Community College Students' Perspectives Regarding Their Remedial Mathematics Placement PDF Download

Author: Laura Jean Crosby
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Many students are entering college under-prepared for college-level, credit bearing mathematics courses, and they are also having difficulty completing the remedial coursework that is required before they can move on to credit-bearing courses. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative research study is to gain an understanding of students' perceptions regarding their remedial mathematics placement. There is little research that takes into account student perspectives when trying to understand why so many students are entering college under-prepared for credit bearing mathematics courses. Two-hundred sixty-seven students enrolled in remedial elementary algebra math courses were asked to voluntarily complete a survey online regarding their prior math experiences and their plans to overcome their remedial placement. One-hundred fifty-nine students completed the survey and sixty-seven students volunteered to participate in a follow-up interview. Twelve of these participants were then selected for follow-up interviews to gain a more in-depth understanding of their experiences. Results of the study indicated that participants attribute their remedial mathematics placement to a lack of mathematical knowledge/understanding, time between math courses, negative experiences with teachers, a lack of effort in high school, and lack of information and guidance regarding the college placement test. Participants planned to study and see a tutor to overcome their remedial mathematics placement.

Author: Daniel Royer
Publisher: Hampton Press (NJ)
ISBN:
Category : Advanced placement programs (Education)
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This guide offers updated shopping tips to people visiting China. It explains what to buy (from porcelain, jade and pearls to silk, antiques, carpets and custom-tailored clothing), how to deal with local merchants and get the best prices, and where to find the best stores, markets and shopping districts - all in a handy pocket-sized format. It also provides tips on finding airfare, hotel and dining bargains.

Author: Amy Katherine Justice Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The purpose of this single instrumental case was to understand how community college students in rural Tennessee perceive the impacts of mandatory remediation with regard to finances, time, and effectiveness. The theory that was used to guide this study was Malcom Knowles’ adult learning theory. This case study was conducted with qualitative measures by utilizing a survey, journaling, and interviews with a sample of students from a community college in rural Tennessee who were assigned to remedial placement in the areas of math, reading, and/or writing. This method of data collection provided students with the opportunity to share their individual perspectives, thoughts, and experiences in a setting that is safe and supportive as their participation remained confidential. Data obtained from the participants was transcribed and reviewed by each participant to ensure that their responses were interpreted correctly to avoid any biases. Responses obtained from the survey were also used to guide questions during the interview process and encouraged unscripted questions to further the dialogue and gain a deeper understanding of the participants' perspectives.

Author: Maggie P. Fay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 6

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Book Description
Drawn from surveys completed by 122 students enrolled in developmental math at four community colleges and from seven student focus groups with a total of 34 developmental math students at those same colleges, this research brief illuminates student experiences with and perspectives on the math assessment and placement process. Findings suggest that many students who go on to enroll in developmental math are unlikely to prepare for the math placement exam, although most students know ahead of time that they are required to take the exam and many colleges make test preparation materials available. Lack of preparation may undermine students' exam performance and negatively affect the accuracy of their placement. We identify four interconnected reasons why students tend to not prepare for the exam: (1) misperceptions about the stakes of the assessment and placement process, (2) lack of knowledge about preparation materials, (3) misunderstandings about why and how to prepare for a college placement exam, and (4) a deep lack of math confidence. The brief concludes with recommendations for colleges. [This brief is a product of CCRC's Analysis of Statewide Developmental Education Reform (ASDER) research project, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.].

Author: Tatiana Melguizo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 9

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Book Description
The main objective of the authors' proposed study is to evaluate the effectiveness of math placement policies for entering community college students on these students' academic success in math, and their transfer and graduation rates. The main research question that guides the proposed study is: What are the effects of various basic skills mathematics paths on the course-taking patterns of community college students? Their study combines descriptive analyses with a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the effect of developmental education. They have two closely related goals: (1) To provide a descriptive analysis of the course taking patterns (basic skills and college level) of community college students; and (2) To use a regression-discontinuity design to test the effect of assignment to different levels of basic skills courses in mathematics on subsequent educational outcomes. The sampling frame for their analysis consists of about 158,000 community college students who were placed into mathematics in one of nine Los Angeles County Community Colleges between June 2001 and September 2009 and for whom a Continuous Placement Score (CPS) is available in the management information system maintained by the Los Angeles Community College District. The authors have been able to identify the assessment and placement practices in 4 of the 9 community colleges. Table 1 describes the placement rules for these 4 colleges. This evaluation provides insights to the district and the state about the effect of placement on successful course sequences that have the potential to promote persistence and save millions of dollars to the state. (Contains 4 tables.).

