State education leaders say it’s time to tackle a troublesome trend: too many of Washington’s high school graduates have to take remedial math in college.
Half of the high school graduates entering community college in 2002 needed to take pre-college math their first year. Dan Bates / The Herald
“It is an alarmingly high percentage,” said Brian Jeffries, who works on curriculum issues for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The problem is less acute at the state’s four-year public colleges and universities. In 2002, 9 percent of incoming students had to take a pre-college math course.
“It’s a bigger issue than just the community college and the school district can work on,” said Ken Limon, an assistant superintendent in the Edmonds School District. “It really has a lot to do with our belief in mathematics – whether people believe it’s important or not.”
Limon and a member of the Edmonds Community College administration, will be in Olympia today to talk to state lawmakers about the often rocky transition into college and what their institutions are doing to smooth the way. On Thursday, the state Board of Community and Technical Colleges met in Seattle on the same issue.
Earlier this year, the Legislature found that insufficient progress had been made in reducing the number of high school graduates who must take remedial college math. It allocated $300,000, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation added $430,000, to look for answers.
The result is the Transition Mathematics Project, an effort to identify math skills that high school graduates need to succeed in entry-level college math. The project has brought together dozens of high school math teachers and college instructors.
“There is a real dichotomy and outlook we are tying to figure out how to resolve,” said Al Friedman, dean of math and sciences at Everett Community College.
Math experts have identified several barriers, including:
* High school and college math teachers seldom discuss their differing expectations.
* High school math teachers are often driven by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, which will become a graduation requirement in 2008. College entrance exams stress different math skills.
* The state requires two years of math to graduate from high school. Many students stop taking math their junior year, and their skills get rusty.
A proposal to require a third year of math to graduate from high school could come up again, said Bill Moore, coordinator of assessment, learning and teaching for the state community college board.
“I think it’s something that definitely needs to be on the table,” he said.
“Too many students … choose to take two years of not very rigorous math, and they need to take three years of rigorous math in order to be prepared for college,” Friedman said.
What many students not planning on college don’t understand is that they also need three years of high school math to be successful in apprenticeships while learning a trade, said Al Link, a member of the state community college board.
Recommendations from the math project include drafting refresher math courses for high school seniors and new college math standards. Also suggested are smaller class sizes and counselors encouraging students to take more math before graduating.
| Math cutoff
Educators regard students as ready for college-level math after they have successfully completed intermediate algebra. |
Kim Verver, a Lynnwood High School math teacher, tells students who want to take the minimum amount of math that they can take it in high school for free or pay for it in college. She also levels with them. “I say, ‘Math is hard, and life is hard,’ ” she said.
An afternoon math study club at the school offers help. On average, one in 24 students attend every day. About two-thirds of them show up voluntarily.
Vinicius Oliveira, 16, a sophomore from Brazil, said math was required through high school in his home country.
“I want to go to college,” he said. “Colleges are looking at if you took math or not. I will continue taking it.”
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