenched in most colleges.

Highlights from College Completion Annual Conference: Game Changers

The College Completion Annual Conference was this week.   <Read the entire report on the Chonicle of Higher Education webpage.>  Much of Monday's discussion centered on what Complete College America calls the "game changers"—strategies that it says can double the number of remedial students passing college-level courses, triple the graduation rates for students transferring with associate degrees to four-year colleges, and quadruple completion of career certificate programs.  Those include tying state appropriations to student performance; making introductory college-level courses, rather than remedial courses, the default placement for almost all students; and offering co-requisite remediation, which is offered alongside college-level courses, to those who need it.

Speakers also argued that too many students are placed directly in remedial courses on the basis of a single placement test, dooming many to a semester or more of courses they pay for but don't get credit for.  Mathematics educators described accelerated math pathways, like Statway and Quantway, that they say are more relevant to most students than the traditional sequences that trip up many learners  The approach, which was developed with the University of Texas at Austin's Charles A. Dana Center, is being used this fall across all of Texas' 50 community-college districts.

The group also heard from students. Kierra Brocks said that when she enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College, in Indiana, she missed the cutoff in math by two points and ended up in a remedial class that didn't challenge her. "It wasn't only money wasted but time wasted," she said. "It doesn't give you motivation to continue."

CHANGING EQUATIONS: How Community Colleges Are Re-thinking College Readiness in Math

Complete Report available to download, http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LWBrief_ChangingEquations_WEB.pdf

From the Executive Summary:  Because of their high enrollment and generally low completion rates, community colleges have been identified as central to efforts to improve higher education outcomes. But that improvement won’t be realized unless more students succeed in math. Together, the high proportion of community college students requiring math remediation, and the relatively low proportion who succeed in required remedial sequences, make placement in developmental math one of the single greatest barriers to college completion. Only 20 percent of students who place into remedial (also known as developmental) math courses ultimately complete the remedial sequence and pass a college-level math course - such as college algebra or statistics - that is required to graduate or transfer.

An increasing number of colleges in California and nationally are involved in experiments aimed at improving, reforming, or even eliminating math remediation in community colleges. This includes a new movement to construct alternative pathways for the majority of community college students, those whose educational goals may not require a second year of algebra. Through LearningWorks’ efforts to strengthen student achievement in the California Community Colleges, it has become clear that practitioners involved in such experiments are eager to learn about parallel efforts, and those not yet involved are curious about the work underway, whether in California or elsewhere in the nation.

LearningWorks commissioned this report, Changing Equations, to address those needs.  Critics argue that intermediate algebra unnecessarily hinders some students pursuing degrees in fields such as English, history, art, and political science from ever graduating. The new pathways for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students are course sequences including both remedial-level courses as well as credit-bearing gatekeeper math courses. Many of these new sequences stress skills in statistics or quantitative reasoning, which proponents say serve most students better in their lives and careers than does high-level algebra. While the de-emphasis on intermediate algebra remains controversial, the math pathways movement resonates with other initiatives to focus community college students’ education around structured pathways leading toward careers.

These experiments are informed by findings emerging from both research and practice that are starting to shift the understanding of math readiness. At the heart of that evolution are four key insights:

1. Math is a hurdle for the majority of community college students. Roughly 60 percent of community college students are placed in developmental math courses.
2. Most students deemed “unready” in math will never graduate. Only 20 percent of students who place into developmental math complete a required gatekeeper course in math.
3. The tests used to determine readiness are not terribly accurate. Research has estimated that as many as a fifth of students placed into remedial math courses could have earned a B or better in a college-level course without first taking the remedial class.
4. The math sequence required by most colleges is irrelevant for many students’ career aspirations. According to research, about 70 percent or more of people with bachelor’s degrees do not require intermediate algebra in their careers.

In sum, the reformers argue that, on the basis of a weakly predictive test, large numbers of students are being prevented from completing college unless they pass a challenging course that may be irrelevant to their futures. Nevertheless, until recently there have been very few experiments with alternatives, leaving intermediate algebra as an effective proxy for determining whether students are “college material.” Various national policy and disciplinary organizations, aware of the gravity of the remedial math dilemma, are urging colleges to re-think this approach and try out alternatives. These include the Developmental Math Committee of the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, Complete College America, and the National Center on Education and the Economy.

Saving Developmental Education - Huffington Post Online

"....The national dialogue exclaiming that developmental education programs do not work is not only a false declaration but a futile approach to improving student persistence and ultimately degree completion. A number of states have withdrawn support for developmental education courses based on the notion that they are expensive, ineffective, and do not belong in four-year colleges and universities. In a few instances, state scholarship programs no longer allow funds to be used to take developmental education courses. Improving degree completion, however, will require institutions to serve students more effectively and a policy environment that does not marginalize developmental education or attempt to relegate it to community colleges...." [Click on this link for the entire article from the Huffington Post.]