Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students Referred to Developmental Education

In “Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students Referred to Developmental Education”, Nikki Edgecombe studies acceleration by gathering data from its usage in different colleges and analyzing the ways it can help developmental students. As we examine the different aspects of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), it is important to emphasis the “accelerated” feature of this program and how it benefits the students involved. Edgecombe notes that a low percentage of students in developmental courses continue to college level courses, and in order to retain students, educators have to find ways to restructure the current developmental courses to help not only keep the students from dropping out but also help them succeed in other academic courses.

This figure illustrates the vast number of students who "leak" out of developmental courses before reaching college-level courses.

Edgecombe defines acceleration “as the reorganization of instruction and curricula in ways that facilitate the completion of educational requirements in an expedited manner” (4). She emphasizes that acceleration doesn’t mean less time in the classroom but that the hours spent in the classroom are formatted to help students reach their goals of attaining course credit and their degrees in a shorter amount of time. Accelerated programs also prevent “leakage” and decrease the number of students who drop out before reaching college-level courses. 

The features of acceleration are categorized into the different types, and one type Edgecombe discusses, is mainstreaming with supplemental support. Through this type of acceleration, developmental students are exposed to the demands of the college-level curriculum and receive the additional help they need through a companion. Students review in depth the concepts from their college-level course and receive additional support that helps minimize the factors that interfere with their education. She notes how ALP follows this model and the importance in the program for the college-level curriculum to remain the same, and with that in mind, CCBC has a limit on the number of developments students in the English college-level courses to eight so that the instructors do not alter the curriculum.

The article concludes that “(t)he evidence presented here suggests that exclusively structural acceleration interventions are associated with improved student outcomes, even when teaching remains unchanged” (25), and in ALP, the companion course is the feature that and increases the students’ changes of succeeding throughout college. Edgecombe uses this paper to highlight the issues that surround developmental education, and through the lens of acceleration, she is illustrates the need for changes in developmental education so that academic success is experienced by a larger number students and not only for those who can get through the gates.

The Status of Basic Writing: Do We Need a Maryland Resolution

In “The Status of Basic Writing: Do We Need a Maryland Resolution,” Jeanne Gunner discusses the language of personal statements,  including the Wyoming Resolution, the Statement of Principles and Standards of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the Portland Resolution of the Writing Program Administrators. However, it is the Wyoming Resolution most usefully addresses the issues that concern basic writing instructors, providing for professional self-definition and solidarity as well as recognition of teaching as a central and viable intellectual activity. Yet, Gunner is still not satisfied with this resolution.  She argues that its rhetoric separates its members from institutional power structures.  Gunner writes,

Our failure, I argue, is due to the fact that we have yet to constitute ourselves as a professional group. Instead, we have been content with our identity as composition's version of the Peace Corps, volunteer teachers going into the educational hinterlands to do good in the face of appalling conditions, assuaging the larger profession's social guilt, and expected to find our labor its own reward. (Jones 61)

In other words, Gunner is arguing for status for teachers of basic writing and pedagogy—faculty who teach mostly minority and under-served populations.  Although, a lot of this work is done on ethical grounds, Gunner argues that now it is time for basic writing teachers to be recognized materially in the form of a resolution that would legitimize their profession.  Ultimately, this resolution would serve two purposes: self-definition of them and their field. To accomplish this task, Gunner asks, “Do we need a Maryland resolution”?

Basic Writing: Pushing Against Racism

In "Basic Writing: Pushing Against Racism," William Jones insists that the term basic writer “has been used with notable frequency, as euphemism and code for minority students” (74).  Basically, Jones says the term is rooted in society’s conviction that Black and Latino students cannot achieve high academic standards.  He points to the effects of racism and cites several studies that confirm stereotypes about blacks and Latinos as less intelligent, lazy and violent.  In Jones’ view,

In tone and sentiment, these opinions are similar to the now familiar conclusions drawn by pioneering researchers into the writing behavior of inexperienced writers: that basic writers "[a]re ...easily satisfied with first drafts, [t]hink of revision as changing words or as crossing out and throwing away [and r]evise on the level of single work or sentence" (Jones 73).

It is not surprising then, Jones argues, that most of us—teachers, parents, and even black and Latino students themselves have internalized society’s negative impressions of basic writing students.  I have seen firsthand the stigma attached to being labeled a basic writer.  Often, in my opinion, the subtext is race, for most of the students placed in these courses are black and Latino students. 

 

For me, one of the most interesting parts of Jones’ article is when he suggests that instructors examine themselves to make sure that they can differentiate between the public perception of these students and the work that they do in the classroom.  In other words, teachers can create innovative pedagogies that confront the systemic inequalities (underperforming high schools) that lead to students being placed or “Jim-Crowed” into basic writing courses in the first place.

