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Developmental Education Enhancing Literacy and Basic Skills

Nothing has been easier to decry than the ineffectiveness ofthe schools. One observer of American education noted: Paradoxical as it may seem, the diffusion of education and intelligence is at present acting against the free development of the highest education and intelligence. Many have hoped and still hope that by giving a partial teaching to great numbers of persons, a stimulus would be applied to the best minds among them, and a thirst for knowledge awakened that would lead to high results; but thus far these results have not equaled the expectation. There has been a vast expenditure . . . for educational purposes . . . but the system of competitive cram- ming in our schools has not borne fruits on which we have much cause to congratulate ourselves. (Parkman, 1869, p. 560)

The sentiments in this passage, written in 1869 by the American historian Francis Parkman, have been echoed countless times since. One hundred years after Parkman’s comment, the American poet and critic John Ciardi complained that “the American school system has dedicated itself to universal subliteracy” (1971, p. 48). The novelist Walker Percy offered this devastating critique: “Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal” (1980, p. 177).

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Cohen, Arthur M., et al. The American Community College, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=1366278. Created from capella on 2020-04-19 23:38:40.

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A steady outpouring of books continued the critique. Hirsch began his best seller with the words, “The standard of literacy required by modern society has been rising throughout the devel- oped world, but American literacy rates have not risen to meet this standard” (1987, p. 1). Harman’s examination of illiteracy described how “more and more working members of mainstream America are found to be either totally illiterate or unable to read at the level presumably required by their job or their position in society” (1987, p. 1).

The conventional belief was that literacy had declined. But how much? And by what measurement? Certainly the colleges were and are deeply involved with developmental studies, but at what cost to their image? And to what effect? In this chapter, several dilemmas surrounding the tracking of students into less-than-college-level courses are explored, especially the difficulty in assigning standards and definitions and assessing program outcomes. Some examples of the ameliorative practices in which the colleges are engaged are also noted.

Decline in Literacy

Unmitigated denunciations are one thing; accurate data are quite another. Information on the literacy of the American population over the decades is difficult to compile, even though for well over one hundred years the Bureau of the Census has collected data on the number of people completing so many years of schooling. Intergenerational comparisons are imprecise because different per- centages of the population have gone to school at different periods in the nation’s history and because the United States has never had a uniform system of educational evaluation. Still, an understanding of the importance of literacy, concern about its decline, and the need to do something about it have become widespread.

Eight National Education Goals were set into law on March 31, 1994, when President Clinton signed the Goals 2000: Educate

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America Act. One of the eight goals was that every adult would be literate, possessing the knowledge and skills to compete in the workplace and exercising the responsibilities of citizenship. Although the act itself has been superseded, its emphasis on stan- dards, norms, and instrumentation so that measures of literacy in all age groups could be reported according to common refer- ents has survived, incorporated into the contemporary emphasis on accountability. Subsequent federal legislation has emphasized testing students periodically, with the intention of encouraging schools where students score below the norm to improve.

Concerns about literacy came as no surprise to educators who have reviewed the scores made on nationally normed tests taken by people planning on entering college. The available evidence suggests that the academic achievement of students in schools and colleges registered a gradual improvement between 1900 and the mid-1950s, an accelerated improvement between the mid- 1950s and the mid-1960s, and a precipitous, widespread decline between then and the late 1970s, before stabilizing in the early 1980s. The SATs taken by college-bound high school seniors show mathematical ability at 494 in 1952 and 502 in 1963; it dropped as low as 492 in 1980 but by 2012 had reached 514. Verbal ability went from 476 in 1952 to 543 in 1966 and then dropped in 1980 to 502, where it remained stable for many years before dipping to 496 in 2012 (College Board, 2012; see Table 8.1).

The scores made by students who participated in the ACT Pro- gram between 1995 and 2010 reveal a similar pattern (Table 8.2). In those years, reading and science scores were stable, English showed a slight increase, and math demonstrated a greater increase. The overall composite rose to 21.1 in 2008 and remained there through 2012. Declines in academic achievement during the 1970s and subsequent stabilization were confirmed by the National Assess- ment of Educational Progress (NAEP) studies of seventeen-year-old students. After bottoming out in the early 1980s, students’ perfor- mance in math rose so that their average score in 2008 was slightly

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Table 8.1. SAT Scores for College-Bound Seniors, 1975–2012

Year Critical Reading Mathematics Writing

1975 512 498 – 1980 502 492 – 1985 509 500 – 1990 500 501 – 1995 504 506 – 2000 505 514 – 2005 508 520 497∗

2010 500 515 491 2012 496 514 488

∗Score from 2006, the first year of the writing portion. Source: College Board, 2012.

Table 8.2. ACT Test Scores for High School Seniors, 1995–2010

1995 2000 2005 2010

Composite 20.8 21.0 20.9 21.0 English 20.2 20.5 20.4 20.5 Math 20.2 20.7 20.7 21.0 Reading 21.3 21.4 21.3 21.3 Science 21.0 21.0 20.9 20.9

Source: NCES, Digest, 2011.

higher than in 1973. Over the same period, their scores in reading showed a gain in the 1980s but dropped back to the 1975 level thereafter.

