The Impact Of Math Placement Guidelines On Community College Student Outcomes PDF Download

Community colleges continue to search for the best way to place students in math courses: a difficult process due to concerns about developmental math as a potential barrier that may negatively affect, narrow, or prevent students’ access to college-level courses, as well as future career pathways (Bailey, Jaggars, & Jenkins, 2015; Cohen, Brawer, & Kisker, 2014). In this study, I set out to document and define the phenomenon of how community college staff, faculty, and administrators choose and implement new math placement models. Through an interpretivist definitional study based on observations, interviews, and document analysis at one community college, I construct a detailed, localized view of the discourses and ideologies faculty, staff, and administrators professed, encountered, and enacted as they responded to the challenge of choosing and implementing a new placement protocol. I employed the constant comparative method of analysis to organize data into key themes, which I analyzed using the theoretical constructs of conocimiento —critical political awareness (Gutiérrez, 2018)—and the social construction of “smartness” (Hatt, 2012, 2016), in order to shed light on understudied aspects of the math placement process. The findings of this research yield insights into the placement process at one community college and encourage faculty, staff, and administrators to engage in thoughtful political dialogue about the consequences of test-based math placement, to examine the implications of a rhetoric of fairness and hope, and to recognize the ways a fear of institutional failure may result in risk-management practices that increase gatekeeping in spite of best intentions to place students using multiple measures. I provide recommendations for community college practitioners who seek to challenge dominant paradigms about achievement and “ability-grouping” as they reconceptualize their math placement policies and suggest justice-based solutions such as improved PK–20 collaborations, increased opportunities and administrative support for thoughtful political dialogue about math placement across all levels of the institution, emancipatory pedagogy, and solidarity-based practices that uphold the ideals of the community college to promote both access and equity.