If you took my post about remediation as an effort to keep kids who have faced challenges out of the system– then I apologize for mis-stating my position.
Y’know who is really good at teaching HS math? Expert HS math teachers. They aren’t PhD’s working as adjuncts because they couldn’t get a tenure track job. They are people with subject matter expertise in math AND a degree in education AND who have studied (and continue to study) pedagogy and go to conferences where they learn from Master teachers who have developed really creative ways of teaching math. Some of them have written textbooks on “how to teach math to kids who hate math” and some of them have written the curriculum which is used in 5 states which have greatly improved their math education. Some of them tutor over the summer– so they have experience with a wide range of “entry points and affection” for math, and some of them work as instructors in elite summer programs for very advanced math students.
Y’know who gets mixed results teaching HS math? Professors of mathematics who end up as adjuncts- through no fault of their own- who have limited experience teaching the math challenged. They know the math- it’s the pedagogy, the innovative approach, the ability to teach a mixed background class (some kids who are great at math but their HS never taught trig; some kids who actually passed trig but have no idea what Cosine means; some kids with actual learning disabilities (the 2E folks). As math majors in college they typically took zero courses on pedagogy– and why would they? And as Master’s and then doctoral candidates– the notion of teaching HS math rarely entered the picture. But now- you take any math adjacent job you can get- that’s how bad academia has become- and if it means teaching the remedial courses that a tenured prof won’t touch- that’s what you teach.
So this is my skepticism on remediation at the university level. Kids from poorly resourced school systems who never got the “good teachers” are STILL not getting the “good teachers” now that they are in college. And I’d love to see the longitudinal research on how many of these students end up graduating in 4, 5 or 6 years. Anecdotally- at least in the CCNY university system- those numbers are nothing to brag about.
So in states with a robust community college system- I ask again, what is gained from duplicating the remedial track, but this time at the four year college university level? If the solution is to beef up the resources as kids transition from CC to the four year university, isn’t that more effective than UCSD compensating for weak HS prep??? If a CC has figured out how to teach these kids who need remediation, why re- invent the wheel at the flagship?