SUNY redesigns math, English to cut failure rate: Tutoring is mandatory
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 21
- 2 min read
Twenty-five percent of first-year students fail math at State University of New York campuses; 22 percent fail English. To help poorly prepared students, SUNY is redesigning gateway classes, reports Kathleen Moore in the Times-Union.
SUNY's University of Albany, where the average GPA of admitted students is 3.7, is paying students who did well in the Writing and Critical Inquiry class to sit through it again to model "normalized college behavior" to freshman, said JoAnne Malatesta, dean for undergraduate education. The peer mentor encourages students to use the instructor's office hours and the tutoring center.
For the last two years, Albany has paid undergraduates to run 90-minute "supplemental instruction" sessions for all of the introductory math and science classes, Moore writes. First-year students are assigned a session and expected to attend. Students who actually went to the extra classes had “significant gains,” Malatesta said.
Starting this fall, some students will be required to participate in weekly, hourlong, one-on-one tutoring in writing. The tutors also are undergraduates. I assume that's the only way to make the tutoring affordable.
Community colleges are adapting too. Hudson Valley Community College redesigned its entry-level English class last fall. "Enhanced English Comprehension 1 is capped at no more than 15 students per section," Moore writes. "Teachers oversee the students while they write for two hours a week, in addition to two hours of class time. The students must also meet one-on-one with the instructor every few weeks."
Supervising students' writing makes the difference, said Tony Podlaski, the department chair. “Are they developing an effective thesis statement? We can offer feedback right on the spot.” And they can't use AI.
More than 20 years ago, HVCC created Math 150 to teach “all the math they should have had in high school,” said Linda Lim, who chairs the math and computer science department. “If a student is going on to any of the STEM fields, if they’re a little weak in the algebra, we encourage them to take it,” she said.
After the pandemic school disruptions, would-be STEM students arrived knowing even less math, she said. There isn't much for instructors to build on. So the community college is limiting the number of students in each class section, and adding another hour per week of class time.
Specialists will come into each Math 150 class to teach "note-taking, effective study techniques and time management." If it works, says Lim, "we’ll look at doing that with other courses as well.”
To their credit, both University of Albany and HVCC are trying to provide more instruction, rather than just lowering expectations. But shouldn't most of this happen in high school -- not college?
Some context: The newspaper which published this, the Albany Times Union posted this to their facebook page. Nearly every comment said, why didn't the high schools take care of their role? Having inside knowledge of one of the schools mentioned, something doesn't make sense. Math 150 is not the lowest math class at HVCC. I feel like this article was written with a focus on students not succeeding in STEM fields and the author didn't make this point clear to the reader. ... To segway, I'd argue that better teaching needs to occur everywhere. Here's one option: (PDF) Design and Effectiveness of Modeling-Based Mathematics in a Summer Bridge Program
My department has long offered voluntary supplemental instruction with undergraduate tutors for one of our harder subjects, and in general, the results are positive. There is a resource issue, however: about half the students who attend supplemental don't need it. The ones who need it the most usually won't attend.
These competencies should have been learned in junior high school: if the pupils weren't proficient in these basic skills, they should have been advised to transition into vocational education & training, rather than having extra taxpayer resources spent on youth unlikely to repay the investment, in a higher education system that needs to shrink, as other post-secondary options expand.
If these things aren't caught and fixed early in elementary school, they become nearly insurmountable for middle and high school. Those schools are not given extra time and resources to deal with problems they never should have been given.
"But shouldn't most of this happen in high school -- not college?"
Ding, ding, ding--we have a winner!
Then again, when the entirety of the public K-12 system exists primarily to support the local political patronage system ("Don't know much about history, Don't know much biology
Don't know much about science book, Don't know much about the French I took..."--why, there might just be an educational staff or administrative job for you!) and secondarily to support the Athletics Industrial Complex, you need to lower your expectations.