Just a few stories...

It's the end of the semester, the time when students suddenly realize that that they need to do something, or fail.

One student failed my first two tests, and missed the third. I really don't like giving a make-up, but I write a test up just for her. She takes it. Then she comes to my office 2 minutes before class wanting to know how she did.

I give 28 points for free (out of 100). She scored a 29...and had no idea that she has no clue whatsoever what's going on. Even the "gimme" question, just pressing buttons on a calculator, she had no clue.

The question, by the way, was like "If you invest $10,000 at 15% for two years, how much do you end up with?"

Her answer:  $17.45.  I mean, seriously, no clue at all, every answer was totally off the wall like that. She's hardly alone, several students decided to wait until the day of the test to figure how to use a calculator to calculate interest...we've been on that topic for weeks.


Another student really was angry with me that she's failing the course. "I want my $400 back!" she says. I tried to explain that this is just the same course most folks take in high school, and that she could just read along in the book, and study, and she would have been fine. "I don't have the book." The semester is almost over, and she still hasn't gotten around to getting the book (and yes, she was handed more than enough loan money to buy a book)...and it's my fault she's failing. The worst of it is she gets to evaluate me (and teacher evaluations are 22%, yes, that exact percentage, of what determines job performance), evaluating the quality of my teaching and materials (i.e., the book).

It's been over 15 years, incidently, since anyone that knows the subject matter has evaluated my teaching. Other than students, all I've had is an administrator come in, watch me teach, then tell me what topics I need to remove from the course, to improve retention. I could literally just spew random words and the administrator (and most students) wouldn't even know.

Another student wrote me a long hate-mail detailing how badly I sucked, and how it's my fault she's not learning, and that it's important that she pass the course, because it's one of her last courses for graduating. Every line of her letter (not text) had at least one grammatical error in it, but I responded. I told if she could learn 8 pages from the text one her own, I'd pass her, and gave her 3 weeks to do it. She couldn't, because, she, too, didn't think getting the book was worth it. What goes on in other courses that you don't need to be able to write a complete sentence, or be able to read a book?


I had one high point, however. All semester, this totally hopeless girl interrupts class time and again to ask, well, questions that anyone paying attention would know. The course is statistics, and the quesitons are like:

"How do you know which one is the mean?"

"What does the x with a little bar over it mean again?"

"How do you know that number is negative?"

"Which one is the standard deviation?"

"How can you tell .02 is less than .05? Is there a formula for that?"

She'd even ask the same question several times during class (much like the first two questions). I politely answer again, and again, and again.

Finally, another student blew her gasket, and told her: "Why don't you just study?!"

The whole class, sans me, laughed uproariously.  I'm sure she'll slam me on the evaluations, but damn...why not just study?

If I had thousands of students each semester, the above might be attributed to just being flukes, but they're not. I barely have 80 students total, and at least a dozen are "winners" like the above.

You might have noticed I used the feminine pronoun every time. That vast bulk of my students are female; the only time I get half or more of the class being male is when I start to teach what used to be first year math courses, like calculus. I'm hardly alone in noticing this.

I see there's a family with multiple children going to college before hitting puberty; I'm sure the kids are fairly bright, but I'm also sure college isn't what it used to be, either.

Next time around, I'll detail what exactly administration is planning to do to deal with the disaster of remediation.

So, does Remediation do any good?

With most students coming to college, that means that much of the money spent on "higher education" is actually spent on 9th grade or lower material. It's only natural to ask if it's done any good. As before, note that over 90% of remedial students don't get even a 2 year degree within 3 years:

Fewer than 1 in 10 graduate from community colleges within three years.

 (this is from a study called "Bridge to Nowhere"; presumably, if remediation helped them, they'd only take one more year to get such a degree).

 Remediation doesn't do students much good, obviously, although their debts are just as real as for students that actually have demonstrated interested in learning.

     “Many of our developmental classes have a 100% passing rate. Let’s show the Developmental Department we can do just as well!”

--administrative encouragement to improve passing rates in college courses. Education is not an issue.

 

     Remediation has greatly helped administration, as these easier courses are much easier to fill with students, especially students that don’t realize the risk of taking on loans, leading to explosive growth in “higher education,” if that phrase is taken to mean high school and lower level material. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say explosive growth in the student base, which certainly helps administrators that get to show off how successful the institution is. Similarly, as non-college courses, it’s easier to hire less qualified (and lower paid) instructors, with less accreditation oversight. Widespread remediation gives all the bonuses from being an administrator with many underlings, without the responsibilities, certainly a very attractive situation.

