Placement and Telemarketing for Developmental Mathematics

Once upon a time, my college had optional placement test results … students could enroll for courses above the level indicated by the placement test. Since the test results were voluntary, students could choose to comply or to rebel relative to our recommendations. One of the factors in this choice was the peer reviews they heard about the developmental course in question; part of our rationale to help them ‘make the right choice’ was the evidence we had about how effective that course was in preparing students for the next course.

Like most institutions, those days are gone; because of ‘best practice reports’ (and our own judgment), we now have mandatory placement test results. Like many other colleges, students at my college MUST comply — regardless of peer reviews of our courses, and regardless of our own evidence.

A recent report from our friends at the Community College Research Center raises even broader questions about the validity of the common placement tests; the report is called “Assessing Developmental Assessment in Community Colleges” … see . This report shares the results of several research studies on placement tests and placement of students, and should be required reading for policy makers at the local, state, and national levels. A basic point is made: For a placement (assessment) system to be valid, the resulting developmental course work should be effective at leveling the playing field. This remains as an open question, overall, for developmental mathematics.

So, I’ve been thinking about this report and what we have been doing. And, I wonder … in commercial enterprises, companies depend upon peer reviews for new business; when that is not enough, they consider things like telemarketing. How successful would we be if we had to use telemarketing to bring students in to our developmental math classes? Could we draw anywhere near the same level of business if we needed to depend on students making a deliberate choice to take our classes as an investment on doing better in the future?

I worry that the vast majority of our students believe that their developmental math work is important only because they have to get a passing grade in order to move on to the next level. I worry even more that … because we have such a strong demand for our courses … REGARDLESS of quality or benefits … we do not put our best content into our courses, nor our best teachers into developmental math classrooms, that our books are less than inspiring, and that we miss opportunities to engage in basic improvement processes.

Maybe it would be good for us to face a possible ‘non-automatic’ nature of students who could opt out of our courses; perhaps we have become so accustomed to guaranteed demand that we do not see opportunities.

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Is Developmental Mathematics an Issue for Racial Equity?

If you are very sensitized to issues of race, this might be an uncomfortable post.  I’ll try very hard to not offend anybody (the comfort level is a different issue than offense).

Some work in Achieving the Dream is framed in terms of focusing on certain groups; see http://www.tjcnewspaper.com/tjc-fulfilling-its-mission-to-achieve-a-dream-1.2133583 for example.  In this article, it is reported that Tyler Junior College is focusing the work especially on “African-American and Hispanic men” … though it seems like both references should say ‘American’.  I won’t get in to the ‘American’  label in this post.

Do you agree with a view of low pass rates in developmental mathematics being a racial equity issue? 

At my own college, the chair of my department did some research on students in our lowest class (pre-algebra); the conclusion was that a course like pre-algebra can serve as a all-too effective racial screening device … the difference in pass rates was fairly extreme.  I don’t want to post them here, but I will tell you that my own research on this over the past 35 years is very consistent with the view that relatively few minority students (especially men) tend to survive the most basic developmental math courses.   

“Why” is the issue?  A student is quoted in the article about Tyler JC as saying this is somewhat related to lifestyle and culture.  I suspect that there are other systemic factors that are at least as important, including the possibility that our standard procedures are less appropriate for students from some cultural or language backgrounds.  I believe that there are factors within the instructional context of our classes that have differential impacts on different groups of students.

A few years ago, I attended a short-course on retention for under-served students led by Craig Nelon (http://www.bio.indiana.edu/faculty/directory/profile.php?person=nelson1) and Bob Grossman (Kalamazoo College, MI); you can see some of this information online at http://www.csmd.edu/istem/events_presentations_nelsongrossman.html.  I encourage you to look for professional development, and resist the temptation to accept low minority pass rates in our courses.

Equity is a basic goal of developmental mathematics, in my view.  We can not ‘solve society’s problems’ by ourselves, but we can be part of the solution.

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Complete College America — focus on ‘remediation’

A recent webinar (March 11) addressed some central concerns of the Complete College America (CCA) alliance, a collaboration of 24 states. 

In this webinar (see http://www.completecollege.org/docs/Completion%20Fundamentals%20Webinar.pdf) remediation was a central issue.  Early in the presentation, the statement is made that “Remediation, as it currently exists, does not make a difference” based on analysis of data for students in gatekeeper courses who had passed remedial math versus those who placed in remedial but did not take remedial math. 

Although this point is valid based on the data, I was encouraged by the fact that the results for math were better than the results for reading or writing:  78% passed the gatekeeper after completing remedial math, versus 68% who placed into remedial math but did not take it. 

Later in the presentation, some novel solutions are described.   Since the presentation was done by several people, I found that the result was a good mix of ideas.  The session on “Transformative Technology” lists “A flavor of the possible” (a very nice phrase), which serves as a reasonable summary of many of the current efforts. 

I was a little disappointed that this CCA webinar did not mention either the New Life project nor the Carnegie Pathways.  We seem to be flying under the radar for many policy makers; this will shift as our implementations begin.

The Math Problem

We’ve all seen the articles … “Math becoming a problem for Utah students” is one example (see http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=14936566&s_cid=rss-148).

The first step in solving a problem is to understand the problem.  Raw data is not the problem; items like “28% of our students are currently taking remedial mathematics” does not define the problem.  Like our own applications, we need to do some thinking before we design a solution.

I believe that a fundamental aspect of the ‘math problem’ related to developmental mathematics is that we have accepted a deficit-oriented remedial curriculum as a valid model.  Strictly speaking, what we have now is not even a model; a model has some basic properties — like a goal, statements of inputs, parameters for functioning, and measures of successful outputs.  Our current system has a vague goal (“get them ready for college math”), which does not survive a professional analysis; we assume that a course like ‘college algebra’ or pre-calculus is a reasonable goal for community college students.

Hopefully, you will read that last sentence in the prior paragraph again.  “Could he really mean what he just said?”  Yes, I do … it’s not that I do not want my students to take more mathematics; I am passionate about encouraging and empowering my students to do just that.  The point is this:  We have no justification for predicting that the current system is a reasonable preparation for college mathematics.

We have been trapped in the cage of procedures and correct answers.  We have been bound by the ropes of ‘basic skills’.  We have been discouraged by the quicksand of ‘schools are not doing their job!’.  It is time to claim the problem, and define it for ourselves.

Once we define the problem, we will be thinking about powerful solutions … helping our students understand a set of mathematical concepts and relationships that apply to a variety of student goals.  This would include variables, additive and proportional relationships, multiplicative relationships, symbolic & graphical representations, numeric and symbolic methods, and abstracting mathematical expressions from various contextual situations.

Claim the problem!  Understand the problem for yourself.  Look past the surface features (data) to see the structures underneath.  Have confidence that we can build better solutions that will truly help our students reach their goals.  Problems are opportunities to apply understanding and wisdom.