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.
Am I really old or is my memory just faulty? Back in the day, any college-level algebra before calculus was considered remedial. (But good numbers of liberal arts majors took it as part of their math and science requirements.)