No one can say with assurance which social or educational con- dition was primarily responsible for the decline in student abilities that apparently began in the mid-1960s and accelerated throughout the 1970s before leveling off. Suffice it to say that numerous events came together: the coming of age of the first generation reared on television; a breakdown in respect for authority and the professions; a pervasive attitude that the written word is not as important as

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it once was; the imposition of various other-than-academic expec- tations on the public schools; the increasing numbers of students whose native language is other than English; and a decline in academic requirements and expectations at all levels of schooling. The time that the current generation has spent texting or on social media websites hasn’t helped either.

The effect of schooling and the availability of other educational opportunities are suggested by the relationships between family income and SAT scores. According to the College Board (2012), scores made by the more than 1.6 million college bound seniors who took the SAT showed a straight-line, positive correlation with family income. Those with income greater than $100,000 averaged 540 in reading, 555 in math, and 533 in writing, while those with income less than $20,000 scored 434 in reading, 460 in math, and 429 in writing. Since students from low-income families are considerably more likely to attend community colleges than universities, these figures do much to explain patterns in the colleges’ student body.

School Requirements

Of all the listed conditions, academic requirements are the only ones that are within the power of the schools to change directly. Several premises underlie schooling—for example, that students tend to learn what is taught, that the more time they spend on a task the more they learn, and that they will take the courses required for completion of their programs. Hence, when expectations, time in school, and number of academic requirements are reduced, student achievement, however measured, seems certain to drop as well. In its 1978 report, The Concern for Writing, the Educational Testing Service noted, “The nub of the matter is that writing is a complex skill mastered only through lengthy, arduous effort. It is a participatory endeavor, not a spectator sport. And most high school students do not get enough practice to become competent

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writers” (p. 4). In the 1960s and 1970s, the schools put less emphasis on composition, and even in composition courses creative expression was treated at a higher level than were grammar and the other tools of the writer’s trade.

Copperman (1978) recounted the depressing statistics regarding deterioration of the secondary school curriculum. Specifically, the percentage of ninth- through twelfth-grade students enrolled in academic courses dropped between 1960 and 1972, from 95 to 71 percent in English courses and proportionately in social studies, science, and mathematics. In other words, the average high school graduate had taken four years of English in 1960 and only three years in 1972. And the curriculum in English shifted from sequential courses to electives chosen from courses in creative writing, journalism, public speaking, classical literature, science fiction, advanced folklore, composition, mass media, poetry, and a host of other options. Not only were students taking less science, math, English, and history, but in the academic classes they did take the amount of work assigned and the standard to which it was held deteriorated as well.

During the 1980s, school reform shifted toward educational excellence and outcomes assessment. In 1983, the National Com- mission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk (Gardner and others), in which it highlighted the importance of education for the civic well-being of our nation. The report sug- gested that states adopt a curriculum, known as the New Basics, to include four years of English; three years of mathematics, science, and social studies; one-half year of computer science; and two years of foreign language for students who wish to go to college. Ravitch noted that “by late 1983, a national survey found that forty-six states had either raised their graduation requirements recently or were debating proposals to do so” (1985, p. 67).

A notable shift in high school course enrollments occurred. Between 1982 and 2009, the average number of Carnegie cred- its taken by high school students increased from 21.6 to 27.2

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Table 8.3. Average Number of Carnegie Units Earned by Public High School Graduates in Various Subject Areas: 1982, 1994, 2000, 2009

1982 1994 2000 2009

Total Carnegie Units 21.58 24.17 26.15 27.15 English 3.93 4.29 4.26 4.37 Social Studies 3.16 3.55 3.89 4.19 Total Math 2.63 3.33 3.62 3.91 Total Science 2.20 3.04 3.20 3.47 Foreign Language 0.99 1.71 2.01 2.21

Source: NCES, Digest, 2011.

(see Table 8.3). All academic areas showed an increase, with mathematics, sciences, and foreign languages showing the most notable gains. In 2009, 70 percent of students took chemistry com- pared with 32 percent in 1982; 88 percent took geometry in 2009 versus 47 percent in 1982; 30 percent took biology, chemistry, and physics compared with 11 percent in 1982. Overall, the high school curriculum was rebuilt to the levels of the 1950s. The effect of the strengthened requirements was a reduced number of high school occupational classes (bookkeeping, typing, shop) and an increase in the totality of courses taken by graduates.

In sum, students coming to the colleges in the 1990s and 2000s had taken more academic courses, and their academic abilities had begun to climb. Indeed, high school seniors’ grade-point averages rose from an average of 2.68 in 1992 to 2.98 in 2005 (Landsberg, 2007). Student testing had increased as well, with more than one- third of the states requiring a minimum competency test for high school graduation. But as the SAT, ACT, and NAEP results show, overall gains in literacy have come slowly, if at all.

A recent report from Educational Testing Service reveals that, despite all types of school reforms in the past generation, little has changed. High school completion rates (exclusive of GEDs),

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77 percent in 1969, fell to 70 percent in 1995 and crept back up to 75 percent in 2009, which has resulted in the United States dropping behind all but five of twenty-six countries listed by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. Noteworthy here is that during that same period total spending per pupil in public K–12 schools more than doubled in constant 2009–10 dollars, the student–teacher ratio (class size) dropped by half, and the percentage of teachers with at least a master’s degree doubled. One in four ACT-tested high school graduates of 2011 who took the core curriculum—four years of English and three each of math, science, and social studies—met the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in all four subjects; 28 percent failed to reach any of the benchmarks (ACT, 2011). Just over half the graduates met the standard for reading, a decline from the peak of 55 percent reached in 1999; only 45 percent met the benchmark for math in 2011. The problem is even more acute in some states: ACT found that “more eighth and tenth graders are on track to being ready for college-level reading than are actually ready when they graduate” and suggests that “state standards in high school reading are insufficient—or nonexistent” (p. 3). More than half of the 49 states with reading standards fully define them “only through the eighth grade” (p. 3). And a recent report from the National Center on Education and the Economy (2013) emphasized the continued disconnect between demands in college-level English and mathematics courses and high school requirements, both in terms of subject matter content and faculty expectations of students.