Standard and Access

In "Standards and Access", Tom Fox argues that if writing teachers do not critically examine their assumptions about the standards they hold then their political commitment to economic access to students of color and other under-represented groups will be compromised.  Basically, Fox is saying that claims that conservative commentators and writing teachers make about the relationship between mastery of writing and academic or economic access is false.  

 

He says that their beliefs blur the social and political reality of racism, sexism, elitism, and homophobia—barriers that really do prevent access to the American dream. Ultimately, Fox argues that writing teachers must choose a pedagogy that resists "standards" and that critiques inequities, commonplace assumptions, complex issues and contradictions. In other words, access alone is not enough to reduce the powerful forces of socioeconomic problems that continue even when basic writing students meet required academic standards. 

 

Ford suggests that writing teachers are not empowering students by not acknowledging society’s ongoing socioeconomic challenges.  Ford writes, “We are denying the terror that comes from economic insecurity; we are obscuring the effect that brutal physical violence has on women students; we are minimizing the debilitating effects of racial violence. We say, “master these standards of writing and you will access the institution.” ”

 

I really enjoyed Ford’s approach to standards and access.  His challenge to the notion of the power of language to lead to economic access is a powerful one.  I know that this idea is something that I have always heard from teachers and employers.  Yet, Ford’s argument that language is used to protect dominant institutions and established social orders is certainly not a way to transform the lives of students who are affected by the status quo.  What I really got from Ford's article is that writing can be used to help students question and critically examine their condition and the society in which they live.

 

 

 

 

Response to: "Students don't care what we know unless they know we care" ~Jerrie Cobb Scott

Anyikem Asong

ALP Group Project
Response to Literacies and Deficits Revisited by Jerrie Cobb Scott

“Simply, very simply, students don’t care what we know unless they know we care.”

This statement is at the foundation of what Jerrie Cobb Scott wants to get across in her article, “Literacies and Deficits Revisted” published in 1993. But the details are just as poignant and essential as they were twenty years ago. Reading this statement literally evoked an excited, “Yes!” That I exclaimed out loud while lying on my couch as I completed Scott’s article. They came at the very end of the article, but were preceded by a number of well supported perceptions and observances. So much of what Scott has to say is what I was hoping to come across as I learn more about literacy, writing and reading in higher education.

In this article, Scott talks about traditional, technocratic definitions of literacy that support deficit theories. Scott also addresses attitudes that persistently resist change specifically in the arena of instruction. Through examining these topics, Scott comes up with a concept called “uncritical dysconsciousness” which is “the acceptance, sometimes unconsciously, of culturally sanctioned beliefs that, regardless of good intentions, defend the advantages of insiders and the disadvantages of outsiders.” (Literacies and Deficits Revisited, p. 47, Scott, Jerrie Cobb).  This concept challenges instructors to teach with a higher level of consciousness that views marginalized students, usually black and Latino students, from a non-deficit standpoint.

More specifically, Scott addresses literate vs. oral cultures, and that often there is a bias toward oral cultures. Scott opened an avenue of thinking for me when she introduced oral culture into the discussion. It made me question how intelligence is measured and what it is measured against. When comparing African cultures and Western (European) culture, historically the African culture has for the most part been compared as inferior to Western cultures. Therefore, it makes sense that within the world of education, the African oral culture would be viewed as inferior to the Western (European) literate cultures. However, who said that the ruler to measure by should be Western literate culture? Why hasn’t oral culture been upheld as essential in the learning process? I am not ready to answer these questions in this commentary, but I was excited that Scott’s discourse raised these questions within me in a new framework – education and the discourse of Basic writing.

Scott uses viewpoints from different scholars to make her arguments, like Hirschian, who expands the definition of literacy to include knowledge – which then places oral cultures in a different light. She even pulls from anthropological studies (Bloome and Greene) to redefine literacy. In these studies “there are multiple literacies rather than a single literacy and individuals may be literate in multiple ways.”

Getting back to Scott’s statement that “students don’t care what we know unless they know we care”, issues that affect students placed in remedial classes like institutional racism and white privilege are areas that are often neglected in teacher training and development – and without being sensitized to these issues, teachers can unconsciously identify more with students that are advantaged and privileged (white students) than those that are not. Scott points out that teachers often unconsciously hold biased attitudes about literacy (insiders and outsiders) that affects the way they teach in the classroom. She stresses that too much emphasis is put on the marginalized-student side of the issue (students that are often placed in remedial classes), and not enough emphasis is put on the teacher. Scott looks at various aspects of this dynamic and challenges the reader to think about how it affects developmental students. She stresses that without deep restructuring in the classroom environment and teachers’ attitudes, there can be no serious educational reforms, and that ultimately, students are better able to learn when they know their teachers know and care about all factors that affect their educational development – and then teach them from this point of awareness.

