by Joseph
Hawkins
The
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) promise has appeared in
several publications.1
The basic promise goes something like this, If
you are in college in 2014, you will not be required to take any
remedial coursework.
Honestly,
the first time I saw the promise I thought it was joke. The promise,
however, is real. But really,
how on earth can a public school district guarantee such an outcome?
And if 2014 comes and goes, and we still have MCPS graduates required
to complete remedial college coursework, what happens? Are there
penalties in place for those making the promise? Will MCPS hand out
reimbursement checks to graduates required to take remedial courses?
And by the way, I have never seen published baseline data on college
remediation rates for MCPS graduates—what is the current
state-of-affairs?
In
reality, 2014 will come and go and nothing monumental will happen. No
one from MCPS will be taken to a woodshed and spanked for making such
a dumb promise. And as sure as the sun rises each day, MCPS graduates
will still be taking college remedial coursework. There is one basic
reason why the latter will still be true in 2014 and beyond.
Public
school districts do not control colleges. There is way too much
variation in how colleges define remediation to make good on the no
remediation promise. We might believe that a graduate with scores of
“3s” on several Advanced Placement exams is prepared for college
(and they probably are), but if that first-year student sits down in
the August of their freshman year and scores below a certain
cut-point on their math placement exams they will
be placed
in a remedial math course. Period! MCPS simply has no control over
this reality.
In
general, it is true that many college and universities exempt
first-year students from even sitting for their placement exams when
those students have high SAT scores or high other stuff (e.g., ACT
scores, AP scores of 5). MCPS is on the record indicating that the
exemptions takes place with a combined SAT score of 1650. Certainly
such a high SAT score might do the trick. The problem is there are
huge numbers of black and Hispanic MCPS graduates without such
scores. Currently, both black and Hispanics MCPS seniors score, on
average, 200-250 below 1650. And given how little these groups’
means move from year to year, there is no evidence to suggests that
by 2014 means will jump from 1400 up to 1650.2
But
let’s return to the no remediation promise. Professionally, I have
nothing against college remediation. It can
work,
and in reality, without it a good slice of poorly prepared high
school graduates or returning older adults would never make a
successful transition to higher education.
My
first real job—with full benefits—was teaching remedial reading
at Howard University. I taught for five years. Toward the end of time
at Howard, I was assigned the responsibility of tracking and
documenting the successes and failures of the University’s remedial
students. In addition, for two years on a part-time basis, I taught
remedial reading at Prince Georges Community College. My views on
remedial or development college coursework are shaped by these
experiences.
My
views?
I’m
a pragmatic realist—as long as colleges are around, and they
control their own placement standards, there will be undergraduates
placed in remediation. And even though some colleges are currently
experimenting with revising how remediation takes place—exposing
students to shorter remediation experiences or online tutorials, the
fact is these “new” experiences—regardless of what we label
them—are still at their core remediation.3
4
At
the time I worked at Howard, remediation was only a recommendation for
entering first-year students and not a requirement. Recommendations
for remediation were based on placement test scores. It has been
decades since my time at Howard, but what I recall is this about the
impacts of remediation: First-year
students who successfully completed their assigned remedial courses
had better grades and graduation rates than first-year students who
either did not complete their remedial requirements or who had never
enrolled even though they had been recommended for remediation.
Again, remediation can
work.
The
debates about college remediation have not abated since my Howard
days. Researchers still crank out papers about their impacts, which
in general, conclude that remediation—beyond the extra cost, which
is huge—is perhaps more beneficial than harmful. The fact that some
students need remediation is not the end of the world. The promise of
no remediation at all, however, probably needs to end.
______________
2Link
to the most recent MCPS SAT report:
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2010/Class2010SAT-MCPS-MD-Nation_09-10-10_OctoberUpdate-Graduation.pdf
3See
this article for how Montgomery College (Maryland) is changing their
remedial courses:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/12082010/montnew190928_32543.php
4See
this article for how other colleges are changing their remedial
courses:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021104924_5.html#eight
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