Washington Post: One Maryland college tests a new approach to remedial math courses

On July 26, the Washington Post published an interesting article regarding entrance exams and remediation. Given the tenor of our last post, which recapitulated an article in the Journal of Developmental Education that advocated the reform not replacement of assessment tests, we thought we'd pass along information on a different approach being taken by Montgomery College in Maryland.

The entire article is interesting—though we may quibble a bit with a few of its major points. While well-intentioned, the educators interviewed in the piece make the same basic argument leveled by comparably ardent anti-remedial forces. Rather than recognizing and fixing flaws within the developmental education system, they are putting more of an emphasis on avoidance, as evidenced in the quote below: 

Instead of relying on standardized test results, the pilot program also looks at high school transcripts. If students earn an A or B in Algebra 2, for example, they might be allowed to move into college-level math. If students earn similar grades in advanced placement or honors English and world history, they might be able to go into college-level English.
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“We have come to believe that having a high-stakes test is not the best way to measure someone’s mathematical competency,” said John Hamman, dean of mathematics and statistics at Montgomery College. “Trying to look at a longer history of their work makes more sense than what they are able to do on one particular day.”

This in itself is not necessarily a bad idea. Still, one has to wonder, how are these students going to perform when placed directly into college-level math courses? Let's say these same students who got an A or B in Algebra 2 took said course their junior year of high-school. After not taking a math course for more than a year, are they still prepared to take the hardest math course in which they've ever enrolled?

The answer to this question certainly remains up for debate.