Trump Method: Complete College America

Whatever your political persuasion, I hope this comparison makes sense to you.  Most politicians use selective fact usage, and it’s normal to have candidates repeat ‘information’ that fails the fact-checking process.  Mr. Trump is just a bit more extreme in his use of these strategies.  I’m actually not saying anything against “the Donald”.

However, the Trump Method is being employed by the folks at Complete College America (CCA).  The CCA is a change agent, advocating for a select set of ‘game changers’ … which are based on a conclusion about remedial education as a useful construct.  The CCA repeats the same information that does not pass the fact-checking process, much to the detriment of developmental education and community colleges in general.

It’s not that professionals in the field believe that our traditional curriculum and methods are anywhere near what they should be.  I’ve talked with hundreds of teaching faculty over the past ten years, relative to various constructs and methods to use; though we differ on eventual solutions and how to get there, we have a strong consensus that basic changes are needed in remedial mathematics.

However, the CCA brings its anvil and hammer communication … promising simple solutions to complicated problems (just like Mr. Trump).  The recent email newsletter has this headline:

Stuck at Square One
College Students Increasingly Caught in Remedial Education Trap
[http://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/08/18/remedial-education-trap?utm_campaign=APM%20Reports%2020160902%20Weekend%20Listening&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_content=Weekend%20listening%3A%20New%20education%20documentaries]

Following up on this headline leads one to a profession-bashing ‘documentary’ about how bad things are.  Did you notice the word “increasingly”?  Things getting worse clearly calls for change … if only there was evidence of things getting worse.  Not only are the facts cited in the documentary old (some from 2004), there is no discussion of any change in the results.

Like “immigrants” for Mr. Trump, remedial education is a bad thing in the view of the CCA.  Since remedial education can not be deported or locked up, the only option is to get rid of it.  The headline says that we ‘trap’ students in our remedial courses, as if we had criminal intent to limit students.  No evidence is presented that the outcomes are a ‘trap’; the word ‘trap’ is more negative than ‘limitations’ or ‘inefficient’ … never mind the lack of accuracy.

Some people have theorized that Mr. Trump appeals to less educated voters.  Who does the CCA material appeal to?  Their intended audience is not ‘us’ … it’s policy makers and state leaders.  These policy makers and state leaders are not generally ignorant nor mean-spirited.  However, the CCA has succeeded in creating an atmosphere of panic relative to remedial education.  Because of the long-term repetition of simplistic conclusions (lacking research evidence) we have this situation at state level groups and college campuses:

Remedial education is a failure, because the CCA has data [sic].
Everybody is working on basic changes, and getting rid of stand-alone remediation.
We better get with the band-wagon, or risk looking like we don’t care (‘unpatriotic’).

This is why the CCA work is so harmful to community colleges.  Instead of academia and local needs driving changes, we have a ‘one size fits all’ mania sweeping the country.  Was this the intent of the CCA?  I doubt it; I think there intent was to destroy remediation as it’s been practiced in this country.  Under the right conditions, I could even work with the CCA on this goal: if ‘destroy’ involved a reasoned examination of all alternatives within the framework present at individual community colleges, with transparent use of data on results.

Sadly, the debate … the academic process for creating long-lasting change … has been usurped by the Trump Method of the CCA.  I can only hope that our policy makers and college leaders will discover their proven change methods; at that point, all of us can work together to create changes that both serve our students and have the stability to remain in place after the CCA is long gone.

 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.