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The Transformative Power of Remediation. Steven Spurling City College of San Francisco. The Questions. Are English and Math levels related to success in a wide variety of college (IGETC) academic areas?
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The Transformative Power of Remediation Steven Spurling City College of San Francisco
The Questions • Are English and Math levels related to success in a wide variety of college (IGETC) academic areas? • If so, does remedial course-taking in English and mathematics allow students who start in college at lower levels to perform equally to students who start at much higher levels?
The dataset • 10 Years of Academic History • 88,000 Students • 350,000 IGETC Course Enrollments • 20 IGETC* Areas • Nearly a Million Class Meetings • Untold Student Time Investment • Native-Speaking Students Only – NO ESL * Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum (IGETC)
Two Hypothetical Patterns • The Student Learning Outcomes Pattern • The Academic Talent Pattern • We will sift through the dataset looking to determine which of these two patterns explains student success.
Regression Estimates – allowed entry into a stepwise regression at a .0001 level
Two Major Questions • How do students do once they get to where ever they are going educationally? • How many of them get there? • The first question needs to be answered before the second one has any meaning.
Question 2 – The Completion of Transfer-Course Rate of New First Time Students
Are the progressively lower completion rates for lower placing students in the prior slide a result of lower placing students being filtered out because of their lack of academic capability or because they are required to take more class levels? • To Complete a transfer level: • Arithmetic students must • Enroll in arithmetic • Pass it • Enroll in elementary algebra • Pass it • Enroll in intermediate algebra • Pass it • Enroll in a transfer level math class • Pass it An EIGHT step process
What’s P? • How to compare the ability to complete the sequence of courses of higher placing and lower placing students? • The march to D.C. analogy. • A simplifying assumption: all of the percentages are the same • p = the average enrollment and success rate. • T = transfer level completion • S = steps in the sequence • S = (l + 1)*2 – 1 • Where l = levels below transfer t = ps p = t 1/s
What’s P in English? • P (L) = 11th root of .0348 = .739 • P (90) = 9th root of .153 = .812 • P (92) = 7th root of .242 = .817 • P (93) = 5th root of .356 = .813 • P (96) = 3rd root of .498 = .793
IT’S THE LENGTH OF THE SEQUENCE!!! • P is very similar across disciplines and from one level to the next. • Students at the lower levels are not less likely to succeed and re-enroll at any given point. • Their lower completion rates are related to the number of steps they have to complete! It’s the length of the sequence!
Conclusions • Academic Talent or Learning Outcomes? • It would seem to be Learning outcomes however in English there is grade slippage that impacts performance exterior to English. • Social promotion or the soft ‘C’ or both? • Sequence length or filtering of less capable students who enter the sequence at lower levels? • The exponent is the length of the sequence. • P represents the equality of capability across levels. • It would seem to be sequence length (the exponent) that lowers end-of-sequence completion more than differences in P – average point-in-time success and enrollment rates – by level. • P declines markedly at the lowest levels only in a four year examination. In an 8 year look, P levels out across levels. • The Bottom-bottom line. • We can deal with many issues. These include everything from learning outcomes to sequence length to grade slippage to heterogeneity of ability. We can’t affect academic talent. • Given the nature of our populations, low placing and part-time, we need to track them over longer periods to time. Our model might be continuous education over long periods of time. • The transformative power of remediation or the second press? What’s our job?
Transfer Completion by Levels below Transfer and Average Success and Enrollment Rate