It was 8:10 p.m. and mathematics professor Sophia Lee’s intermediate algebra corequisite support class was already in full swing.
“Let’s start with a nice little problem to get our feet wet,” Lee said.
Unlike a traditional lecture class, several groups of two to four students stood at each of the whiteboards surrounding the room, discussing and working on the functions problem that Lee had just assigned them. The students did not just work within their own groups, but moved around the room to help other students tackle the problem.
“When students are working together on the whiteboards, that’s where the magic happens,” Lee said, “I love being able to look around the room and see all the thinking happening at once. Students are able to peek at other boards to get ideas when they are stuck. In this setting, natural leadership occurs and students jump into helping one another learn deeply and organically. Students are more engaged and enthusiastic than ever in a math class.”
Students at one whiteboard were in cheerful, animated conversation over a minus sign and some parenthesis.
“See how the students are happy,” Lee said. “The students are teaching each other.”
AB 705, a new California law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2018 has caused community colleges to rethink their strategies for ensuring student success.
In an opinion piece titled “An important opportunity to innovate at California’s community colleges,” Superintendent/President Geraldine Perri said “education should be enlightening, motivating and enriching; not something that dampens a person’s spirit.”
Perri said, “Poor student moral has often been an unintended consequence of traditional remediation as students spent years in courses that potentially underestimated their capacity and presented them with too many opportunities to veer off course.”
Michael Wangler, dean of mathematics, said student throughput rate is crucial for ensuring that students decide to continue on to complete their college education and passing math and English courses is the number one barrier preventing students from staying in college.
Throughput rate is the proportion of a cohort of students who complete the transferable or gateway courses for math or English courses within either two primary semesters or three primary quarters of entering their first course in the sequence.
Wangler said in past years, student throughput rate statewide has been low, with as much as 92% of junior college students statewide unable to transfer to another university because they could not complete their math courses, despite being one class away from transferring.
“AB 705 is designed to help improve student throughput rate,” Wangler said.
The “What is AB 705?” website said AB 705 requires community colleges to maximize the probability that students will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a one year time frame by using the student’s high school coursework, high school grades or high school grade point average to place them in transfer-level English and math courses.
Perri said since AB 705 was passed into law, many colleges are reassessing practices, policies and curriculum that may no longer contribute to a student’s capacity for success. College assessment methods for placement in English and math courses have come under recent scrutiny due to poor outcomes among students placed in remedial courses.
However, the challenge for students taking remedial English and math courses is not always that the courses are too difficult for them.
Wangler said for some students, remedial courses are too easy, leading to the students getting bored with the material, losing interest in the courses and subsequently dropping out.
However pre-AB 705, students were still being placed in remedial courses.
The “What is AB 705?” website said research suggests that standardized assessment tests tend to underplace students.
Citrus College initiated a pioneering administrative policy to combat this problem.
Perri said in fall 2018, all remedial English courses were eliminated, allowing students to enroll directly in transfer-level English courses, a big change from fall 2017 when 47% of students began in remedial English courses.
Perri said despite the change, student pass rates for transfer-level English courses have remained steady, showing that students can succeed in transfer-level English courses without having to take remedial English courses first.
And removing remedial courses won’t hurt the college’s bottom line either.
Wangler said there is no financial downside to removing remedial courses, since student success in transfer-level English and math courses leads to students deciding to continue with their education, which means the students will take more courses.
Wangler said there has been no drop in enrollment; in fact, enrollment has been up the last two semesters and there has been an increase in the number of students taking the calculus sequence, as well as an increase in math majors and STEM majors.
Wangler said AB 705 is also helping to close the equity gap, a nationwide gap in potential for academic success between underrepresented students; Hispanic and African-American students and non-underrepresented students; Asian and Caucasian students.
Wangler said Hispanic and African-American students have lower throughput rates then Asian and Caucasian students.