     Does remediation help faculty? Not as much as was promised, even though initially faculty and administrators were on the same side in providing remedial courses. The point of remediation was supposed to be that a student graduating from it would come to a college course prepared. Unfortunately, most remediation is done without oversight, with the only goal of “pass as many students as possible.” So faculty gains little from having remediated students, with the added burden of being told by a feckless administration, “If the remedial classes have a 100% passing rate, why can’t you?”

     Even without the pressure, faculty have little choice but to cover less material, at a slower pace, out of a sense of fairness to the unprepared students that are honestly struggling with the work; this ripple effect goes all the way up the chain of courses on campus. I get some small benefit from all the remediation, but it’s primarily from keeping the disciplinary problems out of the real college courses. I still get wildly unprepared students in advanced classes, but the ones that care about the material almost always are able to pick up (or remember) the things they should have known coming into the course, within the first few weeks of the semester. To help these students, I can justify slowing down a bit, even as I know doing so harms the other students that intend to take additional courses.

    Does remediation help students? The answer is an almost perfect “no.” It’s helped a few students, although I suspect these students would have been helped just as well before the “everyone goes to college” craze. Recall that less than 10% of remedial students get a degree in only a year more than “normal” students. Remedial students, even ones that complete a program, very disproportionately have no measureable improvement in their cognitive thinking skills from when they first entered college. One could easily conjecture that these completed programs have merely been watered down to the point that cognitive skills are not necessary for completion, or never required such skills in the first place.

     Every study on the subject has verified the obvious: remedial students are less likely to complete a program, and are more likely to spend more time than other students on any program completed or even attempted. They naturally also get further into debt, but as that translates into “make more money for the college,” administration sees nothing wrong here.

 

Just  a little post before going back to look at remedial courses in "high education".

A student in my 2nd year statistics course scored a 100 on the third test of the semester; this was a bit of a surprise, since he failed the first two tests. I give a test about once a month during the semester.

I asked him what changed, and he gave an answer I've heard many times before: "I studied today". One day. I've had students literally rip me a new one because they studied for two hours, and still didn't do well on a test. I've been "nudged" by admin to lower my standards to the point that a student need only pass one test to probably pass the course, so he's golden now.

This is what college rigor is now: study for a day, and you can master a full month of what is now college material (far less than what I covered in the 90s).

Hmm, a semester of material for a course can be mastered by a student that simply tries for a single day. A student takes maybe 4 courses a semester. 32 days of study for a "year of college".

So, a 4 year degree now safely represents about 4 months of effort. It's probably better than that, since a student has less opportunity to forget than in the 4 year degree (which takes 6 years for most students, anyway).

I've often heard it said public school takes so long to cover so little, in order to delay entry into the workforce. Is it the same for higher eduation? It sure looks like it.

Why so many remedial students?

 

“Hey. We’re selling a plot of land, and thought we could ask our math professor friend for help. The land is a rectangle, 120’ on one side, and 300’ on the other. I know you need that much. What’s the square footage and how do you get it?”

--question from the wife of a longtime friend, valedictorian at her school, and a bright person. She and her husband just didn’t take math in high school.

 

     Now, it’s easy to blame the high schools for the unprepared students entering college, but that’s not fair. High schools offer College Algebra-level material, and often more advanced math, and also simpler courses, as well as other options. They tell students “this is what you need for college, this what you need to get by, and this is what you need to pump gas” giving their students the option to take the challenging material, something simpler, or no math at all. Students choose (or are advised by counselors or parents) not to take the challenging coursework, improving their GPA and chances of graduating high school. I don’t blame students for taking the easy way out when asked to do so; I would have myself if my parents had let me. A student who puts effort into it can avoid having a math class for his last few years of high school, if he wishes; I commonly get students that tell me they haven’t taken math since the 8^th or 9^th grade, and looking at their tests, I am in no position to disagree.

 

     “Find the exact area under the curve of the graph of y = 3x² + 2 between x = 2 and x = 4, using the limit of sums method.”

-- High school calculus problem. Using sums in this way is way beyond what I would attempt in an elementary college calculus course, where I often spend considerable time going over how to add fractions.

 

     I’ve certainly heard tales of bad teachers, teachers not doing their jobs, teachers that don’t care about students, and, of course, teachers that succumb to the immense pressure to pass unprepared students. While I believe such teachers exist, I’ve met quite a few public school teachers, and through tutoring many high school students, I can only conclude that the vast majority of teachers are dedicated, hardworking, knowledgeable, and do a legitimate job in offering real mathematics courses to their students. In short, the vast majority of students that want to learn have a fair opportunity to do so.

