- Beginning this fall, Citrus will implement modifications to the structure of English and math courses.
This is due to California Assembly Bill 705, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed on Oct. 13, 2017. The bill went into effect on Jan. 1.
The biggest change will be in the structure of English and math courses, which no longer include several remedial courses; Eng 098, Eng 099, Math 025 and Math 029 will no longer be offered.
“AB-705 prohibits the offering of remediation classes,” said Gina Hogan, dean of language arts.
Those who have not yet begun their English and math classes will start in the respective college-level course, which will be worth an extra unit.
Students who are in need of extra help in those subjects will also be placed into a one-unit corequisite course, which will provide extra aide to students who may require it.
During the AB-705 forum on March 1, Michael Wangler, dean of mathematics and business, said, “For the remedial classes, equivalent Math 025 and Math 029, that we are removing, we have non-credit versions of those courses. So, we’re going to look at offering those as non-credit classes for the students who truly need that level of remediation.”
AB-705 requires that Citrus “maximize the probability that a student will enter and complete transfer-level coursework inside a ‘one-year timeframe,’” and that students be placed into English and math courses using “multiple measures.”
This means Citrus needs to increase a student’s likelihood of completing transfer-level English and math and that the school uses more than one way to place a student into those courses.
Students are now placed based on placement tests into a college-level course or one of three remedial math courses and two remedial English courses; however, this will soon change.
Starting this fall, students will be placed based on self-reported GPA, last completed math course in high school and Accuplacer results.
Applicants will be prompted for a self-reported GPA, as well as high school transcripts if they graduated within the last 10 years. All others will be placed based only on Accuplacer results.
“Based on self-reported GPAs, a lot of our students would actually place in transfer-level courses,” Hogan said.
Several studies, like one by Emily Shaw and Krista Mattern for the nonprofit organization CollegeBoard in 2009, suggest a high correlation between a GPA that is self-reported and one that is school-reported. This means, most of the time, students are reporting honestly.
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office requires that changes be implemented by community college districts by fall 2019.
By having the changes in effect by fall 2018, “we are one year ahead of the plan from the state chancellor’s office,” said Superintendent/President Geraldine Perri at the end of the March 1 forum on AB-705.
