Reforming Math Pathways at California's Community Colleges

The goal of developmental education (also known as remedial or basic skills education) is to help students acquire the skills they need to be successful in college courses, but its track record is poor. In fact, it is one of the largest impediments to student success in California's community colleges. Many students do need additional work to be ready for college, particularly in math. In this report, a follow-up to the authors' earlier statistical portrait of developmental education, they analyze two new reforms in developmental math, known as statistics pathways and compressed math pathways. Both approaches aim to reduce the amount of time students spend in developmental math by reducing the amount of coursework and eliminating exit points--transitions where students are likely to leave the developmental sequence due to failure to re-enroll in the next course in the sequence. Statistics pathways also aim to create an alternative non-algebra based sequence for students in majors that only require statistics (art, sociology, English, journalism, psychology, and other liberal arts and humanities fields). In comparing outcomes for students in these two approaches to those for students in traditional developmental pathways, the authors find that: (1) Outcomes are substantially better for students in the statistics pathway; (2) Outcomes for students in the compressed algebra pathway are somewhat better; (3) All student groups--including underrepresented students--have better outcomes in the statistics and compressed algebra pathways; and (4) The lowest levels of developmental math do not work.