{"id":3451,"date":"2020-03-17T13:03:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T17:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postsecondaryreadiness.org\/dev\/?p=3451"},"modified":"2020-03-17T13:03:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T17:03:43","slug":"next-generation-developmental-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postsecondaryreadiness.org\/dev\/next-generation-developmental-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Next Generation Developmental Reform at Colleges Large and Small, Urban and Rural"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next Generation Developmental Reform at Colleges Large and Small, Urban and Rural<\/h1>\n

By Elizabeth Ganga<\/p>\n

\"Images<\/p>\n

Discussions with faculty at November\u2019s CAPR conference made one thing perfectly clear: Now is no time to rest.<\/p>\n

Faculty from colleges at all different stages of developmental education reform were considering what they could do next to help more students thrive. Several came from colleges that had already moved to a corequisite remediation model and begun using measures beyond placement exams to put entering students into math and English courses. Even so, they were continuing to uncover barriers to student success and looking for ways to address them.<\/p>\n

We interviewed several faculty at the conference to get a snapshot of the reform picture at their colleges.<\/p>\n

Refining Math Reforms at Cuyamaca College<\/h2>\n

Cuyamaca College in El Cajon, California has nearly eliminated standalone developmental education courses, said Tammi Marshall, a faculty member and math department chairwoman. In the last four years, Cuyamaca has added corequisite courses and adopted multiple measures placement. Any student can now take transfer-level statistics or quantitative reasoning with corequisite support.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we kept the courses, students were going to put themselves in those courses,\u201d Marshall said. \u201cSo by eliminating them we\u2019re essentially telling the students, \u2018You can do this work. You can be successful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Faculty and administrators\u2019 attitude in undertaking these reforms, Marshall said, was that they don\u2019t know how to design a perfect developmental education program, but they know it\u2019s going to be better than the college\u2019s traditional approach.<\/p>\n

Their latest improvement is in the approach to math placement. The college still offers intermediate algebra as a prerequisite for STEM students who didn\u2019t complete algebra II in high school, but some students who didn\u2019t need the course were enrolling in it. Now, Marshall said, advisors take a guided-pathways approach: They find out what program students plan to pursue and recommend an appropriate math course.<\/p>\n