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Hard-blocked Placement Prerequisites

Hard-blocked Placement Prerequisites. Report by the FRCC Curriculum Committee Taskforce on Prerequisites. Presenter: Matt Wilson, Ph.D. Hard-blocked placement systems. Across the Country, Community College placement systems differ in many different ways:

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Hard-blocked Placement Prerequisites

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  1. Hard-blocked Placement Prerequisites Report by the FRCC Curriculum Committee Taskforce on Prerequisites. Presenter: Matt Wilson, Ph.D.

  2. Hard-blocked placement systems • Across the Country, Community College placement systems differ in many different ways: • There are different placement test available • There are different ways that schools use placement test data. • FRCC uses the Accuplacer tests, and, currently, we use them primarily for advising.

  3. Hard-blocked placement systems • What is a hard-blocked placement system? • Hard-blocked Prerequisites • Course prerequisites and placements Prerequisites

  4. Hard-blocked placement systems • Basic skills exams (Accuplacer): reading, english and math. • Placement is based on scores in these basic skills subjects. • Developmental education (or dev.ed.) students “place” into or below ENG 090, MAT 099 and/or REA 090.

  5. Hard-blocked placement systems • So what is a hard-blocked placement system? • It is a placement system that uses hard-blocked placement prerequisites across the curriculum to block dev. ed. students from enrolling in college-level courses, including “gatekeeper” courses.

  6. Hard-blocked placement systems • What is the rationale (or theory) behind hard-blocked placement systems? • Pass rates among dev. ed. students are significantly lower • Overall pass rates (12 disciplines): • Non-dev.ed. 70.84% • Dev.ed. 60.71%

  7. Hard-blocked placement systems • By discipline and specific tests (an example) • Economics • Pass rates for non-dev.ed., reading (>REA090): 69% • Pass rates for dev.ed., reading (<=REA090): 38% • Pass rates for REA060: 36% • Clearly, dev.ed. students contributed disproportionately to lowering the overall pass rate, which was just 62%.

  8. Hard-blocked placement systems • So what is the rationale (or theory) behind hard-blocked placement systems? • Are we setting them up for failure? • Cost of failing a college-level course • Student: Lost time, lost tuition $s and lost confidence • College: Lost instruction time

  9. Hard-blocked placement systems • Evaluation: Should FRCC implement a hard-blocked placement system? • Applying this rationale (that we could prevent failure and set up future success), should we implement a hard-blocked placement system?

  10. Hard-blocked placement systems • Basic assumptions underlying the “validity” of hard-blocked placement systems. • From a student-centered perspective, the “validity” or usefulness of a hard-blocked placement system depends upon two underlying assumptions: • It assumes that the placement tests are strong predictors of who will pass and who will fail college-level courses. • It assumes that the traditional dev. ed. sequence is an effective way to promote retention, progress towards college-level courses and, ultimately, graduation.

  11. Hard-blocked placement systems • Are placement tests reliable predictors of pass rates? • Despite the large differences in pass rates between dev.ed. and non-dev.ed. students, placement test, such as the accuplacer tests are very poor predictors of pass rates in college level course. • Collectively, the three placements (REA, ENG and MAT) account for only about two percent of the observed variation in pass rates. • Explanation: in both populations, there is a very large amount of deviation around predicted outcomes based on test scores alone.

  12. Hard-blocked placement systems • Is traditional developmental education an effective path to retention, college credit and graduation? • The “diversion effect” • Many students will not complete dev. ed. sequence • Those that do will not have as many credits at the end of their first year • In a sample of FRCC students, among those who tested into at least one DE course, 65.88% (roughly 2/3) passed at least one college-level course; 28.29% (nearly 1/3) passed at least two or more college-level courses; 9.07% passed three or more; 2.5% passed four or more.

  13. Hard-blocked placement systems • Is traditional developmental education an effective path to retention, college credit and graduation? • Reading, writing and math across the curriculum • Subject specific developmental needs

  14. Hard-blocked placement systems • Recommendations: • Consider obtaining High School GPA data and integrating it into the advising process • Continue to allow dev. ed. students into college-level courses, but find innovative ways to deliver embedded study skills

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