When it comes to reforming remedial education, everyone, it seems, is eager to get in on the act.
One problem, according to a pair of studies being released this week, is that the state lawmakers and higher-education-system leaders who are prescribing sweeping curricular changes don’t always collaborate enough with professors and administrators. When communication breaks down, mistrust and misunderstanding can derail progress.
Two states — Connecticut and Tennessee — are being offered up this week as case studies of some of the promising practices and occasional missteps that reformers from different worlds are making as they overhaul the way remedial, or developmental, classes are provided.
On Friday the American Council on Education will host a meeting to debate those state-level efforts and to suggest how states can smooth out the bumps when changes are underway. The event, and the research behind it, is sponsored by the Lumina Foundation.
One thing everyone agrees on is that too few students who start out in developmental education end up graduating. But why that’s the case is a matter of debate: Is it because those students are more likely to be disadvantaged and from low-performing schools to begin with? Or because there’s something inherently discouraging about being placed in remedial courses?
Nearly two million people start out in remedial courses to prepare themselves for college-level classes, but only a fraction of them go on to graduate. The stakes are huge, since more than half of the students entering community colleges, and about 20 percent of those entering four-year colleges, are placed into these catch-up classes, usually in mathematics or English, the reports note.
Since 1995, more than half of the states have passed laws that directly affect developmental education, according to one report. They range from directives to study alternatives to orders to do away with stand-alone remedial courses or to make them optional.
“In general, what we’re seeing is that state legislatures are taking a much more active role in curricular redesign, an area that’s traditionally been the domain of the faculty,” Jonathan M. Turk, an analyst with the ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy, said in an interview. He is a co-author of one of the reports being released on Friday: “State Policy as a Tool for Postsecondary Developmental Education Reform: A Case Study of Connecticut.”
When state lawmakers take charge, “the question immediately becomes whether these outside entities really understand the details and complexities” of how higher-education systems operate, Mr. Turk said.
Legislating Change in Connecticut
In 2012, Connecticut passed legislation aimed at getting students into college-level classes as quickly as possible. The law requires public colleges to use multiple assessments to place students and restricts students to one semester of remedial coursework.
Colleges also had to replace traditional developmental-course sequences with a new model that places students into one of three levels, depending on how much catching up they need. Those who are near the cutoff are placed directly in a college-level course with built-in support. Students needing more help are placed in an intensive one-semester remedial course. Those with the greatest academic needs are signed up for free, noncredit “transitional” programs.
The problem Connecticut colleges ran into with that last category is that not only did they lose tuition revenue from the students placed in free classes, but their “full-time equivalent” enrollment numbers dropped, costing them a portion of their state financing.
In addition, the prescriptive nature of the law made it hard for colleges to try out new ideas, some of which were already in the works, that might be more effective and efficient, the report concludes. Many faculty and staff members also resented the top-down mandate from lawmakers.
In the future, “legislators and/or their staffs should visit campuses to hear from faculty members and administrators responsible for educating students,” the report suggests.
More Collaboration in Tennessee
A second report that will be discussed on Friday, “The Architecture of Innovation: System-Level Course Redesign in Tennessee,” examines how the Board of Regents for one of the higher-education systems in that state “moved from a compliance body to a promoter of innovation” — a shift that initially made some faculty members uneasy.
Focusing first on developmental courses and, later, on gateway college courses, the regents — who oversee 46 public colleges and universities outside the University of Tennessee system — ordered a switch from stand-alone remedial courses to corequisite courses that allow students to jump right into credit-bearing classes.
That was just one of the changes happening while legislators were passing laws that tied state funds for higher education almost entirely to performance measures and opened the doors to free community college to all state residents.
Many of those new students are enrolling with particularly weak academic skills, putting more pressure on a developmental-education system that remains in flux.
One of the keys to building consensus in Tennessee has been to involve faculty members by requesting proposals for innovative solutions.
Austin Peay State University, which is frequently cited for its successes in improving remedial education, created its own curricular-innovation process. Meanwhile, Chattanooga State Community College connected with local schools to start a math bridge program to better prepare high-school students for college math.
“The regents’ intention was that this be a faculty-driven process, and they encourage faculty to experiment with different academic models,” said Jennifer R. Crandall, another analyst with ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy. She was a co-author of the Tennessee report.
Hunter R. Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education and a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University, in North Carolina, is leery about efforts to standardize developmental education by adopting rigid statewide policies.
“Tennessee has made greater efforts to collaborate with faculty and staff than most other states,” said Mr. Boylan, who will be participating in Friday’s discussion. “Whether those efforts are as extensive as the Board of Regents think they are is another thing.”
While he doesn’t always agree with the strategies that lawmakers, along with nonprofit groups like Complete College America, are pursuing, “Tennessee has certainly been ambitious,” he said. “I’ll grant them that.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
