Acceleration for ALL Students

The proposals at many community colleges to set a minimum cut score that students must achieve to enter remedial education assumes that the current system of assessment, placement and instruction in developmental education is essentially sound, but that certain students have academic skills so weak that they can not be successful in that system. Katie Hern of Chabot College and Myra Snell of Los Medanos Community College take issue with this assumption and suggest that this view is nothing more than blaming the victim for a failed system.

Katie and Myra lead the California Acceleration Project, an initiative of the California Community College’s Success Network (3CSN) where they have become champions for accelerated learning models that successfully serve all students, regardless of how they perform on placement exams. Katie and Myra have become champions for single-semester accelerated developmental courses in math and reading/English that immediately lead to college level courses. The courses do not set a minimum cut score for entrance.  They firmly believe that current assessments do a poor job of determining if a student can succeed in any given developmental course.  As a result, students should not be denied the opportunity to pursue an accelerated path to college-level courses because of a cut score on assessment.  In fact, they have found that many students who are assessed at the lowest levels can be successful in a single, semester-long, accelerated course.

They argue that the current system of multiple levels of remedial education where students assessed at the lowest level may require upwards of 3 or more semesters of work in a single subject is the real problem. Students simply do not persist through each level, inevitably dropping out before they ever reach college level courses. As a result, they have eliminated the levels and focused on a single course, reducing the time in remediation and the likelihood that they will drop out of the system.

The results prove them correct.  Moving students to the new course doubled student success in college level English for students placed at the lowest levels. 45% of students who enrolled in Chabot’s accelerated reading/English course passed college-level English, compared to only 23% of students who enrolled in two levels of remedial English/reading.

Most impressive was that the students who scored the lowest on placement tests had significantly improved outcomes. Students who scored below a 50 on the Accuplacer reading and sentence tests, which represent the lowest 7% of scores on the exam at Chabot, passed the accelerated course at the same rate as they did the lowest-level English/reading course.  Meaning students that many colleges are considering excluding from remedial education on their campuses showed significant improvements by virtue of only having to complete one remedial course before enrolling directly into college-level English.  Furthermore, the inclusion of more students who were assessed at the lowest levels in the college-level English did not negatively impact the completion rate for the college-level English class.   The bottom line – the multi-layered system was the problem – not the students.

Myra has achieved similar results with her accelerated Path2Stats course.  Path2Stats bypasses the traditional four-course sequence of developmental math courses leading to calculus by offering a single four credit developmental course that prepares students for college-level statistics. Given that the vast majority of students entering college will pursue non-Algebra/calculus based majors – Path2Stats provides a more practical and realistic way for students to fulfill their math requirements.The results are tremendous:

• 85% of students completed the course
• 93% enrolled in college-level statistics
• 85% completed college-level statistics resulting in  . . .

. . . an overall college-level math completion rate of 64%.

Most amazing is that 31% of students tested into the lowest level of math – pre-algebra/arithmetic completed college-level statistics compared to only 5% in the traditional model.

I have always thought that the discussion about denying students access to remedial education because of the evidence of failure was putting the cart before the horse.  We all have seen that recent innovations in remedial education show that redesigned instruction can increase student success.  We also know that the system of assessing students for remedial education is clearly broken and in need of a complete overhaul.  So it seems premature for system leaders to advocate for the denial of service to students without first engaging in a full blown reform of their remedial education system.  Katie and Myra have proven that setting a floor for entrance to remedial education is further codifying an existing system that is about weeding students out, not facilitating student success.

Katie and Myra have a wonderful webinar online that you can view that does a much better job than I in describing their success.  View it here.