College Admissions

Because each college set its own standards and because the founding of colleges preceded the development of a widespread secondary school system, the early colleges displayed a wide vari- ety of admission requirements. By the late nineteenth century,

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most were operating their own remedial education programs. In 1895, 40 percent of entering students were drawn from prepara- tory programs operated by the colleges and universities themselves (Rudolph, 1977, p. 158).

Numerous attempts to stabilize college admissions have been made. In 1892, the National Education Association organized the Committee on Secondary School Studies, known as the Committee of Ten, which was to recommend and approve the secondary school curriculum for college matriculation. In 1900, the College Entrance Examination Board began offering a common examination for college admission. Nonetheless, the wide variety in types and quality of colleges in America made it impossible to devise uniform admission standards. There has never been a standard of admission to all colleges in the United States. The Educational Testing Service and the ACT Program offer uniform examinations across the country, but each college is free to admit students regardless of where they place on those examinations.

Of all postsecondary educational structures in America, the public community colleges bore the brunt of the poor preparation of students in the twentieth century. When sizable cohorts of well-prepared students were clamoring for higher education, as in the 1950s and early 1960s, the community colleges received a large share of them. But when the college-age group declined and the universities became more competitive for students, the proportion of academically well-prepared students going to community col- leges shrank. Thus, the colleges were dealt a multiple blow: relaxed admission requirements and the availability of financial aid at the more prestigious universities; a severe decline in the scholastic abilities of high school graduates; and a greater percentage of appli- cants who had taken fewer academic courses. And although the recent upturn in the eighteen-year-old population has lowered the median student age in community colleges, it has done little to elevate the students’ abilities.

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The community colleges responded by accommodating the different types of students without turning anyone away. They have always tended to let everyone in but have then attempted to guide students to programs that fit their aspirations and in which they have some chance to succeed. Students who qualified for transfer programs were never a serious problem; they were given courses similar to those they would find in the lower division of the four-year colleges and universities. Technical and occupational aspirants were not a problem either; vocational programs were organized for them. Internal selectivity was the norm; failing certain prerequisites, applicants were barred from the health professions and technology programs. The students who wanted a course or two for their own personal interest found them both in the departments of continuing education and the transfer programs.

The rest, the poorly prepared high school pass-throughs, has been the concern. How should the colleges deal with students who aspire to a college degree but who are reading at the fifth-grade level? Shunting underprepared students to the trades programs was a favored ploy, giving rise to Clark’s cooling-out thesis (1960). Another ploy was to offer a smattering of developmental courses where students would be prepared, more or less successfully, to enter the transfer courses—or entertained until they drifted away. But the decline in achievement exhibited by secondary school graduates and dropouts in the 1970s hit the colleges with full force. The problem of the underprepared student became central to instructional planning.

The Magnitude of Remediation

Remedial and developmental and, less often, compensatory and basic skills have been used more or less interchangeably for courses designed to teach literacy (the essentials of reading, writing, and arithmetic) plus broader skills for living (time management, how to study, coping with family crises). Students have been advised to

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enroll in those courses on the basis of entrance tests or prior school achievement. The courses are not often accepted for credit toward an academic degree, but their funding comes through the regular academic instructional budget, sometimes augmented by special state or federal program appropriations to assist disadvantaged students.

Although the decline in student ability stabilized in the 1980s, developmental education grew until it leveled off in the 1990s. The rise in remedial course enrollment occurred because student ability had sunk so low that college staff members, legislators, and the staff of the universities to which the students transfer had had enough. The dropout and failure rates were unconscionably high. When the population was expanding and an ever-increasing number of new students showed up each year, the problem was not as acute, and few colleges did anything about coordinating developmental education. In the late 1970s, however, the attitude shifted as the college staff realized that it was more feasible, not to say socially and educationally defensible, to keep the students enrolled than to let them drop out as a result of academic failure.

All public two-year colleges offer developmental courses. The Center for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) tallied the sections offered in a national sample of colleges in 1998 and found that 29 percent of the scheduled class sections in English and 32 percent in math were designated as developmental (Schuyler, 1999b). These data were corroborated in state studies: 14 percent of the credit-course enrollment in Illinois, 17 percent in North Carolina, and 23 percent each in Florida and Washington community colleges were in remedial courses (Illinois Community College Board, 2005; North Carolina Community College System, 2007a, 2007b; Florida Department of Education, 2007; Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, 2006).

