Can We Even Say “Developmental” Anymore?

Some of us say “remedial mathematics”, others say “developmental mathematics”.  Do you feel like you can’t say either one now?

You may have heard that “NADE” changed its name from National Association for Developmental Education to “NOSS” … National Organization for Student Success.  You can understand why this was done, with the recent attacks on all things developmental.  Being understandable, however, does not make this type of thing “right”.  As far as NADE/NOSS is concerned, I think the name change will make it difficult for the organization to articulate a clear identity … since ‘student success’ is an over-arching concept, suggesting that the group will focus on the universe of higher education.  Who will speak on the behalf of students who need advocates for over-coming weak preparation?

Clearly, this avoidance of the word developmental is a systemic problem — a symptom of massive denial — a denial being offered as a “solution”.  Obviously, remedial education (aka developmental education) has had significant problems in the past with our focus on too-many courses, and not providing enough benefit.  However, multiple measures and co-requisite courses will also be a failure in coping with the gaps in preparation that our students bring to us.  We could debate whether a high-school graduate SHOULD need coursework in college before being able to succeed in mathematics; ‘should’ is a very weak design principle for an educational system.  We must succeed in the real world.  Why should we penalize students by pretending that we have some magic that will somehow enable students with an SAT Math of 420 to succeed in a college curriculum with only added support to their ‘college math’ course?

If leaders don’t want to use labels like ‘developmental’, I encourage them to use the new replacement phrase “black magic”.  It would take some serious black magic to help students succeed in their college program with serious deficiencies in mathematics without doing some direct (prolonged) work on the problem.  In some cases, what is being done to avoid developmental math courses comes across as smoke & mirrors.  People implement grand plans, which (according to them) produce great results for all kinds of students.  Sign them up for “America’s Got Talent!” 🙂

I think we are better off using an accurate word like “remedial” and then have an honest discussion about identifying students who need one or two courses in order to be ready for success in their college program.  We need to think more about the whole college program, and less about passing a particular ‘college’ math course.  The opportunity for second chances and upward mobility are at the center of a stable democracy.

Language is important.  Not using a word (like “developmental”) does not solve the set of problems we face.  There is no magic in education; progress is made by applying deep understanding and critical thinking across a broad community committed to helping ALL students achieve their dreams.

Controlled Burns in the Forest of Developmental Mathematics

Are there connections, or parallel conditions, between the worsening wildfires and developmental mathematics?  The destruction of a wildfire is terrible, and this post is not meant to minimize the problems experienced in that process.  However, it occurs to me that we can learn some lessons from fire management techniques.

Specifically, the overall danger from wildfires can be managed do some extent by setting controlled burns — fires deliberately set, with an expected path and amount of burn.  The process of a controlled burn is intended to reduce both the amount of flammable material AND the risk of fires spreading quickly in a region.  The forest, in effect, is made more healthy by intentionally burning some of it.

Now, the big problem with wildfires is that conditions have created larger and more aggressive fires, especially in regions of the American West.  The effects of climate change have increased the mean temperature in the areas as well as reduced the annual precipitation.

Some of us might  see developmental mathematics as being consumed by uncontrolled wildfires.  These wildfires come with catchy phrases — “corequisite remediation” and “multiple measures” being two of the most common fires.  We focus our attention on the wildfire; we fail to see the conditions which required some type of fire in developmental mathematics.

Between 1970 and 2010, enrollment in developmental mathematics grew … and grew.  We also tended to create additional non-credit math courses in dev math.  Given the poor results guaranteed by a long sequence, a correction is necessary.  Since we (in the profession) did not manage to create a controlled burn to limit the danger, outside forces released the wildfires of co-requisite remediation and multiple measures.

Eventually, the co-requisite remediation and multiple measures “wild fires” will burn up all of the readily available fuel.  Quite a bit of this destruction was necessary given the climate and conditions in developmental mathematics.  Some of the destruction was not necessary, like the areas of a forest that did not need to burn but the wildfire could not be controlled.  Many of us are dealing with both types of destruction in developmental mathematics.

The necessary destruction includes:

• sequences of length greater than 2 (prior to college level math, including ‘college algebra’)
• content based on an obsolete K-12 structure
• teaching methodologies based on low-level learning of unimportant mathematics

The valuable parts of developmental mathematics can still be saved from the wildfire.  These valuable parts include:

1. college-prep math courses focused on mathematical reasoning for adults
2. a balance between general education and math for specific programs or target courses
3. mathematics faculty skilled in delivering courses which dramatically increase the abilities of the students

These properties of future prep mathematics represent our commitment to support the success of all students, in future mathematics … in science courses … and in academia in general.

We, in the profession, will need to play the role of fire fighters who work to change a wildfire into a controlled burn.  A good result from a wildfire is improbable without intense effort by a committed group of people.  We can work to create a fire break to limit the continued burning from “co-requisite remediation” and “multiple measures”.  The total destruction of developmental mathematics is possible if we are not willing to do the hard work of stopping the wildfire.