Author: Caroline Munn Best
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781109892901
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
This qualitative study explores mathematics education from the perspective of community college students who are recent graduates of a rural high school. The research questions relate to the students' perception of their understanding of rural, their rural high school experience, the factors that contributed to their preparedness or lack of preparedness for college-level mathematics, and the effect that their rural education had on their preparation for college. Students enrolled in a mathematics course at a suburban community college in East Tennessee were asked to complete a survey after midterm of fall semester 2005. Information about the location of their high school, age, and whether they consider themselves rural were used to screen students for an interview. Students were purposefully selected who graduated from one of eight rural high schools located in counties with an economic status of transitional or at-risk, were between the ages of 18 and 24, and responded to an email sent to set-up a time for an interview. Eighteen students were interviewed after midterm fall semester 2005 with follow-up interviews with seven students the following spring semester. Findings include the following: students from at-risk counties equate rural with isolated, country, and poor; students who graduated from rural high schools in transitional counties do not see rural as a major factor in their education compared to students from at-risk counties; and students from schools in at-risk counties are negative about their high school mathematics experience. Factors stated by these students overwhelmingly fault the teacher's ability to explain the math, teacher favoritism toward certain students, unconcerned attitude of teacher, and the low expectations of teachers and the school administration.

Author: William Maxwell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 14

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Book Description
This paper is an exploratory description of remedial coursetaking over several semesters. In attempting to characterize the introductory course classrooms of urban community colleges, it proposes a distinction between fragmentary and full cohorts. Also proposed is a concept little examined in community colleges, the placement/course level match, the match between placement testing and the level of subsequent remedial course-taking. Despite whatever assessment is stipulated by placement testing, community college students are somewhat free to exercise their choices as to whether they enter a remedial course at the assessed level, or enter another course at a higher or lower lever. This paper is a longitudinal study of the coursetaking paths taken in remedial mathematics courses after placement testing of students.