Data on entering students who need remedial help suggest the magnitude of the problem. The Education Commission of the States estimates that 40 percent of all college students and 58 percent

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of those in community colleges require some remediation (Fulton, 2012). A 2010 study of 250,000 incoming students at fifty-seven community colleges across the country found that 59 percent were referred to developmental math and 33 percent to developmental English or reading (Bailey, Jeong, and Cho, 2010). The percentage of underprepared entrants varies widely. A recent study of one hundred thousand students in six community colleges that are part of a large, urban system found that roughly 90 percent of the students were assigned to remediation in one or more subjects (Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez, 2012). Of all the recent high school completers, 46 percent (and 92 percent of the GED graduates) entering Kentucky’s public institutions in 2004 were underprepared for college (Kentucky Developmental Education Task Force, 2007). In California, 72 percent of entering students required to take the placement exam in fall 2010 were directed to basic skills courses in English, and 85 percent were referred to developmental math. Strikingly, of those students testing into remedial math, the largest percentage assessed at three levels below college-level; only 14 percent of these ever completed a college-level math course (California Community Colleges, 2012). Over 70 percent of students entering Virginia’s community colleges in 2007–08 were referred to developmental math (nearly half to three levels below college-level math) and 34 percent to developmental English (Virginia Community Colleges, 2010). Nationwide, 44 percent of first-time community college students enroll in between one and three developmental courses; 14 percent take more than three.

Developmental Teaching

How do college faculty members who face students daily feel about massive developmental education efforts and the poorly prepared students in their classes? Students’ abilities exert the single most powerful influence on the level, quality, type, and standard of cur- riculum and instruction offered in every program in every school.

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Other influences—instructors’ tendencies, externally administered examinations and licensure requirements, the entry levels imposed by succeeding courses in the same and other institutions—are of lesser importance. Nothing that is too distant from the stu- dents’ comprehension can be taught successfully. All questions of academic standards, college-level and remedial courses, text- book readability and coverage, and course pacing and sequence come to that.

Students are part of the instructors’ working conditions. Except for faculty members recruited especially to staff developmental programs, most feel that their environment would be improved if their students were more able. In the CSCC’s 1977 National Science Foundation–sponsored survey of science instructors at two-year colleges throughout the country (Brawer and Friedlander, 1979), respondents were asked, “What would it take to make yours a better course?” Over half noted “students better prepared to handle course requirements,” a choice that far outranked all others in a list of sixteen (p. 32). More than twenty years later, Outcalt (2002b) found almost the exact response among the academic faculty he surveyed.

If students cannot be more able, at least they might be more alike so that instruction can be better focused. Teaching groups of stu- dents whose reading or computational abilities range from the third to the thirteenth grade is demoralizing; everything is more difficult, from writing examinations to showing group progress—hence, the unremitting pressure for ability grouping, remedial courses, and learning laboratories that serve to remove the poorer students from the classrooms.

As integrated developmental programs grew in the 1980s, separate divisions combining faculty members, counselors, and support staff were formed to accommodate them. As noted in Chapter Three, this separation of the developmental education staff from the academic discipline–centered faculty has led to an increased level of professional consciousness among members

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of the former group. They publish their own journals, which carry articles on peer tutoring, the pros and cons of mandatory testing, ways of organizing reading and writing laboratories, and the various treatments they apply to students who come within their purview. In some colleges the academic instructors still treat them as pariahs, but they have their own colleagues and support groups. A continuing problem, however, is that an overwhelming number of developmental instructors are part-timers.

Assessment and Placement

More than half the states have regulations governing remedial instruction. Some have mandated that it not be offered in the public universities; Florida, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, and Arizona are notable examples. Others have placed limits on the number of developmental courses a university may offer and directed the universities to arrange remedial instruction for their students with the community colleges, thus inflating their numbers of developmental students. Illinois law stipulates that “the primary emphasis on postsecondary remedial programs [is] at Public Community Colleges” (Ignash, 1997, p. 7), an example of persuasiveness seen also in several other states.

As responsibility for remediating the underprepared has been shunted to the community colleges, assessment and placement of incoming students have become integral. Beginning in the late 1970s, the nation’s community colleges moved toward a system of placement testing, restricted admissions to many courses and programs, integrated developmental programs complete with counseling and tutorial services, and assessment of the efficacy of these procedures. In the 1980s, state-mandated placement testing was installed, first in Florida and Georgia; subsequently in Texas, California, and New Jersey; and by 2000 in twenty more states. These requirements affected all the publicly supported institutions, and at the start of the twenty-first century 92 percent

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of community colleges were administering high-stakes exams to determine whether students should be referred or directed to developmental or college-level courses.

Some of the states that have mandated assessment and place- ment have specified tests and cutoff scores. The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education requires that all colleges in the state use the College Board’s ACCUPLACER Computerized Placement Test, and its cutoffs for reading and math fall within a narrow range. The Texas Success Initiative has established a college-readiness standard on the Texas Higher Education Assessment, required of all exiting high school students who plan on entering college. California allows its 112 community colleges to choose their own measures, and in 2007 over one hundred different instruments were in use (Brown and Niemi, 2007). In a survey of entering community college students conducted by WestEd in 2010, most did not understand that their performance on placement tests would determine the classes they could take or that their score would affect when they could begin earning college credit or how long it would take to complete their course of study (Venezia, Bracco, and Nodine, 2010). Students’ apparent ignorance of the consequences of placement tests significantly ups their stakes.

Are placement tests valid? State policies rarely ask. A few call for regular review of cut scores but not of the instruments themselves. The most common approach often fails to distinguish between students who would benefit from remediation and those who could succeed in college-level courses with additional support. Too many students are directed toward developmental studies based on tests of limited validity; one recent study found that three of every ten students is misassigned to developmental English; error rates for math placement are lower but not trivial (Belfield and Crosta, 2012). Commercially available tests have become popular: COMPASS, ASSET, and ACCUPLACER. Tests gain reliability if they are matched with course requirements, and short refresher courses offered prior to testing are also helpful; however,

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these test prep courses are available at less than half of the community colleges. When high school grade-point averages are used in combination with placement tests, predictions of college success are considerably more accurate. When Long Beach City College began using high school grades to determine whether incoming students belonged in developmental classes, 53 percent of one thousand in the group were placed into college English, compared with less than 6 percent from the same high schools in the prior year. And 62 percent passed the course, the same as the college’s typical pass rate (Fain, 2013b).

