Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community Colleges (TLC3)

You might have heard of the MAA project “National Study of College Calculus”  (see http://www.maa.org/programs/faculty-and-departments/curriculum-development-resources/national-studies-college-calculus ).  That work was very broad, as it studied calculus in all 3 settings (high school, community colleges, and universities).

A recent effort is focused on community colleges  with the title “Transitioning Learners to Calculus in Community Colleges”   (info at http://occrl.illinois.edu/tlc3  )  Take a look at their web site!

One component of their research is an extensive survey being completed by administrators of mathematics at associate degree granting public community colleges, including the collection of outcomes data.  A focus is on “under represented minorities” (URM), which relates closely to a number of recent posts here (on equity in college mathematics).

I am expecting that the TLC3 data will show that very few community colleges are successful in getting significant numbers of “URM” students through calculus II (the target of this project).  The ‘outliers’, especially community colleges succeeding with numbers proportional to the local population of URM, will provide us with some ideas about what needs to change.

Further, I think the recent emphasis on ‘pathways’ has actually decreased our effectiveness at getting URM students through calculus; the primary assumption behind this (based on available data) is that minorities tend to come from under-performing K-12 systems which then results in larger portions placed in developmental mathematics.  The focus on pathways and ‘completion’ then results in more URM students being tracked into statistics or quantitative reasoning (QR) pathways — which do not prepare them for the calculus path.  [Note that the basic “New Life” curricular vision does not ‘track’ students; Math Literacy is part of the ‘STEM’ path. See https://www.devmathrevival.net/?page_id=8 ]

Some readers will respond with this thought:

Don’t you realize that the vast majority of students never intend to study calculus?

Of course I understand that; something like 80% of our remedial math students never even intend to take pre-calculus.  Nobody seems to worry about the implication of these trends.

Students are choosing (with encouragement from colleges) programs with lower probabilities of upward mobility.

The most common ‘major’ at my college is “general associates” degree.  Some of these students will transfer in order to work on a bachelor degree; most will not.  Most of the other common majors are health careers (a bit better choice) and a mix of business along with human services.  Upward mobility works when students get the education required for occupations with (1) predicted needs and (2) reasonable income levels.  Take a look at lists of jobs (such as the US News list at http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs )  I do not expect 100% of our students to select a program requiring calculus, nor even 50%; I think the current rate (<20%) is artificially low … 30% to 40% would better reflect the occupational needs and opportunities.

Our colleges will not be successful in supporting our communities until URM students select programs for these jobs and then complete the programs (where URM students select and complete at the same rates as ‘majority’ students).  Quite a few of these ‘hot jobs’ require some calculus.  [Though I note that many of these programs are oriented towards the biological sciences, not the engineering that often drives the traditional calculus curriculum.]

I hope the TLC3 project produces some useful results; in other words, I hope that we pay attention to their results and take responsibility for correcting the inequities that may be highlighted.  We need to work with our colleges so that all societal groups select and achieve equally lofty academic goals.

 Join Dev Math Revival on Facebook:

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.