All across the country, community colleges are
undertaking commendable efforts to remove a critical barrier to student
success. They are redesigning math pathways in ways that hold great potential for
improving teaching and learning. Many are aimed at improving success for those
students who need college algebra — many of whom are students in the STEM fields
— while also helping students who do not need college algebra to complete
college math requirements. Not only are they assisting students move more
quickly and successfully through math sequences, but the new approaches have
the potential to expand the pipeline of low-income students and students of
color into middle-skill STEM careers. But a nagging problem remains. College
placement policies and processes are mostly out of synch with reform trends and
might actually be diverting STEM interested students from the STEM fields.
Academic researchers are increasingly calling for placement policies to also be
reformed. A report by Jobs for the Future makes six recommendations for
reforming the placement policies that steer huge percentages of community
college students into remediation courses. The California-based Policy Analysis
for California Education, meanwhile, says the state has to rethink its
placement policies so they serve as a foundation for student success rather
than a filter to manage enrollment.
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