Integrated Programs

Proceeding in tandem with assessment and placement procedures have been a number of integrated programs combining instruction in the three Rs with counseling, tutoring, study skills seminars, and a variety of special interventions, such as early alert systems and monitoring of students’ attendance and progress. The courses may include remedial reading and writing, and adjunct classes centering on certain content areas also may be provided. The students may be tutored individually by professionals or peers. The programs frequently include reproducible instructional sequences presented through learning laboratories. Nearly half use computers as an interactive instructional tool for on-campus reading, writing, and mathematics, and one-fourth offer develop- mental courses through distance instruction. In some of the more sophisticated developmental programs, remedial classes are offered through the English and mathematics departments, adjunct courses or study programs are offered through the learning resource center, study skills activities are presented by members of the counseling staff, and tutorials are coordinated by any of these divisions.

Numerous descriptions of such programs may be found. Some are organized as bridge programs designed to assist recent high school graduates in making the transition to college. These programs

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include counseling and efforts to direct the students toward career goals as well as an emphasis on basic academic skills. The Freshman Initiative Program at Bronx Community College (New York) is designed for entering freshmen requiring two or more remedial courses. Students take two or three developmental courses and at least one credit-bearing class in their first term, all while receiv- ing in-class tutoring and professional counseling. Santa Monica College (California) offers a Summer Bridge and Learning Com- munities Program through its First Year Institute.

Many other permutations can be cited. Some programs allow students to enter the academic courses but insist that they take advantage of tutorial assistance available to help them with their coursework. This is an old approach, matching learning laboratories with the specific course areas. Some of these labs are dedicated to math, others to reading or writing. Also prevalent are open-entry, open-exit courses, where students can drop in at any time and work with an instructor on specific problems. However, where these are volitional, they may be playing into the students’ tendency not to place extra effort on their college work.

Overall, numerous patterns are in play: self-standing develop- mental courses; learning assistance keyed to students in regular college classes; supplemental instruction for students in high-risk courses; precollege bridge programs; learning communities; and combinations of all of these. The point is that the colleges have now abandoned the practice of allowing students to drop in and drop out at will and have moved distinctly into a mode of mandatory assessment and placement in sequences designed to keep students in school and to help them improve their basic skills so that they can complete an academic or occupational program satisfactorily.

Program Effects

Although only a minority of developmental programs in commu- nity colleges are evaluated in a regular and systematic fashion, many

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reports indicate varying effects. The measures usually employed are student retention, grade-point average, remedial course com- pletion, successful transitions to the college-level programs, and graduation rates. Levin and Calcagno cited studies showing that “about seventy percent of students pass the reading and writing remedial courses they enroll in, but only thirty percent pass all their remedial math courses” (2007, p. 4). The more remedial courses students must take, they less likely they will be to progress on to college-level classes or to earn a credential. And even when all remedial sequences have been completed, many students fail to enroll in or complete college-level classes. According to Bailey, Jeong, and Cho (2010), one-third of students who com- plete a remedial course or sequence never enroll in college-level courses, even though three-quarters of those that do successfully complete them. In Arizona, for example, 28 percent of develop- mental math learners beginning college in fall 2005 successfully completed a college-level course in math within six years; the com- parable statistic for developmental English students was 47 percent (Arizona Community Colleges, 2012).

Are developmental programs effective? Pascarella and Teren- zini’s meta-analysis found remedial programs “at least modestly effective in helping students overcome deficiencies in their pre- collegiate academic preparation and associated disadvantages” (2005, p. 398). Hundreds of studies reported in the published literature and in the ERIC files suggest that student placement procedures are valid and that students learn to read and write in the remedial classes. Even though some single-college studies have found enrollment in developmental courses to have no effect on subsequent achievement, the inconsistency seems to relate both to the way programs are organized and to the variations among types of students.

The integrated programs, designed to affect retention as well as learning by combining remedial instruction with counseling, tutorials, and assistance specifically tailored to the other courses

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that the students are taking, have more salutary effects than the freestanding or separate developmental classes, which have lower retention and lower long-term success rates. Since 2006 when Valencia College (Florida) began requiring a Student Success course for all students who had been directed to developmental classes, persistence rates have risen significantly, to 81 percent for the class entering in 2010 (Florida Department of Education, 2006). Levin and Calcagno (2007) agreed that isolated courses are con- siderably less effective than those that link basic skills courses with credit-bearing courses, use supplemental instruction, or establish learning communities. They pointed to successes attained through learning assistance centers that include career counseling, tutoring, and other enhancements. They also contended that instruction in critical thinking, complex problem solving, and abstract reasoning can be salutary for remedial students.

The positive effects of integrated developmental education programs are not surprising; when staff members are involved in a comprehensive program, they pay close attention to students, integrate teaching with counseling, provide a greater variety of learning materials than ordinary students receive, and motivate their enrollees to devote more time to their studies. In short, when special treatment is applied; when students are given supplemental counseling, tutoring, and learning aids; and when they are singled out for additional work, they tend to remain in school. Special treatment of any sort yields special results.