The “What is AB 705?” website said that assessment instruments and placement policies have serious implications for equity, as students of color are far more likely to be placed into remedial courses, and students placed into remediation are much less likely to reach their educational goals.
Perri said since removing remedial classes, student completion rates increased substantially, with gains across all racial/ethnic groups. In fall 2018 alone, 53% of African-American students and 63% of Hispanic students completed college-level English, which was an increase of 13% from 2017 for both minority groups.
Another change Citrus College adopted after AB 705 passed was incorporating interactive, interpersonal and inclusive corequisite support classes into the curriculum.
In fall 2018, The Capacity Gazette’s article “100% of Students Eligible for Corequisite Model of College Statistics” said Citrus College initiated a corequisite support model of college statistics that is open to all students, regardless of their test scores or high school grades, which enabled students to bypass remedial math courses and enroll directly into transfer-level math courses.
Lee said Citrus College added corequisite support courses to their English and math curriculum after being inspired by the curriculum at Cuyamaca College.
However, switching to the new curriculum took some time and training to implement.
Wangler said the initial phase of corequisite support class implementation consisted of faculty training that took about a year, with personnel from Cuyamaca College helping to train Citrus College faculty in teaching the new corequisite support curriculum, as well as numerous Citrus College support staff helping to refine the new teaching techniques.
Citrus College’s corequisite support math courses combine innovation with contemporary teaching activities.
“In the math department at Citrus College, we have adopted the 360 degree flexible classroom, where students are taken out of their seats and placed directly on the whiteboards on all four sides of the room,” Lee said in an email. “Our new collaborative furniture allows students to build a community based on teamwork, motivation and growth mindset. We do fun activities such as Speed Dating, Uber Driving, Gallery Walk and Think-Pair-Share. Students are more engaged than ever and truly appreciate the all-inclusive, active learning experience that Citrus has to offer.”
Quite a difference from traditional math classes of the past.
“We catch our own mistakes which helps a lot,” Brandon Miranda, 19, pre-engineering major said. “We have a sense of understanding with each other, which makes me feel more comfortable going up on the board, because I point out their mistakes and they point out my mistakes.”
Lee said the corequisite support math classes are not just about the math.
“They talk about test anxiety,” Lee said. “We create a sense of belonging by sharing our family problems, our life problems. We embrace mistakes. It’s not just me writing problems on the board, it’s a lot of deeper thinking about concepts.”
Registered nursing major Stacy Amhaz, 49, said she had a hard time learning math taking traditional math classes at another college, but found success in math taking Lee’s corequisite support math classes.
“When I took her class I knew that I had hope, that for once I could actually make it through a math class,” Amhaz said. “It takes the right teacher and the right style of teaching math to open minds to a math way of thinking.”
Perri said from 2015 to 2016, the completion rate for students starting in remedial math was 14.6%, but in fall 2018, the student completion rate of the corequisite statistics with support course was four times higher at 63%.
However there’s still work to be done.
“At the heart of our corequisite support courses lies equity,” Lee said in an email. “As mathematics faculty, it is crucial that we reevaluate the way we teach our classes in order to break down any barriers for our low-income students of color and help close the equity gap. What can Citrus College do to close the equity gap further and what are the best ways to help underrepresented students learn math better?”
Wangler said they are thinking of offering one remedial class for the small percentage of students that still cannot pass the transfer-level math courses despite the influence of the support corequisite classes.
Lee said the dean of the math department being involved in the implementation of AB 705 is important because he makes decisions that get things done efficiently, and he puts resources where they need to be in order to to get the new system running smoothly.
In February 2019, Citrus College won the coveted Golden State Honey Badger award for the most successful implementation of AB 705.
Despite the award, the administration, faculty and staff continue to strive to improve on their success, and especially the success of Citrus College students, by continuing to pioneer effective administrative and instructional methods for implementing AB 705 that other colleges can replicate.
“I prayed for a math class like this,” Amhaz said. “This class was an answer from God.”
Video courtesy of Sophia Lee, mathematics professor.