     Perhaps public schools shouldn’t give students the opportunity not to learn, but I suspect they’ve long since figured out that forcing students into classes they have no interest in taking doesn’t really help the students. If only that knowledge could be passed up to postsecondary institutions.

     If a student chooses not to be prepared for college, it’s no great surprise that such a student, when tricked into going to college, is not prepared for it. A student shouldn’t be made to suffer forever for a poor choice made in high school, but…recall how years ago getting into college was not a certain thing. It was reserved for those who worked hard and studied, demonstrating they were willing to do what it takes to achieve higher learning. The great slobbering greed of colleges with open admission policies, and the “increase the student base at all costs” major goal of administration, has led to a massive influx of unprepared, often wildly unprepared, students onto college campuses.

     These students, being unprepared for college, naturally do very poorly in college courses, and administration (with “graduation rate” being a goal of what makes a college good) clamps the pressure down on faculty to increase passing rates, as well as opening up an array of less regulated remedial courses, with no restraints on what goes into such courses. Unfortunately, the remedial faculty (often with less qualifications and job security than other college faculty) are bullied into having high pass rates, and the only surefire method of doing so is to lower the difficulty as much as possible.

 

(Two students at my door): “Hi. We’re in your statistics class, and we have a question about lines of regression.”

(Me, welcoming them in): “Certainly, those are some rough formulas, the key is to be very careful and not try to skip steps.”

(I take out some paper and start setting up a typical problem)

Student: “No. We’re not even going to try that. Our question is for when you already have the line, like for y = 2x + 1, because we can get that on our calculator. How did you get the points, and how do you graph the line? We’ve both had 6 hours of developmental and got A’s in College Algebra, and neither of us had to do anything like that.”

--Students at an accredited institution where developmental math wasn’t handled at all by the math department, and College Algebra wasn’t either, to some extent.

 

     With no restraints, “reduce difficulty as much as possible” is results in very low difficulty indeed, which is why at one campus, it was quite common to have students with 4.0 GPAS, 9 hours of passed math courses…and still completely overmatched by what should have been basic concepts.

     Since the flood of unprepared students doesn’t stop at remediation, faculty in the higher level courses have no choice but to likewise reduce course requirements, or lose their position. So, in my case, it isn’t just statistics students that can’t handle graphing a line, nearly half of the students I have in calculus, for years now, are unable to add fractions, despite the high GPA and multiple prerequisites.

     As long as administrators view everyone with a pulse as a source of a government check, with no concerns about how such a person can end up trapped in a lifetime of debt, remedial students will be a common feature on “higher education” campuses.

Remedial, 3 steps down...then four?!

 

Basic Mathematics

 

“It’s dummy-dummy math.”

--this course as described by a student.

 

This course covers perhaps 3^rd to 5^th grade material, from how to add and subtract whole numbers, to plotting points on the number line. While many of these students may well have serious learning disabilities, I’ve often observed a learned helplessness to these students, as though they’ve been trained to stop all activity as soon as a question is asked. No exercise is too simple, no question anything but insurmountable, and every homework problem I assign must be done in class because, well, no understanding of the material can be taken for granted.

 

Even as I acknowledge that, perhaps, the college is justified in offering this course, I again don’t understand why there are no moral reservations about loaning people money to take it, or interest in directing them to cheaper methods of gaining these rudimentary skills. What’s interesting is disciplinary problems actually drop off here relative to the other remedial courses; while there is some unruliness, it’s not as severe as in the other remedial courses, nor is cell phone use during class nearly as prevalent.

 

I’ve never seen or heard of a student going from this course to anything like a successful college career. With over 90% of “normal” remedial students failing to have a college career, this isn’t surprising.

 

My college is currently in the process of reworking the entire remedial math system, again, based on yet another theory of presentation that, if followed, will supposedly increase retention, so these remedial courses may not even exist at the publishing of this post; they were part of my college for 10 years, however, and many institutions have similar courses.

 

There’s nothing wrong with trying to improve education and learning, but at some point, someone should think that “Gee, this student didn’t learn this in 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. Maybe he doesn’t want to learn this and we shouldn’t loan him money to learn it.” Failing that, admissions should think “Maybe loaning this person money that goes right to us would be taking advantage of someone with a mental disability and it would be not be acting with integrity to do that.” So far, these possibilities have never been raised at any meeting concerning remediation, and administration continues to sell these courses to anyone willing to go into debt to take them.

 

Let’s go over that last issue again: an adult coming to college campus with skills comparable to a 2^nd grader should still be treated with integrity, and not exploited. Putting such an adult into a contract of lifelong indebtedness is borderline criminal…and yet many college campuses have this level of remedial course for sale to incoming students, and don’t even blush when asking the student to check a box initiating the loans that lead to a lifetime of debt.