The various students classified as needing remediation also influence developmental outcomes. Gallegos described one type, the nonnative English speaker, with several risk factors: “There is overwhelming evidence that developmental students and tra- ditional students are, on the average, fundamentally different in many ways that will not be affected by successful remediation” (2006, p. 35). Developmental students often have elevated high school grade-point averages, suggesting grade inflation. They are more likely to be bilingual, are often the first generation in their

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family to attend college, are from low socioeconomic status back- grounds, have dependents, and attend part time. Evaluating “the effectiveness of developmental programs by comparing the aca- demic success of students exiting these programs to that of students placed initially in the corresponding college-level course” (p. 57) is often undertaken, but in many cases students will continue to speak Spanish to anyone they spoke Spanish with before, disabilities and financial disadvantages will persist, their numbers of children will remain the same, and the educational level of their parents will not change.

Indeed, according to the Council for the Advancement of Adult Literacy (Chisholm, 2008), only 8 percent of English as a Second Language (ESL) students make the transition to college- level courses (although presumably they do gain in employment probability). The council attributes this to the fact that many ESL programs center on life skills, and thus even those students who complete ESL sequences still do not have the English language skills necessary to succeed in postsecondary education. The life skills classes rarely teach the special vocabulary, grammar, and listening required for college study and indispensable for writing papers, taking notes, and understanding teachers. Three to six hours per week are not enough; high-intensity classes of twelve to twenty hours per week, such as those employed at Mira Costa College (California), are necessary. The Community College of San Francisco has a well-developed program, including vocational ESL that teaches enough for students to hold entry-level jobs in health, construction, and maintenance.

Student age is another factor influencing developmental out- comes. In a study of 30,000 first-time traditional students and 5,700 older students, the Community College Research Center at Teachers College found that older students were more likely to need some remediation because they had forgotten some of their basic math and English skills (Calcagno, Crosta, Bailey, and

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Jenkins, 2006). Prince and Jenkins used data from the Washing- ton State Community and Technical College System to track the progress of low-skill students twenty-five or older with no more than high school diplomas. Only 13 percent of the ESL students in this group went on to earn some college credits, but around 30 per- cent of the Adult Basic Education students entered college-level courses, with 5 percent earning forty-five units or a certificate or degree within five years. As for the programs’ value to students’ earnings, “Attending college for at least one year and earning a credential provides a substantial boost in earnings . . . Short-term training such as that often provided to welfare recipients may help individuals get into the labor market, but it usually does not help them advance beyond low-paying jobs” (2005, p. 23).

Legitimacy

Like any other public agency, an educational institution must maintain its legitimacy. The community colleges have strived to maintain their claim to a position in the postsecondary sector through numerous stratagems. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s they sought people with doctoral degrees to serve as staff members and rewarded current staff members when they obtained the higher degree, even though possession of a doctorate bore little or no relation to a faculty member’s professional activities. The doctorate was a way of saying, “We are as good as the senior institutions.” Similarly, they segregated their developmental programs in an attempt to regain the legitimacy lost when the colleges accepted adult basic studies and job training programs that could in no measure be considered college level.

Actually, a school’s legitimacy rests on its academic stan- dards and the definition of its guiding principles. Academic standards certify that a student holding a certificate or degree has met the requirement for employment or for further study at another college; they are the basis for the reputation of institutions and the

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people who work in them. Community college instructional pro- grams, testing and counseling services, course content, and course requirements must all relate to a shared vision of desired compe- tencies and outcomes. Their certificates or degrees must evidence some set of proficiencies achieved at some minimum level.

What are the standards in developmental education? Here the special programs exhibit several problems in common with the traditional. One of the main problems is the difficulty in setting fixed exit criteria (grading standards) for courses and programs where a wide range of students share the classroom. Either the exit criteria must be fluid, with a different standard for each student, or the time and type of instruction must be greatly varied, or the instructors must maintain exceedingly modest expectations. All three options are at play in practically all programs.

Standardized expectations of accomplishment, or exit criteria, suggest social norms as contrasted with standards for individuals. Social norms imply that people who would function adequately in particular social settings (the workplace, school) must act to a certain standard. The alternative, relating accomplishment to the desires or entering abilities of individuals, suggests that any accomplishment is satisfactory. This conflict between social and individual standards is an issue of the absolute versus the relative, and it strikes at the heart of developmental education.

Different groups take different positions on the issue. Commu- nity college instructors—particularly those not teaching develop- mental classes—tend to argue in favor of absolute standards. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has studied the problem extensively, surveying its members and sponsoring state conferences on the issue. The ASCCC deplored some of the pressures to lower standards: students entering the col- lege with inadequate basic skills but with the expectation of passing the courses, as they have done throughout their prior school careers; ill-prepared students insisting on enrolling in transfer courses rather

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than remedial courses; the virtual elimination of D and F grades and concomitant wider use of passing grades; and a reduction in the number of required subjects. In 1977, the ASCCC Aca- demic Standards Committee recommended that standards should be maintained through the use of diagnostic and placement test- ing, directive counseling, academic prerequisites for courses, and proficiency testing before awarding academic degrees. These recom- mendations were in no small measure responsible for California’s adopting matriculation standards in the 1980s.

