PLACEMENT & COLLEGE READINESS: SURVEYING

THE LANDSCAPE

Bill MoorePolicy Associate, SBCTC

Director, Re-Thinking Precollege Math Projectbmoore@sbctc.edu

360-704-4346

SESSION OUTLINERole/purpose of placement

testingGeneral issues & definitions

(including attributes, affective domain)

Studies and other resourcesTesting approaches &

alternatives (including diagnostics)

Ideas for Criteria/Principles?

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER• What do you see as the

main functions of placement tests for colleges?

• How well do you think students understand what’s involved in college placement testing (and what’s on the tests)?

PLACEMENT TESTING IN A “SEAMLESS” EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Sorting students appropriately into postsecondary courses

Defining “college readiness” to various stakeholders, especially K-12 system

Historical Role

New Role in K-20 System

SESSION OUTLINERole/purpose of placement

testingGeneral issues & definitions

(including attributes, affective domain)

Studies and other resourcesTesting approaches &

alternatives (including diagnostics)

Ideas for Criteria/Principles?

Washington Work on College Readiness

Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium

REDEFINING COLLEGE READINESS

David Conley, prepared for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2007

Leads to a desire to look

smart, so tends to:

Avoid challenges

Give up easily

See effort as fruitless or

worse

Ignore useful negative feedback

Feel threatened by the success of

others

Leads to a desire to learn,

so tends to:

Embrace challenges

Persist in the face of

setbacks

See effort as the path to

mastery

Learn from criticism

Find lessons and

inspiration in the success of

others

Fixed Mindse

t

Growth

Mindset

As a result, they reach ever-higher

levels of achievement

As a result, they may

plateau early and achieve

less than their full potential.

Student Attributes for

Math Success (SAMS) Project

UT Dana Center

Academic Youth

Development program

Student Readiness Inventory, ACT

Another Approach to Attributes

SESSION OUTLINERole/purpose of placement

testingGeneral issues & definitions

(including attributes, affective domain)

Studies and other resourcesTesting approaches &

alternatives (including diagnostics)

Ideas for Criteria/Principles?

Assessment Findings, CCRC Study

Confusion about what it means to be “college ready”—no obvious cutoff point

Tests may be reasonable predictors of college-level success, but less effective at identifying who is likely to benefit from interventions

Assessments do not provide adequate diagnostic information

A single cutoff point exaggerates the distinction between developmental and college ready—need for multiple measures including non-cognitive

Students are confused about the process and not well advised (Venezia, Bracco, & Nodine, 2010)CCRC, Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2010)

MDRC study of placement testing practices

ISSUES/FINDINGS• Students take tests

without full understanding of purpose, significance

• Colleges rely solely on single standardized test

• Offer little or no information relevant to faculty, instruction

• Little ongoing deliberation around placement choices, issues

QUESTIONS• Balancing efficiency with

accuracy, relevance?• Role of multiple measures

(transcripts, affective, work samples, …)?

• Strengthen connections between placement, instruction, progress?

• Data collection for ongoing review, deliberation re tests?

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Compass Test #1: ALGEBRA(Cut Score Needed to Take Intermediate Algebra; average =

52)

http://www.achieve.org/AlignedExpectations

Various Relevant Resources/Studies• California Resources and Projects

– Research and Planning Group for California CCs

– Basic Skills Initiative• Achieving the Dream reports

– “Standardization vs. Flexibility”– “It’s Not about the Cut Score…”

• National Center for Postsecondary Research (Community College Research Center)

• MDRC Research • ACT• Developmental Education Initiative

SESSION OUTLINERole/purpose of placement

testingGeneral issues & definitions

(including attributes, affective domain)

Studies and other resourcesTesting approaches &

alternatives (including diagnostics)

Ideas for Criteria/Principles?

Math Placement Testing Options

• MyMathTest• MAA/Maplesoft Placement Test Suite• Academic Placement Testing Program

(MPT, CRMT)

• Carnegie Learning Cognitive Tutor• Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS)

Concept Test ExampleA jogger runs away from campus at a steady

rate, stops to talk to some friends, runs away from campus for a little longer, and then returns to campus. Which graph below could show the jogger’s distance as a function of time?

Customized State Approaches

http://www.calstate.edu/eap/

CLASS RESULTS

School Instructor Course Test Date Test Type AR50/90

Number of Students: 25

Topic No. of Mastery Class Average Students at Code Items Level Score Percent Mastery

DECM 9 6 4.6 51% 6 24% EQTN 6 4 3.2 53% 11 44% EXPS 5 3 2.7 54% 12 48% FRAC 9 6 4.2 47% 4 16% GEOM 10 7 5.0 50% 7 28% INTG 11 8 7.0 64% 12 48% ---- ---- ------ Total 50 26.7 53%

CALIFORNIA MATHEMATICS DIAGNOSTIC TESTING PROJECT

Accuplacer Diagnostics: Example Report

Transcript Placement Prototype

Joe Montgomery

Readiness, not Remediation (Conley)

From the Acceleration Initiative (3CSN.org)

Recommendations include:

Reconsider assumption that placement score = # of terms remediation

Consider using placement scores to identify students needing extra support in accelerated model rather than tracking into longer sequence

(Katie Hern,

Chabot College)

SESSION OUTLINERole/purpose of placement

testingGeneral issues & definitions

(including attributes, affective domain)

Studies and other resourcesTesting approaches &

alternatives (including diagnostics)

Ideas for Criteria/Principles?

Organizing Principles for Assessment• Coherence The system aligns curriculum, instruction, and assessment around the key learning goals spelled out in the standards for college and career readiness.• Comprehensiveness The system consists of a toolbox of assessments that meet a variety of different purposes and that provide various users with information they need to make decisions.• Accuracy and Credibility The information from assessments supports valid inferences about student progress toward college and career readiness, as well as actionable information for multiple users.• Fairness The assessments enable all students to demonstrate what they know and are able to do.

Robert RothmanAlliance for Excellent Education Policy Brief, 2010

Assessment for Placement (Writing): Placement criteria should be clearly connected to any differences in

the available courses. If scoring systems are used, scores should derive from criteria that grow out of the work of the courses into which students are being placed.

Decision-makers should carefully weigh the educational costs and benefits of various approaches (timed tests, portfolios, directed self placement, etc.) recognizing that the method chosen implicitly influences what students come to believe about writing.

Students should have the right to weigh in on their assessment through directed self-placement, either alone or in combination with other methods.

If for financial or even programmatic reasons the initial method of placement is somewhat reductive, instructors of record should create an opportunity early in the semester to review and change students’ placement assignments, and uniform procedures should be established to facilitate the easy re-placement of improperly placed students.

Placement processes should be continually assessed and revised in accord with course content, overall program goals, shifts in the abilities of the student population, and empirical evidence.

Adapted from Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs) position statement