Where is the Position Paper on Co-Reqs? Math in the First Year?

Two major movements are “sweeping” across the college landscape — co-requisites in mathematics (and English), and “college math course in the first year”.  Those who have “drunk the cool aid” see both changes as progress, while an academic response continues to be more of minor interest and waiting for real data on the impact of the changes on real students.  In this context, a lack of clear communication is equivalent to a yielding of the discussion.  In my view, AMATYC has done exactly that.

I want to make sure that you know of my long and generally positive relationship with AMATYC.  I first attended a conference of the “American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges” in 1987. I had been teaching for about 14 years at that point, and was being impacted by a loss of enthusiasm for the work.  That conference was a major turning point for my professional life, as well as the start of many relationships that continued for decades.

AMATYC produces position and policy statements on a variety of topics, and these generally lag behind the need — understandable, given the processes that allow for broad input from members  This lag time is normally a few years … when ‘handheld calculators’ were first an issue, the AMATYC statement on them was developed about 3 or 4 years later.  When issues came up about credentialing, the statement on qualifications came out about 4 years later.

We are now in the 5th year of the co-requisite infusion.  (Infusion suggests an external agent seeking to modify the internal functioning of a body.).  I don’t believe anybody in AMATYC is even considering a position statement on co-requisite mathematics.  Instead, the conferences are increasingly populated by sessions sharing experiences with implementations.  In the absence of official statements, the presence of multiple sessions on a practice amounts to an implicit approval of that practice.

Do we, as professionals or members of AMATYC, support co-requisite remediation without qualification?

Like good political strategy, the news cycle is being dominated by one ‘side’.  Our silence … individually and as AMATYC … relinquish the power to those seeking to disrupt our work.  [And, yes, the groups have stated that they are working to disrupt our work.  I won’t name them, as I do not want to provide any more PR for them.  It’s time for our side of the story.]

I’ve posted before on the practice of co-requisite remediation; Why Does Co-Requisite Remediation “Work”? and TBR and the Co-Requisite Fraud as well as The Selfishness of the Corequisite Model.  Of course, we should consider new models.  Of course, our use of fundamentally new structures impacting students must be based on scientific evidence and research — not ‘data’ grown specifically to support a particular practice.

The other ‘movement’ (Math in the First Year) is based on some of the worst uses of statistics I have ever seen in academia.  Of course, I’ve posted on that: Policy based on Correlation: Institutionalizing Inequity.  The flaws in this movement are so obvious that I would expect any basic statistics student to spot them within a few minutes.

Do you see the flaw of ‘first year’ in this image?

Does AMATYC have a position statement on ‘math in the first year’?  Nope.  There is a policy on placement, but not on a practice which places students in situations where they can suffer academic harm.  “Math in the first year” basically says that if you get a random student to pass a math course early like the best students do, that all students accrue the benefits of the best students (academic grit, financial stability, etc).

I always strive to be honest, and that involves me divulging that my relationship with AMATYC has faded away.  Perhaps the current leadership is actively working with the committees to develop policy statements.  However, I do know that the latest ‘standards’ (IMPACT) have very little to guide our decisions on such basic issues; the web site for IMPACT has a link, but no content.  What does all of this silence say about us?

Will we continue to be silent?

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