College is too late to learn how to multiply fractions

Years ago, I mentored a girl who got into two University of California campuses, because her grades made her one of the top graduates of her high school. She chose community college. Despite a B in AP English, she didn't think she was prepared for college writing. (She was correct.) She worried about math too, despite an A in Algebra II/Trig. "We never had a real teacher, just a sub," she said. "She didn't teach us. She just yelled at us for being bad." She signed up for pre-calc senior year, but it was canceled because the school couldn't find a math teacher.

Colleges should admit students who aren't prepared for college math, place them in college-level classes and provide extra help to enable them to succeed, argues Shakiyya Bland of Just Equations.

Many "underprepared" students are capable of doing well, but went to high schools that didn't have qualified teachers teaching advanced math classes, Bland argues. She imagines "a first-generation student who graduates near the top of her class" from a school that offers no math beyond Algebra II, taught by a long-term substitute. The student scores below the cutoff on the university's math placement exam and "is routed into non-credit remedial coursework that she may have to pay for out of pocket," writes Bland. Discouraged by her lack of progress and low on financial aid, the student quits without a degree.

By contrast, the University System of Georgia's "corequisite" model places low-scoring students "directly into college-level courses while providing just-in-time support through labs, tutoring and aligned instruction." More students are passing gateway courses, Bland writes.

Many community colleges and universities have dropped remedial classes in favor of this model. It works for students who are close to the college level, researchers conclude. That is, it works better than placement in remedial classes, which has a very low success rate.

But starting students in college-level classes doesn't work for students who are far from being ready. Remediation doesn't work either. Nothing does. I know from my days writing about community colleges that students who don't have solid middle-school math skills have very little chance of success in academic or vocational programs.

University of California professors complain they have to teach middle-school math skills in classes designed to prepare students for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields. UC is "test blind." Students who think they're prepared, because they got inflated grades, are hitting the wall in college, wasting time and money trying to learn what they should have learned in elementary, middle and high school.

It's not students' fault that the math teacher was a substitute who majored in psychology and thinks the Pythagorean Theorem is racist. Or maybe the third-grade teacher wanted students to discover multiplication for themselves, and they didn't. The problem is that they were passed along without learning what they needed for the next level and they were lied to about how well they were doing. That problem needs to be fixed in elementary, middle and high school.

My mentee worried that she wasn't prepared for community college math or English. I offered to stay in touch via e-mail, but she declined. I don't think I was much help to her. It was too late.