New LearningWorks Report
Highlights Benefits
of Revamping Math Education
"Together, the high proportion of community
college students requiring math remediation, and the relatively low
proportion who succeed in required remedial sequences, make placement in
developmental math one of the single greatest barriers to college completion."
CHANGING EQUATIONS:
How Community Colleges are Re-Thinking
College Readiness in Math
Experiments to reverse low community
college completion rates by redesigning the remedial math most students
must take are yielding promising results, defying assumptions about the
kind of math students really need. In a major departure from the
traditional one-size-fits-all remedial math sequence that emphasizes
intermediate algebra, a growing number of the nation's community colleges
are part of a movement to prioritize statistics and quantitative reasoning.
Early results - including a dramatic
jump from 6 to 51 percent in the share of students completing college-level
math in their first year of college -- are lending credence to the theory
that the alternative pathways are better tailored to college majors that
don't require intermediate algebra. About a quarter of California's 112
community colleges, as well as numerous colleges in about a dozen other
states, have begun to develop these alternatives for non-STEM
(science, technology, engineering, and math) students.
This brief was written for
LearningWorks by Pamela Burdman, a nationally recognized education policy
analyst, philanthropy professional, and journalist.
For more information and to download
the brief click
here.
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