PROBLEMS
WITH DEVELOPMENTAL/REMEDIAL MATHEMATICS AT ACC
Hunter
Ellinger
— updated 8/21/2007
Here
is a summary of my main points:
[1] ACC developmental-education operations are in serious
violation of ACC board policy D-4
in several different ways,
especially the mandates to concentrate on the skills needed for the student's
specific major (D4[3]), maximize student choice and flexibility respecting
mandatory remediation (D4[4]), and avoid involuntary removals from
college-credit courses (D4[5]). ACC is also much stricter and more rigid
on mandated remediation than most other
[2] The 2003 change in state law that removed the state
requirement for continuous mandatory remediation also added some good provisions requiring that institutions provide individual remediation plans
for students based on their specific goals. ACC does not do
this at all for developmental math. ACC advisors present
a single plan -- everyone take intermediate algebra -- even though many degree plans do
not require that course or the abstract material covered in it. In
theory, there is some limited flexibility about how soon after enrollment remediation
must be begun, but even that small flexibility is largely a mirage, since
eligibility for it is on unpublished criteria (even teaching faculty cannot be
sure which programs are eligible for deferral), and once a student begins to
take any developmental math course, even voluntarily, they are no longer
permitted to take advantage of the deferral provision.
[3] The statement often made by the
administration that the faculty supports the current system is
misleading. What they mainly mean is that the developmental-communications
faculty supports it. Talk to faculty in college-level departments,
especially vocational and liberal-arts ones, to get the contrary view. In
fact, in Fall 2003 (after the TASP repeal) the Faculty Senate refused to
endorse the more-of-the-same developmental-education proposal by the
administration, instead adopting a resolution that called for ACC rules to be
based more on course prerequisites and on alignment with advice given by each
college-credit department to its own majors. (This resolution was ignored
by the administration.)
[4] In developmental mathematics (about 80% of
developmental enrollments and most of the source of contention), even the
faculty who teach developmental math courses are largely ignored in deciding administration
policy (almost all full-time math faculty teach both developmental and
college-credit courses). For example, the math department specifically
asked to set different standards for "college readiness" based on the
kind of student major, but were told that they had to define a level high
enough that it prepared students for all possible majors: this means
Intermediate Algebra, which is a prerequisite for the precalculus/calculus
track but unneeded for College Mathematics, Statistics, or Math for
Measurement, the only math courses required for many degree programs.
[5] One aspect of the problem is that ACC
advisors urge students to take the COMPASS algebra-placement test to determine
their math-remediation status, rather than using the more general THEA
(formerly TASP) test, which gives a better measure of general math-related
competence. The THEA test includes non-algebraic areas of mathematics
that are both more useful and more interesting (and thus easier to remember)
than many of the COMPASS items. ACC's math department developed two
courses that were designed specifically to prepare students for the THEA test,
but now no longer can offer them because the advisors refuse to put students
into them, even when the THEA test better matches the math course required in
the student's chosen program. Much of the push to use the COMPASS is a
well-intentioned effort to minimize the number of tests entering students take,
but the result is that many students are forced into unnecessary math remediation,
requiring substantial extra student money and time (as well as substantial
extra cost to ACC).
[6] ACC needs to accept that
mathematics-education issues for adults are quite different from those for
adolescents. It is reasonable to require that secondary-school students
make an effort to learn the equivalent of most of the material on the THEA,
which includes algebra along with many more practical math topics. In
secondary school, the educational emphasis is on exploration of careers and
areas of knowledge, and students need to get a good taste of mathematical
abstraction via algebra (preferably with connections to their physical-science
and social-science courses). But it is wrong to impede access to college
by requiring adults to learn things that are not needed for the goal they have
chosen. This is especially true for people for whom secondary-school math
classes were occasions of repeated failure, but it is also true for people who
have the capacity to learn unneeded math, but not the time -- ACC now forces
many such people to squander their limited opportunities on material they don't
want or need, often leading them to give up on higher education.
Most people who enter remediation at ACC never complete it.
[7] I would be the last person to deprecate
mathematics. My degrees are in math (1964) and math/science education
(2002), and I taught math in the Peace Corps. I have used higher math
throughout my career as an applied scientist, and have expanded that use since
partnering with a math professor who teaches at all levels from an arithmetic
course (ACC's Basic Math Skills) to UT's highest-level graduate
mathematical-statistics course. I have co-authored a course designed to
enhance vocational mathematics education (ACC's Math for Measurement). I
agree that we need more people with math skills (although classic algebra is now
less important), but feel that force-feeding abstract math to everyone won't
produce those skills -- a much better approach is to infuse logical and
quantitative thinking throughout each curriculum to the extent that skilled
people in that area see it as useful. Note that almost all
successful-in-real-life college graduates can read and write competently, and
most can handle graphs, numerical tables, and formula substitutions (all
pre-algebra or early elementary-algebra topics), but only a few percent can
factor polynomials, rationalize denominators, solve simultaneous or nonlinear
equations, etc. This is usually not incapacity -- most of these people
learned and promptly forgot these skills when they went to high school -- it
simply reflects that such algebraic skills are not needed at any point in most
successful careers. So mastery of these skills should not be required in
order to attend ACC, except in the programs where the faculty
in that program make them prerequisites because they see a specific,
discipline-related need.
[8] Developmental education is very costly to
ACC, which loses money in all developmental courses, especially after
facilities and overheads are taken into account. In FY06, the net loss (after allowing for
tuition, fees, and state reimbursements) was about $669/enrollment/semester for
reading, $608/enrollment/semester for writing, and $260/enrollment/semester for
developmental mathematics. But because
math is about 80% of the developmental load, its total cost is greatest – about
$4 million/year compared to $1.5 million/year for reading and $0.9 million/year
for writing. The total ACC financial
loss on developmental courses (not counting ESL) now exceeds $6 million/year.
[9] Developmental mathematics contact hours
increased 48% in the five-year period from FY01 to FY06. By comparison, other ACC contact hours
increased by only 14% over the same period, and those for developmental reading
and writing decreased by 16% and 5%,
respectively. College-credit
mathematics contact hours decreased by 8%. (Compared to other
[10] The most recent
data published by ACC show that for FY03 5.9% of the students enrolled in
mandatory remediation at ACC succeeded in completing remediation requirements that
year. This compares to a state
average of 7.6% and an average of 90% for Capital IDEA’s