Support for efforts to bring all students to at least college-level literacy comes from many other areas, not least the American Association of Community Colleges. As its 1988 Commission on the Future of Community Colleges pointed out, “Literacy is essential both for the individual and society . . . community colleges must make a commitment, without apology, to help students overcome academic deficiencies” (AACJC, 1988, pp. 16–17). The association carried its point a step further when it sponsored a national study seeking to determine the long-term success of students who had participated in developmental programs. The study found that most students who had gone through the remedial programs did well in their college-level studies, entered occupational programs or direct employment, and in general joined the mainstream of American life, much like a general cohort of the students entering community colleges (McCabe, 2000).

Advocates of the concept of lifelong learning often provide an opposing view. To them, any seeker of knowledge should find the institution a resource to be used for an infinite variety of pur- poses. Cross, for example, argued that substantial changes in school forms are needed, so that anyone may learn anything at any time: “My concern is that in our exuberance for recruiting adults and certifying that their learning projects meet our standards, we will corrupt independent, self-directed learners into learners dependent on someone else to determine where, when, and how people should

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learn. Visions of a learning society with people of all ages enthu- siastically pursuing learning that interests them could so easily turn into a joyless learning society with people grimly fulfilling requirements and seeking legitimacy for every conceivable variety of learning” (1978, pp. 19–20). These opposed positions suggest dif- fering views about current and potential students. Some see them as lethargic illiterates, others as humanistic knowledge seekers. Both viewpoints defend the legitimacy of the institution, conve- niently assigning blame for dismal developmental outcomes to the lack of effort or the lack of interest, respectively, of underprepared students.

The Dilemma of Tracking

Segregating the less well-prepared students has much appeal. Classes can be made more homogeneous; the bright students are not forced to wait for the less able to catch up; and, most important, the instructors whose classes have been relieved of the poorer students can retain the attitude that they are teaching in a true college. However, the practice of shunting students to developmental classes is based on tenuous assumptions, especially the assumption that student performance standards are immutable, when nearly all school programs are based on shifting norms. The concept of functional literacy provides an example.

Definitions of Functional Literacy

One definition of functional literacy is the level of reading, writing, and calculating ability that people need to succeed in the public realm in which they choose to operate. Under this definition, the level of literacy required to function as a citizen, taxpayer, or homemaker, or in any other non-specific milieu, serves as a criterion. A second definition is the level of reading, writing, and ability to send and receive messages that it takes to obtain and maintain a job. Obviously, different levels of literacy are required for performance in various jobs. A third definition of

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functional literacy is the level required to perform successfully in a college program. Here again, alternative programs require different levels of competency. Harman cited a 1956 omnibus definition: “A person is functionally literate when he has acquired the knowledge and skills in reading and writing which enable him to engage effectively in all those activities in which literacy is normally assumed in his cultural group” (1987, p. 4). All of these definitions, then, can be subsumed under the statement, “Functional literacy is the ability to communicate in the symbolic language of reading, writing, and speaking that is adequate for people to maintain themselves in the context of particular situations,” or, as the NAEP defined it, “using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (Kirsch and Jungeblut, 1986, p. 3).

So defined, functional literacy is related to the milieu in which people find themselves. It is relative; there are no absolute minimum standards of competence. A functionally literate person in some school settings may be functionally illiterate in certain jobs. And a person who is quite able to communicate within the confines of certain jobs may be functionally illiterate for purposes of a college program.

The dilemma here is that institutional legitimacy and faculty predilections rest on standards, defined outcomes, and certifiable results, but the definitions guiding staff efforts and the precepts of continuing education or lifelong learning are relative. Each person brings idiosyncratic backgrounds and aspirations to the institution; each finds a separate set of experiences. How can the two be reconciled in an open-admissions institution? The question is not limited to developmental education, but the influx of students with low academic ability brought it to the fore.

Imprecise Criteria

Selective admission to any program is as discriminatory as it is justifiable. Regardless of the yardstick applied, the people who are shut out of the programs in which they wanted to enroll have been

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discriminated against. Yet with accrediting agencies, state licensing boards, and senior institutions looking on, program directors feel justified in admitting only a select few, particularly if the field of endeavor for which the program prepares people can take only so many graduates or if college facilities allow for only so many matriculants.

Should the colleges restrict admissions to certain programs? If some applicants cannot gain admission because their level of literacy is lower than a cutting score, the issue is resolved for them. But if applicants are admitted to the program, then its operators are responsible for teaching the skills required for them to succeed in it. The pattern of allowing all to enter and using the program itself to screen out the unworthy should be discounted, first because one cannot simultaneously teach and judge and second because it is too expensive, in terms of both public funds and concern for people, to allow sizable numbers to enroll with the expectation that many of them will not complete the course of study.

The pressures for selective admission to various programs have grown in recent years. In the 1950s, most colleges screened students into remedial programs if their prior high school grades or their scores on entrance tests suggested that they might not be able to succeed in the transfer programs. In the 1960s, the pressure to allow anyone to enter a transfer program grew, the reason being that remedial programs were seen as catchalls for the less worthy, as holding tanks for students who would not succeed in higher education. In the 1970s, the pendulum swung back, with many institutions building developmental programs, screening students into them, moving away from the attitude of letting students try everything and fail if they must. That trend accelerated in the 1980s as state mandates spread.

However, it is quite possible to teach functional literacy in the transfer program, especially for students whose assessment scores approach the cutoff for placement in college-level courses. Some notable efforts at mainstreaming—that is, allowing lower-ability

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students to take the regular college classes even while they are being assisted supplementally—have been made. Remediation does not have to come in the form of segregated developmental courses.