 

As a matter of principle, a college helping students to get financial aid for this course should have their accreditation reconsidered; taking advantage of people like this cannot possibly be acting with integrity. To satisfy the people that really need the help of this course, a college could just simply offer it, for free, as part of their obligation to the local community; I know I’d be more motivated to donate my time to such students if I knew they were there out of a legitimate interest in learning, instead of just for the check.

 

For one semester, we offered an even more basic math (a sub-pre-sub-remedial course, if you will). This course was promoted by admimnistration as “taking out the math they don’t need, like squares and rectangles,” Am I really alone in thinking it odd that administrators with no knowledge or training in a subject nonetheless get to decide what is needed in a subject?

 

Never forget the lesson of all these remedial courses: most colleges have redefined high school as "college courses", and sell to the community the need for the "higher education" even as all they offer is the same stuff the community already exorbitantly paid for in the high schools. This alone is bad, but consider these last few courses. The institution documents that these people have the cognitive skills of an 8 year old...and then signs them up for loans to take courses that administration knows will not lead to any job that would allow the poor suckers to pay off the loan.

Yikes...is this really that much less abhorrent than endorsing pedophilia?

Remedial, 2 steps down

 

One might thing administration would be happy enough re-defining remedial math into a "College Course" by calling it "College" Algebra.

 

One might think going one step down from that would sate administrative greed, but now, it can go even lower.

 

Me, addressing class: “Ok, so last class we learned about complementary angles, worked some problems with complementary angles, and I assigned homework problems on it. Any questions on the homework?”

Student: “Yeah, problem #1.”

Me, reading the problem: “Angles A and B are complementary...before going to the rest of the problem, what does complementary mean for angles?”

(I go to the whiteboard to write down the definition, and wait. Several moments of silence, then a student responds)

Student A: “They’re equal?”

(Three other students, echoing): “Equal?”  “Equal?”  “Equal?”

Me: “No. The mathematical word for ‘equal’ is ‘equal’. This is a different word, and it means something different. Take out your books, and look in the index or the section the homework is in, and find the definition of complementary.”

(I sit down and wait. Sixty seconds of page flipping passes, and a student responds)

Student B: “They’re the same?”

(Three other students, echoing): “Same?” “Same?” “Same?”

 

--I believe the most frightening thing about this incident is that nobody even laughed, no student in the course understood how this answer could not be right, or had the initiative/capability to look up a word in a book even when directed to do so.

 

College Preparatory Algebra I basically covers material from the 6^th to most of the 9^th grade. If that seems to overlap with College Preparatory Algebra II of the previous pose, that’s because it does; years of my explaining this to administration accomplished nothing, because the course as-is had a higher retention rate. Recent initiatives in higher education may make this course obsolete (but will come back again in a few years, as addressed later). The only thing missing from this course relative to the more advanced developmental course is a discussion of the quadratic formula.

 

Despite this being nearly the same course as College Preparatory Algebra II, the students that place into this course are clearly weaker than in the “advanced” remedial course—those placement tests are pretty good, all things considered. The students in this course, whether I pass or fail them, spend years on campus, going nowhere but deeper in debt. I did have one student, her grasp of English shaky at best (Spanish being her first language, and non-traditional as well), take this course, and she earned an A. I offered her the chance to just read the few pages that differentiates this course from College Preparatory Algebra II, and she did so, passing the final exam for the latter course without actually taking it, and moving directly to College Algebra (saving her four months of time), which she also passed in her first attempt.

 

For a small minority of students, these courses can be the start of a successful college career, but for the rest, being told to take one of these courses is a warning. Usually if a student comes to enroll, and needs a year of remedial courses before he can take what used to be a remedial course, maybe administration should ask  “Are you serious about learning?” rather than telling him “Check this box stating you’re looking for a degree, so you can start getting student loan money.” It’s a long hard road to higher learning from the 6^th grade, and I just don’t see the economic sense in loaning everyone money to spend so much time learning material that is available for free in the public library, and that most people already had years of opportunity to learn in public school. While I don’t see the sense in it, administration sure does, for some reason. Oh yeah, the checks.

 

You think 6th grade would be the theoretical minimum to start studying higher education? Hah.

Remedial, one step down

   

        The big money in college comes not from college students, but from those that aren't really ready for college. Remedial courses are big business, and administration, after realizing how profitable it was to define down college math to be "College Algebra", realized they could define things down even further.

College Preparatory Algebra II:

              “The Civil War was inevitable, but it didn’t have to be that way.”

