Posts published on January 29, 2011

Early Assessment Program For College Readiness Gets Mixed Review

In a profile of California’s Early Assessment Program, Catherine Gewertz in Education Week writes that the program has brought together K-12 and higher education to create a test that sends an early signal to high school seniors about their college readiness, allowing those who meet the mark to go right into credit-bearing coursework as college freshmen, skipping remedial classes. The program has a suite of courses to bring lagging 12th graders up to college-level, as well as training for pre-service and in-service teachers. Though the program has been widely praised since the test was first given in 2004, the program has generated a confounding mix of results. There are early signs that it reduces the need for college remediation: one study found that students at one California State University campus who had taken the EAP — regardless of their scores — were 4 percentage points to 6 percentage points less likely to require remediation than those who hadn’t. Yet remediation rates at CSU remain largely unchanged in the past six years. It may be that by the time students get the news that they are not college-ready — when they’re seniors — it’s often too late to rearrange their class schedules. Many students, also, are too far short of the mark to catch up in just one year.
Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/01/20/18eap_ep.h30.html?tkn=PTRFctgnxpXXCBZEu9LUxQ7c4%2FDS7uC0qAdh&cmp=clp-sb-ascd

Source: PEN Newsblast