It is likely that most students can succeed in the collegiate and occupational programs if they are required to supplement their courses with tutorials, learning labs, special counseling, peer-group assistance, and a variety of other aids. The open-door philosophy of the community college implies that these students should not be denied. Students who are shut out of collegiate programs typically miss exposure to the humanistic and scientific thought on which these areas are based. Community colleges have succeeded in opening access to all; if that access is limited to developmental courses that offer primarily the same type of basic education that failed the students in the lower schools, then students have been cruelly denied access to higher learning.

Those who would impose standards for programs at any level face difficulties stemming from lack of consensus on institutional purpose, antagonism to the idea of group norms, and, in secondary schools and community colleges, the inability to impose entrance requirements. Selective screening into the transfer programs could not be maintained in an earlier era because students demanded and got the right to fail, and that contributed to the unconscionable attrition figures of the 1970s. Selective admission into the collegiate programs has been tried again because it is easier to screen students out en bloc than to establish criteria for functional literacy course by course. Yet unless those criteria are defined, selective admissions will again be unsuccessful.

Reconciling the Dilemma

In any institution that takes a chance on marginal students the fail- ure rate will be high relative to 100 percent success. But the success rate will also be high relative to the 0 percent outcome of not admitting them at all. The only issue is the cost. Three options are available to colleges that would reconcile the conflict

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between maintaining standards and allowing all students to enter the programs of their choice. First, they can define the specific competencies required to enter and succeed in each course. College level, program proficiency, and academic standards are not sufficiently precise. There is too much variation among courses in the same program—indeed, among sections of the same course—for these criteria to hold. Screening tests can be used at the point of entry to each class. And precise exit criteria—also known as specific, measurable objectives—can be set.

The second option is to allow all students to enroll in any course but to limit the number of courses that poorly prepared students can take in any term and to require that they take advantage of the available support services. Thus, students might take only one course at a time and participate in tutorial and learning-laboratory sessions on the basis of two or three hours for each credit hour attempted.

A third is to build freestanding developmental programs and insist that all students designated as reading, writing, or computing at a level precluding their passing college-level courses enroll in them. These programs would emphasize study skills, directing attention to the problems that kept the students from achieving in their earlier schooling.

All three options are now employed to some extent. The col- leges that rely on precisely specified measures of student progress have built their programs on absolute standards. But these are in a distinct minority. The many that monitor student progress and insist that students participate in auxiliary instructional exercises or developmental courses taught within the academic departments have moved well toward building the kind of college-wide instruc- tional effort that teaching poorly prepared students demands. But the separate programs that concentrate exclusively on remedial studies have become the most widespread, involving especially trained instructors and judging success by the number of students who pass through to the academic and occupational programs.

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They are effective only when they employ comprehensive efforts complete with support services and connections with the colleges’ other programs. The freestanding remedial course is much less likely to succeed.

At least two options are not acceptable: allowing sizable per- centages of students to fail; and reducing academic standards so that those who do get through have not been sufficiently well prepared to succeed in the workplace or in further education. High failure rates have led to numerous charges that the community colleges are a dead end for many of their matriculants, especially minority stu- dents. By reducing standards, the colleges were merely pushing the problem off to the students’ employers or the academic institutions in which they subsequently enrolled. Since the 1980s, the numer- ous state mandates designed to improve student progress reflect a decided unwillingness to allow either of those options to continue.

Issues

Whether the community colleges pick up the seventeen-year-olds who have left high school early and whether they serve as a bridge between schooling and work for their older students, developmental education fits within their mission of connecting people with opportunities. They will be involved in remedial studies in one form or another, but several questions remain: Is developmental education effective? How does it affect the college staff? How can it be maintained without jeopardizing the college’s standards and its legitimacy in higher education? How many times should the public pay the schools to try to teach the same competencies to the same people?

College staff need more information about the effects of the developmental education in which they are so heavily engaged. Do segregated remedial programs lead to higher standards in other courses? Do the faculty members outside the programs add content to the courses from which the underprepared students have been

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removed? Do they pass students through the courses more rapidly when they are relieved from having to wait for the students of lesser ability? If so, all these results should be tabulated as benefits of the separate programs. So far, studies of these effects have been almost nonexistent.

Several attempts to engage instructors in defining the outcomes of their courses in specific, measurable terms have failed. What forms of staff development would be successful? What incentives could be used?

Would allowing instructors to test the students who sought entry to their classes and bar those who did not pass the test suffice to encourage them to take responsibility for passing a specified percentage? To date, they typically refuse, individually and collectively, to be held accountable for results.

Required support services increase instructional costs. Can the colleges find sufficient funds for the necessary tutors, counselors, learning laboratory technicians, and paraprofessional instructional aides?

Is it worthwhile to reexamine how applicable traditional college-level standards are to various academic and career tracks? For example, most developmental students in community colleges are steered toward algebra-based remediation, as algebra or a higher mathematics is often required for an associate degree. But some colleges—most notably those in Texas—have questioned whether developmental students not planning to enter math- or science-based fields would be better served by taking classes in statistics or quantitative reasoning, which might prove more relevant to their future careers and present less of a barrier in the transition to credit-bearing courses.

The overriding issue is whether community colleges can main- tain their credibility as institutions of higher education even while they enroll increasingly less well-prepared students. If they can, they will fulfill the promises of their earliest proponents. Regardless, the United States is not going to abandon its functional illiterates, and the community colleges are going to be involved in educating them.

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