College is the new high school -- if that.
Colleges misaccept those that should be repeating high school.
Speaking from experience, when my youngest first went to college, she got placed in the remedial level for her math. She had good grades in highschool, but I guess she didn’t take enough math then. Anyways, it was the best thing for her. She said that it finally clicked for her and after taking that class, she had no problems with the rest of her college math classes.
Columbia Teachers Collage!! They couldn’t be protecting their own kind, could they?
My wife started back to college last fall after 28 years out of school. They placed her in the lowest level of algebra, two steps from college algebra. This semester, she has intermediate algebra.
My oldest daughter started this semester, after taking one semester off after high school. They started her out in intermediate algebra.
My youngest daughter, a freshman in high school and in algebra 1, was helping them BOTH with their homework last week because her class had already covered the material.
The students today are terrible in math, with a few exceptions. Nobody fails in the end, they get make up work or tutoring or whatever that allows them to PASS the class. These kids get to college and have no idea what they are doing.
“... more than a quarter of the students assigned to remedial classes based on their test scores could have passed college-level courses with a grade of B or higher. “
Stated another way, “...only about 25 percent of the students assigned to remedial classes based on their test scores could have passed college-level courses with a grade of B or higher.” I am well aware that college teachers who teach those courses in which students get a “B or higher” are evaluated and retained based on student satisfaction surveys administered to those students at the end of the semester. Getting a “B or higher” is quite easy for the student to do, considering that a lower grade would result in the teacher getting lower evaluations. The teachers are not going to give out lower grades than a “B or higher”. Surprisingly, a number of students will get lower grades but that is due to failing to attend class and often failing to complete essential assignments. In those cases, the students don’t complete the satisfaction surveys or don’t blame the teacher directly.
I'm 53 years old and have a Liberal Arts B.S. Degree 1981. My intended course of study back in the day was science intense but I had a weak math background. So I bailed out and settled for a liberal arts degree.
I decided last fall to finally do what ever necessary to get that science degree and this meant first getting my math skills up to college level. I checked with my local community college and state university and discovered that I would have to acquire the math skills at the “college algebra” level to proceed with the needed college science classes.
My choices were in ascending order: Basic Math (remedial), Pre-Algebra, Elementary Algebra (algebra 1), Intermediate Algebra (algebra 2), finally College Algebra (advanced Algebra). My Community College uses the ACT COMPASS placement test.
Five (5) weeks before I took the COMPASS test, I started at page 1 in the Dummies Guide to Basic Math and Pre-Algebra and the optional Dummies Workbook.
Chapter 1 was easy but starting at chapter 2 I (hard to admit) began to be a challenge for me. It has been 30+ years since I had any math classes and on my best day I really stunk at it. Anyway, times and attitudes change and I worked through the book and work book with a high degree of discipline.
How did I do on the COMPASS Test? Good question! I scored 68 on the MATH portion. This is not 68% out of 100% BTW. On the ALGEBRA portion, I scored 28. To get into PRE-Algebra, a COMPASS score of MATH 20 is required, Elementary Algebra, a score of MATH 36 is needed, Intermediate Algebra a score of ALGEBRA 31 is required.
As you can see, I almost made it into Intermediate Algebra (just shy by 3 points). If I had another week to prepare I probably would have scored high enough for Intermediate Algebra. No matter, Elementary Algebra was my goal as I want to master the concepts not gather college credits. My MATH score was well within the acceptable range for Elementary Algebra. One would assume that I posses the skills to do well in that class.
My Elementary Algebra class is a mish mash of college age students and older working adults although I'm one of if not the oldest in this class. I will know better after Thursday (we get our last test grades then) but I have one of the higher grades in the class, C+/B- Mathematically speaking, a few of the students will, after this week have no possible chance of passing the class. I will say that I'm working very hard at it, doing hours on hours of homework and practice problems.
Given my COMPASS placement test scores one would think one such as myself would find the class easy but this is not the case. I would have been unhappy spending a semester in pre-algebra but for this student, elementary algebra is quite a handful. Personally I'm having difficulties understanding how remedial classes would be a negative to college freshman and I not sure why it would as the article claims it would derail a students career path. I wish I had taken the COMPASS test back in 1976 and forced to take elementary algebra back then.
...and what harm does this do to the community college business model? None whatsoever. In fact, they make pretty good money running those remedial classes, and if a student in them goes on to graduate, that student will have spent more money toward his Associate's degree than he otherwise would have.
This is the bottom line. There's no cash incentive for a school to do it any other way.