This is about us, not about the people who started these wildfires. Are we willing to do what it takes to be able to continue to provide developmental mathematics that makes a difference to our students?  Do we see equal access and upward mobility as worthy goals?

I hope you will stand against the wildfires and work with me for the future of developmental mathematics.

Case Closed … Mind Closed?

We are again being bombarded with ‘information’ about co-requisite remediation working.  The “we” in that statement would be everybody involved with college remediation — practitioners, administrators, policy makers, and boards.  One of the recent notes from Complete College America begins with “Case Closed on Traditional Remediation”.  Good propaganda … bad education.

The most basic issue before us is NOT “should we have stand-alone developmental math courses”.  No, the core issue is:

What ‘mathematics’ do students need to ‘know’ for various educational goals?

Non-mathematicians have considerable difficulty understanding this question, because of the two words in quotes — ‘mathematics’ and ‘know’.  For many, mathematics consists of arithmetic and algebraic procedures with some memorization of geometric formulae; ‘knowing’ consists of being able to recall barely enough of those procedures to pass a college math course.  In other words, non-experts tend to see mathematics as training in skills, and they tend to view our courses as barriers to an education.

We certainly can agree, at some level, that the mathematics being taught in basic courses (whether remedial or college algebra) is both badly out of date and not well suited to the educational needs of our students.  Therefore, when the primary evidence for co-requisite remediation comes from comparisons between the experimental treatment and ‘traditional’, the results have meaning mostly for people who do not understand the problem space.  So what if 70% of students in the treatment succeed compared to 54% of those in the traditional classes!  Neither group is getting good mathematics (most likely).

My message continues to be:

Design NEW courses with modern content designed to meet the educational needs of our students.

For some students, this will mean that they take a college statistics course with extra support (co-requisite).  For other students, this means that they will take one pre-college course which provides strong understanding of concepts and relationships with good fluency in being able to deal with quantitative problems in both symbolic and numeric methods.  For a few students, this means that they will need to take two pre-college courses.  And, for some students (half?), they can start in the college mathematics course because their recent Common Core mathematics experience has provided them sufficient fluency.

A declaration that the “case [is] closed” reflects the bias of the speaker, not the factual situation.  The speaker is hoping that we will have a closed mind to other interpretations (especially if we are leaders or policy makers).  The worst thing about Complete College America is the message that a problem has been solved and there is nothing further to understand.   We see closed minds in education, but the results are never good.  I can only hope that most of us will keep an open mind, and consider the basic problem so that we can work on real solutions for our students.

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Cooked Carrots and College Algebra

Perhaps your state or college is using high school grade point average (HS GPA) as a key placement tool in mathematics, in the style of North Carolina.  The rationale for this approach is studies showing a higher correlation between HS GPA and success in college mathematics, compared to standardized tests (SAT, Accuplacer, etc).  Is this a reasonable methodology?

Some of us are doing true multiple measures, where HS GPA is included along with other data (such as test scores).  However, North Carolina is using HS GPA as the primary determinant of college placement; see http://www.nccommunitycolleges.edu/sites/default/files/academic-programs/crpm/attachments/section26_16aug16_multiple_measures_of_placement.pdf .

This HS GPA movement reminds me of a specific class day in one of my classes — a graduate level research methods class.  On this day, the professor presented this scenario:

Data shows that students who liked cooked carrots are much more likely to succeed in college.  Should a preference for cooked carrots be included as a factor in college admissions?

The goal, of course, was to consider two basic statistical ideas.  First, that correlation does not equal explanation.  Second, most correlations have a number of confounding variables.  In the case of cooked carrots, the obvious confounding variable is money — families eating cooked carrots, as a rule, have more money than those who don’t.  Money (aka ‘social economic status’, or SES) is a confounding variable in much of our work.  We could even conjecture that liking cooked carrots is associated with a stable family structure as well as non-impoverished neighborhoods, which means that there will be a tendency for cooked-carrot-liking students to have attended better schools.  Of course, this whole scenario is bound up in the cultural context of that era (the 1970s in the USA).

In a similar way, proponents point out the high correlation between HS GPA and success in college mathematics.  That correlation (often 0.4 or 0.5) is higher than our test score correlations (often 0.2 or 0.3), which is often ‘proof enough’ for academic leaders who do not apply statistical reasoning to the problem.  Here is the issue:

If I am going to use a measure to sort students, I better have a sound rationale for this sorting.

That rationale is unlikely to ever exist for HS GPA … no explanation is provided beyond the statistical artifact of ‘correlation’.  Student A comes from a high-performing school and has a 2.5 GPA; do they need remediation?  Student B comes from a struggling school and has a 3.2 GPA; are they college ready?  Within a given school, which groups of students are likely to have low GPA numbers?  (Hint: HS GPA is not race-neutral.)

If you are curious, there is an interesting bit of research on HS GPA issues done by Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 2009; see https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-13-09.pdf .  One of the findings:  HS GPA is “contaminated” by SES at the student level (pg 14).   Just like cooked carrots.

So, if you are okay with ‘cooked carrots’ being a sorting tool for college algebra, go ahead with HS GPA as a placement tool.

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