The Accelerated Learning Program: Throwing Open the Gates

In “The Accelerated LearningProgram: Throwing Open the Gates”, Peter Adams et al. discuss in depth the development of ALP, what events led to its inception and what features form to create ALP. Furthering his investigation on the statistical results that reflected the passing rates in the developmental course ENGL 052 and first-year composition ENGL 101, Peter Adams discovered that hidden in those statistics was the fact that “the problem was not that basic writers were attempting first-year composition and failing; the problem was that they were giving up before they ever reached that course” (305). This was a discovery he decided to share with the attendees in the Conference of Basic Writing in 1992. Adams’s topic focused on the idea of “mainstreaming” basic writers into first-year composition to improve their success rates and to have them move beyond developmental writing courses to first-year composition. Even the keynote speaker at the conference, David Bartholomae, discussed a similar topic by introducing  “The Tidy House: Basic Writing in the American Curriculum” which discussed the creation of the “other” (referring to basic writers) through the formation of developmental writing courses.

The conference struck a chord with institutions, with some of them creating programs geared at mainstreaming basic writers into first-year composition. It wasn’t until 2007 that the Community College of Baltimore County piloted its first mainstreaming program known as the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). Students who tested into developmental writing courses would have the option to volunteer and register for ALP, and if they did, they were placed in ENGL 101 with seven other developmental writing students. Adams et al. emphasize the importance of placing students in the same course with higher level writers because not only will they be surrounded by role models of higher-level writing but it will also “avoid the sometimes stigmatizing and often demoralizing effects of segregating basic writers into sections…(309). In addition to the ENGL 101 course, they would have to attend a second course or a “companion course” with the same basic writing students and instructor from their ENGL 101 course. Adams compared the success rates results from both the traditional English courses (052 & 101) and ALP, taken between the fall of 2007 through the spring of 2009, which showed ALP had higher success rates and a lower drop out rates. This data illustrated the success and benefits students experienced through the mainstreaming approach.

In this article, Adams et al. break down the reasons why ALP works:

Mainstreaming: They make a note to emphasize the “powerful psychological effects” mainstreaming has on students. When they are placed directly in first-year composition, it helps to not shine a negative spotlight on them in terms of not being ready for college because of their writing, which reduces the stigma.

Cohort Learning: Through the concept of learning community, ALP places eight basic writers in the same ENGL 101 course with the goal that students build a community and develop to where “the students begin to look out for each other in a variety of ways” (313).

Contextual Learning: Through meaning context, the students are already applying their writing to the course rather than being in a basic writing course working on material that will be useful in a first-year composition course.

Acceleration: CCBC developed the acceleration part of ALP. With traditional courses, the amount of time it took the students to take the basic writing course, many not passing it the first time, and then the first-year composition many students would “leak” out. By having basic writers take the developmental course at the same time as the first-year composition, ALP shortens the “pipeline” reducing the number of students who drop out.

Heterogeneous Grouping: Mixing the basic writers with higher-level writers, ALP allows for higher-level writers to serve as role models and also reduce the stigma of being placed in a separate developmental course.

Attention to Behavioral Issues: This part of ALP shifts the attention to the behavioral issues the students might be displaying that affect their success in the course, such as too many hours at work or too many courses. Other behavioral issues they are aware of is the “high school attitude” which makes learning not seem “cool” and the use of social media in the class, not buying the necessary textbooks, or just falling asleep. The ALP faculty pays close attention to these issues, which is made possible with the small class size.

Attention to Life Problems: ALP faculty also pays close attention to what is happening to the students outside the classrooms, “they frequently refer students to sources of outside support for such concerns as financial aid, health issues, family problems, and legal problems” (315).

            The biggest issue many of these programs face is the cost it takes to have the program running. They tend to be expensive compared to the traditional courses but as Adams et al. show, in the long run, ALP is more cost effective than traditional courses because it is not only important to look at cost but also to take into account the success rates of students in the program. Taking all those into account, the program becomes more appealing to the administrators since “(i)n sum, for basic writers, ALP doubles the success rate, halves the attrition rate, does it in half the time and costs slightly less per successful student” (316).

