Placement Tools for Developmental Mathematics and Intermediate Algebra.
2008; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0894-3907
AutoresWilliam Donovan, Ethel R. Wheland,
Tópico(s)Educational Assessment and Pedagogy
ResumoMuch attention has been given to the readiness of high school for college-level mathematics. The U.S. Department of Educations National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that Fall 2000, 71% of degree-granting institutions enrolling freshmen offered mathematics (Parsad, Lewis, & Greene, 2003) and that 22% of entering freshmen at these institutions took a mathematics course. The NCES report defined (also commonly referred to as developmental or basic skills courses) as courses reading, writing, or mathematics for college-level lacking those skills necessary to perform college-level work at the level required the (p. iii). A recent Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) report shows that 33% of Ohio's recent high school graduates enrolling as first-time freshmen at Ohio public colleges or universities Fall 2003 took a mathematics course (OBR, 2005). Our institution Ohio sees comparable enrollments developmental mathematics courses, called remedial some, to sources including NCES and OBR. These high enrollments developmental are of concern for many reasons.First, public focus on the mathematical preparation of high school is not new. One only needs to consider the nations reaction to the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1957. Within a year of that event, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which emphasized the study of mathematics, science, and foreign languages (Fiske, 1982). But the late 1960s, with the United States winning the space race, the NDEA replaced as the focus of federal educational efforts at the precollege level the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which supported projects such as Head Start for disadvantaged students (Fiske, 1982). According to Campbell, Hombo, and Mazzeo (2000), the average NAEP mathematics assessment score of 17-year-olds declined between 1973 and 1982.Since that time, however, a 10-point gain average scores is evident, most of which occurred between 1982 and 1992. Because average scores have remained at or about their 1992 level, the average mathematics score of 17-year-olds 1999 was higher than it was 1973. (pp. 8-9)Although this information seems encouraging, comparison to other shows room for improvement. The 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results showed that in 2003, U.S. performance mathematics literacy and problem solving was lower than the average performance for most OECD countries (Lemke, Sen, Pahlke, Partelow, Miller, Williams, Kastberg, & Jocelyn, 2004). (The OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries.)By this standard, even 5 decades after Sputnik, the United States still seems to lag the mathematical preparation of its students. But it's not as if the problem is being ignored. According to Young (2002) and Boggs and Shore (2004), student demographics and the varying levels of required college preparatory high school, as well as the rigor and content of those courses, are shown to make an impact on student readiness for college. Gamoran, Porter, Smithson, and White (1997) have evaluated the success of transition mathematics as a remedy to the problem of low-achieving, lowincome being tracked into dead-end mathematics high school. Desimone, Smith, Baker, and Ueno (2005) have examined conceptual teaching of mathematics as a way to better mathematics instruction the U.S. Also, one certainly cannot ignore the intent of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 relative to mathematics.A second reason for concern is the possible connection between the remediation required with low mathematics skills and their college attrition rates. Adelman (2006) states that by the end of the second calendar year of enrollment, the gap credit generation college-level mathematics between those who eventually earned bachelor's degrees and those who didn't is 71 to 38 percent (p. …
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