How To Improve Policy For Remedial/ Developmental Education Success At Community Colleges #3
Guest blogger: Nancy Shulock, California State University -Sacramento. This the third and last blog in this series on remedial/developmental education policy. See prior two posts for more context.
A current proposal by the Academic Senate of the California Community Colleges to allow for content review as a basis to set prerequisites aligns with the best thinking nationally on how to simultaneously improve remedial instruction while taking a balanced approach to the prerequisite issue. By encouraging colleges to be clear on the skills and competencies that students need in college level courses and designing basic skills courses accordingly, it is also a major step towards improving basic skills. The proposed policy would also lay the foundation for more diagnostic use of assessments so that students can be directed only to those basic skills courses or modules or contextualized courses that they need – shortening the time they spend in remediation. It lays the foundation for creating a set of clear college readiness standards that can communicate to K-12 what will be expected of students who enter the community colleges. Finally, it replaces problematic statistical processes with purposeful alignment of course content, in line with what the leading reform states are doing and consistent with a new report by two leading national policy centers on improving college readiness by aligning competency expectations and assessing proficiencies.[i]
An expert on state developmental education policy reported that no other state has such a prescriptive policy for what institutions have to do or cannot do to try to improve the basic skills of under-prepared students and none has the kind of “onerous” statistical validation that California has.[ii] He confirmed that leading states, such as Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, are using content review as the driving force in reforming the delivery of developmental education to improve outcomes for under-prepared students.
With more explicit reference to prerequisites, another leading expert summarized the new directions as follows[iii]:
The most thoughtful states are trying to strike a delicate balance on assessment and placement policy. On one hand, policies that are too permissive allow students to enroll in college-credit courses without adequate preparation or support, setting up both the student and the institution for failure. On the other hand, overly restrictive policies may require students who have a reasonable chance of succeeding without intervention, such as those who fall just below the established cut score for placement into remediation, to enroll in developmental education anyway….Effective state assessment and placement policies will strike a balance between restrictive and permissive rules. (Collins, p.9)
The ASCCC proposal to allow content review reflects these best efforts by putting the focus on course content and letting faculty at the colleges determine what mix of separate basic skills courses, modular courses, integrated courses, etc. will help students acquire the competencies they need in the shortest possible time.
[i] Beyond the Rhetoric: Improving college readiness through coherent state policy. National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and Southern Regional Education Board, June 2010.
[ii] Bruce Vandal, Education Commission of the States, personal communication, July 2, 2010.
[iii] Michael Lawrence Collins, Setting Up Success in Developmental Education: How State Policy Can Help Community Colleges Improve Student Success Outcomes. Boston: Jobs for the Future, June 2009.