            Now that the features are broken down to show how each one works in forming ALP as a whole, Adams et al. conclude the article by looking towards the future of ALP. Since their statistics for the two years showed improvement in the success rates, their concern is to make sure that the demographic was adequately represented by developmental writers and that no favorable biases were shown by the instructors towards the students. By looking into these concerns, Adams et al. make sure that their results truly show the benefits ALP have for basic writers. In addition, they are also focusing on the success rates of the students in other courses, their completion of the program, and transfers to four-year institutions. However, these aren’t the final results they will focus on, they will continue to gather feedback to make sure ALP is beneficial in every sense to the student’s academic life, “there is an even more important reason for continuing to improve the effectiveness: the success of our programs is of life-changing importance to our students” (319). 

Works Cited

Adams, Peter, Sarah Gearhart, Robert Miller, and Anne Roberts. "The Accelerated Learning Program: Throwing Open the Gates." Ed. Hunter R. Boylan and Barbara S. Bonham.  Developmental Education: Readings on Its Past, Present, and Future. New York: Bedford St. Martin's, 2014. 303-320. Print.

Response to "Basic Writing Reconsidered" by Peter Dow Adams - What's Left Out?

So far, during my readings on the subject of Basic Writing, a thought continues to come to mind. This thought is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the minds of students that are placed into BW courses, whom often happen to be African-American, Hispanic or from immigrant families, but there are a number of cultural, societal, institutional, historical factors, etc., that have shaped not only their educations, but have shaped their access to quality education. Any human being placed under identical circumstances as some of these students who are less fortunate, would probably perform identically to these students. And what most strongly stands out for me as this thought crosses my mind, is that access to quality education has become a luxury not a right, based on income brackets and demographics, and that as a result, many of these students have never been challenged to rise to their innate intelligence levels. Further, because of teachers that do not challenge their subconscious racism based on deeply held beliefs, many of these students are expected to perform at lower levels and ultimately underachieve due to how they are treated in classrooms. This, of course, is not true in all cases, but it is a reality for many, and is a factor that I have not seen raised directly in the articles I have read thus far. Most of my reading on the subject of BW is read through this lens.

That being said, having read “Basic Writing Reconsidered (1993)” by Peter Dow Adams and other articles, I realize that courses are needed on the college level to address these discrepancies in our educational system in America. However, as Adams raises in this article, the stigma attached to being placed in a remedial class (at any age) can actually discourage students from seriously pursuing an education, because it is sending a subliminal message that s/he is not smart enough – when in fact, they are but may have been subjected to circumstances that prevented them from achieving accordingly.

Adams talks about not only the stigma of being placed in a basic writing class, but also about students performing at lower levels because the bar is placed low in these classes, about students not being motivated by their peers because they are all in the same boat, about being subjected to inferior materials and teaching methods and always feeling a step behind, and about the dangers of misplacement. Besides these negative factors, Adams also addresses the weakness of how BW had been taught in the 90s (assembly-line approach), and the strength that was discovered by taking a new approach of raising the bar for BW students by using the same materials and methods used in college-level courses. He goes on to questions whether it is fundamentally correct to segregate students that test into BW from students that test into college-level English. While I agree with this questioning, I have to go back to examining how a student will be treated in a classroom where it is known that s/he is not at the same level as the other students, especially if that student is not white.

Adams raises many valid points in this article, pointing out the importance of gathering statistical data so that arguments can be made for the existence of BW programs, broadening the freshman intro courses to included teaching methods that address students with weaker writing/reading skills, and trying a new initiative of mainstreaming BW students into freshman English classes. He looks at the TSWE (Test of Standard Written English) and how its administration is not addressing the needs of students – that students need more time for testing and would do better with writing samples than multiple choice questions. He stresses that funding for data collection and red tape are major obstacle is getting the statistics needed to measure results of BW, and suggests that teachers collect the data themselves, which I think goes too far. Teachers should not be responsible for data collection.

Adams provides comprehensive tables that chart the successes of failures of students that test into lower level BW, upper level BW, and Eng 101. The results are extensive but ultimately show that students do better when they are mainstreamed into levels with higher achieving students. The tables also showed a surprisingly high rate of students that were tested into either lower or upper BW but never took a class – sometimes as high as 52% that never took a class at all. Adams asks why? So many questions are raised at the end of this article, and they are questions that probably fueled the discourse on BW moving through the years after 1993 when this article was published.

There are many factors to consider in the discourse on basic writing in colleges, some of which I raised at the start of this blog. Another factor to think about is that sometimes, students just want to learn from the standpoint they are in and move forward from that point. They neither want others to expect them to be intellectuals or proficient writers, nor to expect them to embrace a culture of academia that they never aspired to in the first place. Maybe it is important to ask students, “What do you hope to achieve?” Just a thought.