Author: Elizabeth J. Meza
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Almost half of all college students in the U.S. attend community colleges; almost sixty percent of these students are referred to remedial English, reading or math through means of a standardized placement exam, with math being a the greatest area of need. While these courses, often as many as four in a sequence, are meant to be a boost for students unprepared for college-level coursework, they have low success rates and few students make it through the entire sequence to succeed in a first college-level math course, leaving them far short of graduation or a meaningful credential. While developmental (aka remedial) education, those courses or sequences of courses below the college-level, has received a lot of attention recently due to its high costs and low student success rates, current research has largely failed to document, examine, or classify programmatic approaches to developmental education. This lack of information that would facilitate analysis is due in part to the relatively recent recognition of the problem, but it is also because of the difficulty accessing reliable information about large numbers of programs and the range of definitions, student populations, and perceived quickly shifting innovations (some may go as far as to say educational fads) that developmental education programs encompass. Unfortunately, this lack of a comprehensive picture of developmental education programs has led to either the complete elimination of the programs as unnecessary and perhaps counterproductive for students, or to a focus on a number of disparate approaches with little underlying theory behind them or even agreement as to the problem. This research is centered in 28 Washington state community college campuses and examines a mixed methods approach to answer three main questions: 1) To what extent and in what ways do math developmental program elements vary across institutions? Developmental education may vary widely even within one relatively homogenous state system of community colleges, such as the system in Washington. Programs have differing resources devoted to them, as well as differing pedagogy, intervention strategies and approaches, student referral and advancement policies, etc., and this variation has not even been fully described in previous research. 2) To what extent do student outcomes, as measured by completion of the developmental sequence, completion of a first college-level math course, and highest education reached, vary across the different math developmental education programs, after controlling for student characteristics, among the 28 community colleges in Washington State? What proportion of overall variance is contributed by student characteristics vs. programmatic factors? Wide institutional variation has been found in previous outcomes studies of professional-technical programs leading to terminal associate degrees in Washington, suggesting that institutional or programmatic variables may be contributing significantly to student success or lack of it (Scott-Clayton & Weiss, 2011). 3) What program policies and practices seem to be associated with positive outcomes for developmental education students? Can developmental education programs be categorized in some meaningful way? Is there a "typology" or categorization of programs that identifies characteristics that seem to be associated with either positive or negative results? For example, do schools with better (or worse) results, net of student characteristics, share identifiable programmatic characteristics in terms of policy and practice variables that are positively or negatively associated with student outcomes? I find from this research that strategies such as reducing the total number of courses in developmental education pathways, implementing alternatives to placement in developmental math via standardized tests, and better preparing students for assessment, are associated with greater student success in completing the developmental math sequence and in completing a first college level course. I also find that colleges with these more innovative features are significantly more successful than their more traditional institutional peers in terms of student outcomes. However, I also find no variation between colleges in the outcome of highest education reached, after controlling for student background characteristics. It seems that, at least for this sample, college did not have a significant association with ultimate educational attainment. Diving deeper to examine colleges' policies, practices, and the perspectives of students, faculty, and administrators, I find wide variation in pathways, program structure, assessment policies, connection to advising, tutoring, and institutional research departments, and day-to-day concerns and operations. One commonality is the conviction that teaching that addresses student motivation and confidence in their ability to learn math and peaks their interest, factors not usually examined systematically in higher education policy research, is central to developmental education student success. This research informs strategies for increased college completion for underprepared students. College completion has emerged as of paramount importance in fostering U.S. economic development and global competitiveness, yet if half of college students are unprepared for college work and thus are unlikely to persist to degree completion despite their motivation to attend college, serious attention should be paid to what can be done to increase their odds of success.

Author: Pamela Burdman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
There is growing concern that the remedial math courses taken by most community college students unnecessarily divert some students from earning a degree. Anecdotes of students who thought they had completed their math requirements in high school only to have remedial courses delay their progress through college are common. In addition, research has shown that African American and Latino students are disproportionately affected, frequently facing three or four remedial math classes. Redesigning the placement policies that assign students to these sequences could be as important as redesigning the curricula into which students are placed. To address concerns about ineffective and inconsistent placement practices, community colleges and some universities around the nation are adopting three types of reforms: (1) changing tests; (2) de-emphasizing tests; and (3) supporting students' test-taking. Such changes could reverberate across the educational segments from the universities that enroll community college transfer students to the K-12 schools expected to get students college-ready. This is the third report in "Degrees of Freedom," a series that explores the role of math as a gatekeeper in higher education. It examines concerns that placement policies unfairly send the majority of community college students to remedial math, deterring them from completing college. It also considers how changes in these policies interact with university placement policies as well as with K-12 college readiness strategies. [For part 1 of this series, see ED564291. For part 2 of this series, see ED564295.].

Author: Kathleen K. Shepherd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Community colleges
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
An estimated 41% of the more than 11 million students who attend a community college need remediation, with remedial mathematics the most common course students need. The literature pertaining to best practices for student success in remedial mathematics abounds, yet, there is little evidence of the factors that influence instructor use of these best practices in the classroom. This study evaluated results of a 29-item survey of American Mathematical Association of Two Year Colleges' members on the influence of instructor demographics, faculty development, institutional policies and procedures, and student support services on instructor use of best practices in teaching remedial mathematics. Developmental Theory served as the study's theoretical framework, while the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and the Input-Environment-Output Model served as conceptual frameworks. Analysis revealed nine significant predictors of overall use of best practices, four of which were influenced by instructor demographics, three by institutional policies and procedures, and two by professional development. This study may inform policymakers and administrators alike as they scrutinize the delivery of remedial mathematics courses.