Government education is a fraud in California. By law, students that need remedial classes can not get them. Hence, they will fail, wasting, time effort and tax dollars.
How do they “move faster toward a degree” if they are unable to do math and English? This is felony stupidity. And we the taxpayers are financing it—while the students are losing an educational opportunity.
“The college is eliminating many remedial course sections this year in compliance with AB 705, legislation approved by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017. The law requires that community colleges in the state automatically place students in transfer-level courses.
The goal of the legislation is to get all students through transfer-level courses faster in the hopes they will obtain a degree or certificate within two years and can more quickly transfer to a university.”
New state law shaking up Bakersfield College remedial offerings
Joseph Luiz, Bakersfield.com, 2/2/19
New Bakersfield College students may have a tougher time getting through their first math and English courses this year.
The college is eliminating many remedial course sections this year in compliance with AB 705, legislation approved by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017. The law requires that community colleges in the state automatically place students in transfer-level courses.
The goal of the legislation is to get all students through transfer-level courses faster in the hopes they will obtain a degree or certificate within two years and can more quickly transfer to a university.
While colleges aren’t required to be compliant with the legislation until fall 2019, Bakersfield College is already getting a head start on it. This semester, BC has heavily reduced its remedial English offerings and is placing most students in B1A, the transfer-level course.
The new placement model will go into effect for math in the fall, according to college officials.
“We are such a large college. It would have been a tsunami to try to do it all in the fall,” said Liz Rozell, vice president of instruction for the college. “We wanted to ease into it.”
To determine placement, the college weighs assessment results as well as high school experience, such as grade-point averages.
This semester, incoming students on the lower end of the spectrum were typically placed in a B1A class that also includes a co-requisite course that provides extra support and guidance, as officials say the rigor and standards of the course are staying the same.
These courses are taken concurrently with B1A courses and are taught by the same professor. The way it works is this: Students take their regular class, after which they have more time with their professors to go over concepts again, try hands-on learning activities, practices and more.
“They’re learning and getting skills at the same time they can apply them directly in their regular class,” said Andrea Thorson, dean of instruction for the English department. “I think this works because the support happens at the same time as the instruction.”
Students who are initially placed in transfer-level courses can choose to opt out and take a remedial course instead if they feel it is needed, Thorson said. However, the college must prove to the state that the student is highly unlikely to succeed in a transfer-level course.
Although Thorson said class sections for courses that serve its lowest-level students have been dramatically reduced, the college is still keeping its top tier of remedial courses — officially called Academic Development courses — largely intact.
These are just one level below transfer-level courses.
BC officials are hoping that the new legislation will help address a problem that the college and many others across the state have been struggling with: getting lower-level students to take and pass transfer-level English and math.
Rozell said that for years, only around 3 percent of the students it has placed in its lowest Academic Development classes would go on to take and pass transfer-level English and math within a two-year period.
On average, remedial students would take between three to four years to get into transfer-level classes, she said.
“We know we’ve got a problem, and doing what we’ve been doing is not helping the problem,” Rozell said. “We have to do something different.”
Rozell said she hopes AB 705 will help level the playing field for lower-level students and give them the leg up they need to succeed.
“It’s an equity issue,” she said. “This is about trying to balance it out, giving opportunity to students that wouldn’t have a fighting chance otherwise.”
Faculty concerns
While BC officials are optimistic about the impacts of AB 705, instructors and students have expressed concern about the change.
Pam Boyles, a longtime English professor, said it has been a struggle for her and other English instructors to try to meet these students’ needs and help them be successful.
Less than a month into the new semester, Boyles said, she’s already seeing students in her B1A classes not completing assignments, despite the extra help they’re getting through the co-requisite course. In one of her classes, she said 10 out of 23 students didn’t turn in work on Thursday.
“There’s a concern about driving students away who are college material but were dropped at the deep end of the pool,” she said. “I and my colleagues have objectives and expectations in (the B1A) class — writing and critical thinking skills students should be able to demonstrate. We get no pleasure in watching students struggle mightily and not reach those goals.”
Boyles said she’s concerned about how the new placement model could affect morale for both students and instructors if struggles continue.
“When students fail, they don’t usually blame the teachers, they blame themselves. They take ownership of it,” she said. “The faculty will blame themselves too if the students aren’t doing well in their classes.”
Rozell said that while instructors may see a lower overall success rate in their transfer-level classes, what’s more important is that more lower-level students are getting through them.
“If they’re used to seeing 60 to 70 percent of students pass and now its 40 or 50 percent, they feel like they’re not doing a good job or they’re not getting as good of students, and they aren’t getting as good of students, but they’re going to get more of them through the pipeline,” she said.
‘A whole new ball game’
Emmanuel Limaco, a BC student who also serves as an officer on the Student Government Association, said he is concerned about AB 705 especially as it pertains to adults who are pursuing college after years of being away from school, whether it be due to a job, family obligations or even incarceration.
Limaco said he believes that student population is especially at risk of not succeeding at the new placement level and possibly giving up on college altogether.
“The last thing I want to see happen is for students to go through a transfer-level class, fail and just give up on college,” he said. “It will probably work fine for students right out of high school, but for someone who hasn’t been in a classroom for a long time, I don’t think it’s going to work.”
Limaco said he was one such student. He began attending classes at BC in 2016, more than a decade after he graduated from high school. Limaco said he was placed in remedial classes and said they helped him ease into the college experience.
“I could have probably started higher, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to say that should be the case for every student,” he said.
Limaco said he would have preferred to see a slower transition: The remedial courses could be phased out gradually over time, so lower-level students would have a little more time to adjust to the new placement model.
As students are adjusting to the change, Boyles said it is equally an adjustment for faculty.
“We’re struggling with them in getting used to it,” she said. “With anything new, there will be a learning curve. This is a whole new ball game.”
Rozell said the reaction to the new placement model has been very mixed from students as well as faculty so far, which she believes is understandable.
“It has not been easy trying to do this,” she said. “Most of (the faculty) are not feeling this is best way to go, but they’ve worked so hard. I praise our faculty for their work.”
Thorson said she was unsure herself about it at first but has come around to the idea.
“It’s uncomfortable because this is not how we usually do things. Remediation is what we’ve always known,” she said. “I don’t know if this is going to be the magic bullet, but we’ve got to try something, because we’re not setting (lower-level) students up for success.”
About Stephen Frank
Speak Your Mind