Remedial classes out, struggles still intact

Remedial classes are here to stay, but Southwestern College is ditching the placement test.

Students will no longer be required to take nontransferable math and English classes, aside from one exception for business or STEM majors who did not complete Algebra II or Integrated Math 3 in high school. They will be placed in Math 72.

SWC wants to maximize the probability that students will enter and complete transfer level coursework in English and mathematics within a one-year timeframe to meet the requirements of AB 705, which took effect Jan. 1, 2018. Students enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) have three years to complete transfer level classes.

Rather than the placement test, English placement will be determined by the student’s high school GPA. Students with a GPA above 2.6 will be placed in English 115 alone. Those with a GPA below 2.6 will be placed in an English 115 class with a support co-requisite. High school transcripts and the student’s major will determine mathematics placement. Math requirements vary widely depending on the course of study a student chooses.

State law stipulates that if a student graduated or finished their high school coursework within the last 10 years, they will self-report that data to help determine their placement. Karen Cliffe, who chooses the mathematics department, said there are still some things that need to be worked out when a student is lacking high school data.

“We have not yet finalized guidelines for students coming from adult school, a GED, no schooling background or from another country,” Cliffe said. “We still need to figure out how those students will find their placement. We have a committee that’s working on that.”

Cliffe said students who do not have the required high school information to assist with placement will participate in the guided self-placement process, which is also still being worked on. Cliffe and her mathematics department co-chair Silvia Nadalet, said they are imagining a series of questions asking students about their major, time constraints, goals and potentially incorporating sample math problems to help determine where they are more likely to be successful. They said a team of teachers is working on it and the goal is to have the survey fully designed by mid-March at the latest.

Both the English and mathematics departments are piloting courses with co-requisite support this semester. Four English 115 classes will require students to be concurrently enrolled in the English 45 support course. Both Cliffe and Nadalet are currently piloting a math course with a co-requisite.

“We’re piloting two classes, business calculus and college algebra,” Nadalet said. “The goal is to learn as much as we can about implementing co-requisites and what students need so that we can lay it out share the information with other faculty who are going to teach courses in the fall.”

Nadalet said there will be teachers working on that over the summer based on what she and Cliffe had developed as an idea for a template that can be modified for their own courses.

Nadalet said success of the co-requisite classes will be based on a long-term analysis, not just the spring semester results. They will have to see what deficiencies students are going to have in their future classes before they can determine what adjustments will need to be made.

Although AB 705 does not allow SWC to place students below a transfer level class beyond the math class exception, remedial classes are not being eliminated for those who would prefer them. That being said, enrollment is expected to decrease.

“I think we’ll always have some remedial classes because there are some students that take these classes not for any goal or career-oriented reason,” Cliffe said. “Maybe they’re a parent who wants to help their child with math and they need to review for their own sake. We’re still going to have them but fewer sections and students can self-select in it.”

Because of all the recent changes, SWC faculty believes it is important for students to see a counselor to discuss career options.

“For students in the past, some of those pre-transfer level courses gave them an opportunity to learn what college was about, orient themselves in that environment and decide what they want to major in while taking general ed,” Cliffe said. “Since they need to make that decision right when they come in, they really have to have an idea of what their major is going to be and where they want to go.”

There has been some debate over whether students will be ready to go straight to transfer level classes, but the English and mathematics leaders say they are doing their best to help students.

“Even if we are concerned about whether students are ready or not,” Nadalet said. “This is what we are being asked to do and we need to give it 100 percent to try and make it successful. We are committed to everything we can do to support students, our concern is that some students need more support.”