A single placement test determines whether a student is “college ready” in math and English at most institutions. Fifty percent of community college students and 20 percent of four-year college students are found to be underprepared and require some sort of remediation. Developmental courses require students to expend more time and money on noncredit-bearing classes, resulting in these students having far lower success rates than students who enroll directly in college-level courses.
While there are numerous ways to address developmental education improvement, one possible solution is to redesign the way we view student readiness. Consider these questions:
- What student information are we missing to assess readiness?
- Do we use all available information to drive placement decisions?
- Is our path to academic achievement too narrow?
- Are all interventions being used appropriately for each student?
Traditionally, we view these questions through a paradigm of academic content. “Has this student mastered the relevant content within the domains of math and English?” This question steers toward a placement test as the most logical tool and remediation as the best intervention.
But, what if instead we asked, “What does this student need in order to succeed in college?” This changes our view of how we go about assessing students. Certainly academic achievement and content mastery are important, but we should also be careful not to let these elements blind us to other skills that influence success.
1. Assessing college readiness
Although placement tests vary in subject matter, they each cover a rather narrow spectrum of student success skills — academic achievement. Less than 21 percent of two-year schools use any other measure, like high school GPA, for math and reading placement. However, research shows a student’s noncognitive skills and behaviors can be just as important as their academic achievement in determining whether they will succeed in college.
Advocates for placement improvement recommend including more holistic measures of student skills and behaviors when determining college readiness. Institutions should seek to not only expand their indicators of academic achievement, but also consider how they can assess noncognitive skills (e.g., using an assessment such as the SuccessNavigator® assessment). This would position institutions to more fully understand a student’s likelihood for success, rather than remaining focused only their performance on a placement test.
2. Improving course placement decision making
A WestEd report outlines multidimensional methods to determine course placement. One such method uses a combination of high school GPA and high school exit exam scores to determine a student’s success potential, while only using placement test scores when needed. An Educational Testing Service study at an urban community college found that students who scored slightly below placement test score cutoffs, but were accelerated to college-level math courses on the basis of having reported strong noncognitive skills, passed college-level math courses at approximately the same rate as students who met the standard placement test cutoffs.
The above examples show how institutions can restructure their course placement models to use readily available information to place students with more accuracy.
3. Widening the road to achievement
The one-dimensional model — using placement tests alone — ignores the opportunity for more nuanced classifications helpful in evaluating a given student’s likelihood of success. Diverse student populations at an institution require the system to have enough flexibility to diversify achievement paths while adhering to academic standards.
Education leaders and institutions are looking at two particularly promising alternatives. The Corequisite Model enrolls underprepared students into college-level courses while also taking a concurrent remedial section. Carol Twigg, President and CEO of The National Center for Academic Transformation, champions giving students the independence to complete remedial education at their own pace, a process known as the Emporium Model.
4. Synchronizing intervention
Our focus on student success should not be lost once a student is initially placed. Institutions must also consider how to support students as they progress though their coursework. Cocurricular supports, such as advising or tutoring, should be aligned to curricular supports to ensure individual student deficits are identified and addressed.
Assessment, placement and support are less effective when placed in silos. A holistic success paradigm steers institutions toward a more comprehensive support infrastructure, with the goal of leading greater numbers of students to and through their courses of study.
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