Minding the Dream by Mellow Gail O.;Heelan Cynthia M.;

Author:Mellow, Gail O.;Heelan, Cynthia M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Unfulfilled Dream

There are many aspects of the reality of Developmental Studies in community colleges. For many students, Developmental Studies are both their entrance into and their exit from college. Students who come with very poor skills, often coupled with nonexistent study habits, weak educational aspirations, few or no role models, and complicated personal lives, often fail to make academic progress. Some of these students leave developmental classes midway through their first semester, while others try for a year, but their rate of academic progress is limited.

Because of its open-access policy, community college is sometimes recommended by advisors for students with intellectual developmental disabilities who have “aged out” of high school but for whom there is no real alternative. Seventy percent of community college students take at least one remedial course, and only about 25 percent of them graduate within eight years. Of the students who were placed into developmental math or English, only 22 percent completed a gateway course in their designated subject area within two years. The more courses students have to take to place into college-level work, the higher the probability that they will not begin their college program at all (Charles A. Dana Center, Complete College America, Inc., Education Commission of the States, and Jobs for the Future, 2012).

In communities where from 30 percent to 80 percent of the students who graduate from high school with a diploma lack high school–level skills necessary to succeed in college, it is the rare Developmental Studies program where more than 60 percent of the students remediate their basic skills deficits (Bailey, Jeong, and Cho, 2010).

Other realities concern how incoming students’ developmental needs are assessed. Although entry-level skills testing is overwhelmingly conducted in contemporary community colleges (using nationally available or home-grown tests), few of these tests provide the kinds of diagnostics that would allow a college to customize a curricular sequence. While some community colleges, such as Miami-Dade Community College in Florida, mandate that all basic skills be remediated before beginning credit work, many community colleges separate linguistic from mathematic basic skills. This can result, for example, in students succeeding in one area, but then spending several semesters trying to pass an algebra course as their final six credits for a degree.

At the other end, there are systems, such as the City University of New York’s community colleges, that use nationally normed assessment tests as exit examinations and prevent even the students who pass a developmental course from taking the credit classes unless a set score on the examination is achieved. Interestingly, the national testing companies do not set “passing” scores for their basic skills assessment tests, nor do they publish results—not even a national average, suggesting that the political and economic realms might not be in harmony.

Structural considerations for developmental programs within community colleges are quite variable. No consensus has been reached for how to configure Developmental Studies—about half create separate departments, and half embed developmental classes within departments that offer college-level English or mathematics. While some data have

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