---quote from a student history paper. A month before the paper was written, the history professor ranted extensively to the rest of the faculty how annoying it was that he had to stop his lecture, and spend time defining the word ‘inevitable’ to his class. This is common to remedial students: they can look you dead in the eye, nod in agreement that they understand, and still not comprehend a word you’re saying. Remedial students generally can take other college classes, even if they have yet to take, much less pass, the remedial courses. Many of these are dubious, but admin doesn't question how non-college students can pass these "college" courses.

This is the most common developmental math course for a student to take. It covers basically the material that public schools address in 7^th-9^th grade, from graphing lines to the basics of the quadratic formula. A great number of students are in this course because they failed this material (or failed to take it) in the 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. Again, I pass around 50% of the students, which should be considered amazing considering the student’s history of failure, but the pressure from administration to pass, pass, pass, pass the students is very strong, and the majority of meetings regarding math instruction are about how to increase retention (i.e., passing) in this class.

What’s particularly funny about this is how much time faculty spends in state meetings, presenting information and material that the high school teachers need to give their students, so their students will be prepared for college. Somehow, we think the pressure college faculty face to pass as many students as possible isn’t nearly as bad as the pressure high school teachers face.

A large minority of students in College Preparatory Algebra II are non-traditional. They took and passed the material years ago, but have simply forgotten it, or at least are extremely rusty. While spending four months reviewing in college is a painfully slow and expensive way to go about regaining these skills, I can appreciate not everyone has the initiative to go down to the library, check out a book, read and re-read and practice for a few hours until the skills come back. I’m sure administration would never suggest such a course of action to a student, not with a sweet student loan check on the line.

Me: “A quarter of my remedial class was high school students….”

(other faculty chuckle)

Faculty: “Doesn’t administration know you can’t remediate when they haven’t had a chance to learn it the first time around?”

I also have non-traditional students that are young, not even old enough to have graduated high school. My college successfully recruits high school students into taking this course, oblivious to the fact that the material here has to be offered at the high school already, for less money. As the high school schedule is different from the college schedule, I have to change my course presentation just for these students.  Year after year I do what I can to offer an abbreviated course (almost 2 weeks less material because of the schedule conflict), simultaneously with the other students, who so far don’t seem to notice when a handful of very young students disappears towards the end of the semester. Putting high school students in remedial courses isn’t restricted to my campus, my associates at other schools report administration is doing the same elsewhere.

“I co ming offise to day AAAAaaaa?”

--E-mail from a Vietnamese student. She got an A in my trigonometry class, dominating the other students despite not knowing much English at all. Yes, she did work in a nail salon when she wasn’t in class, and no, she didn’t graduate the equivalent of high school in her native country. She asked one question the whole semester, coming to my office to do so: “How come students that know nothing are in this class?”

Another small percentage of students are in College Preparatory Algebra II because their English is very weak; I often get a few Spanish-speaking students, and on rare occasions someone with a different native language. These students, like the non-traditional students, tend to do better than the other students because their reasons for doing poorly on the placement test, for example, have little to do with a fundamental lack of interest in learning. These students care, but through not being born to the English language just don’t happen to be prepared for advanced material presented in that language. Even if this course is less than ideal, it does serve students that care.

Disciplinary problems, almost completely absent in college courses (I’ve had perhaps two significant incidents in twenty years), are strikingly common at the remedial level. Loud talking to the point of interrupting class (and ignoring the instructor’s requests for quiet) are everyday events, and students becoming hostile and engaging in shouting matches with the instructor during class are not unheard of.

Student: “Is Mr. McTurkey in?”

Faculty Member, looking at list of names on the door: “Who?”

Student: “Mr. McTurkey.”

--Students often have trouble with my last name, which is why I introduce myself by my first name. This particular student had taken me for the previous remedial course, but was having trouble and came to my office for help. I wasn’t in, but the faculty member who shared my group office was happy to let me know the student was looking for me, albeit a little confused on my name. I firmly believe reading is more important than mathematics, although educated people should have proficiency in both.

Remedial students will even initiate calls or answer their phone during class. In College Algebra, upwards of 20% of the class at any given moment will be texting/playing on their cell phones, but the percentage of students engaging in this activity in this level of remedial class is usually around 50%, at least in my classes (it’s rather amusing how many students think they are fooling me by keeping their hands in their crotches for 50 straight minutes, or digging in a purse every five minutes of class). Various rules make it difficult for faculty to do much about this, and faculty, for many reasons, are loathe to try anything that might lead to a student complaint.

The majority of students coming to college nowadays require remediation. In the past, that used to mean learning high school material, but now, it's 7th-9th grade.

Are we sure this is what higher education should be? If not, there are three more remedial below this one...