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Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

latimes.com

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Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#61

Post by Clubber »

justin_vanw wrote: post #55
Clubber wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now, are you saying we shouldn't let bright kids from bad schools get into college? Show me where I implied that.

I was just using your technique of putting words in someone else's mouth, with a question mark at the end. See GP post.

Apparently you were the only person in this thread who couldn't see the implication.

>how else are we going to get an adequately diverse student body? (without remedial classes).

I didn't have to put words into his mouth, you did. I guess you're just intellectually diverse. See what I implied there? Maybe you didn't.

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#62

Post by thaumasiotes »

pirocks wrote: post #10
oh_sigh wrote: post #2

"At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees." This is crazy to me. I'm not familiar with Cal State but do they just let anyone in who applies?

Not all cal states are created equal. Many are effectively glorified community colleges(not necessarily a bad thing) , while others (like calpoly slo) are excellent universities. Source:was recently a California high school student

Cal Poly SLO shouldn't be used as an example of the CSU system; it is technically considered a CSU but is exempt from the admissions process that every other CSU campus is required to use. Cal Poly SLO can indeed be described as more or less an excellent university; no other CSU can.

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#63

Post by wfunction »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #54
userbinator wrote: post #19

The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system's priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025. The implicit message here seems to be, "let everyone pass through the system regardless of how qualified they actually are, but we'll have to lower the bar to keep grades and graduation rates…

As far as I can tell from the article the goal is to reduce the number of classes the students need to graduate. They are not say that that graduates will not meet the graduation requirements for math and english but that they have better ways to get them to learn what they need to learn to graduate. I have no doubt that every extra class that a student needs to take makes it less likely that he/she will graduate. It…

I don't know about you but the last time I saw a class take on extra teaching load to help students "catch up" and not sacrifice on other teaching goals was... never. You seem unrealistically hopeful that things are going to work out the way they claim.

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#66

Post by yeukhon »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #54
userbinator wrote: post #19

The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system's priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025. The implicit message here seems to be, "let everyone pass through the system regardless of how qualified they actually are, but we'll have to lower the bar to keep grades and graduation rates…

As far as I can tell from the article the goal is to reduce the number of classes the students need to graduate. They are not say that that graduates will not meet the graduation requirements for math and english but that they have better ways to get them to learn what they need to learn to graduate. I have no doubt that every extra class that a student needs to take makes it less likely that he/she will graduate. It…

But then the change contradicts your statment that the purpose "is to reduce the number of classes the students need to graduate" because if a student readiness for Math and English are low, then it doesn't make sense for them to move ahead.

I agree with your final point. I also believe if the current mandate is to ensure students are prepared for upper course load, then at least the entry to admission perhaps need to be increased? Or at least offer a free one-semester remdial class. If someone is not ready to do a "2x+3=6" then high school education failed to do its job and allowing the student going into a college knowing every college requires some math class to graduate (pre-calc, or as calculus+), only do more harm.

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#67

Post by thaumasiotes »

oh_sigh wrote: post #2

"At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees." This is crazy to me. I'm not familiar with Cal State but do they just let anyone in who applies?

> I'm not familiar with Cal State but do they just let anyone in who applies?

No, Cal State is the 2nd of three public college tiers defined by California law. (Top is the UC system, bottom is the community college system, which will indeed let in anyone who applies.)

CSUs, except for Cal Poly SLO, admit on a quota-by-major system, scoring all applicants objectively and taking the top $quota who applied in each major with a score above the minimum admittance threshold. Some majors at particular campuses, and some entire campuses, are considered "impacted", which means they get enough applicants that you're unlikely to be admitted with a score near the minimum threshold. The converse of this is that if you're above the minimum threshold, and you apply to a non-impacted campus, you'll be admitted. If your school gave you As, you'll beat the threshold without any inquiry into the quality of your school, or whether it was possible to receive grades lower than A.

Here's CSU San Jose's policy (they're impacted):

> To be considered for admission, graduates of California high schools or residents of California, as defined for tuition purposes, must have a minimum eligibility index of 2950 using the redesigned SAT or 694 using the ACT. The minimum eligibility index for nonresidents of California is 3570 using the redesigned SAT or 842 using the ACT. The CSU eligibility index is calculated by using either the SAT or ACT as follows:

> SAT (sum of scores in mathematics and critical reading) + (800 x high school grade point average)

> -or-

> (10 x ACT composite score without the writing score) + (200 x high school grade point average)

( http://info.sjsu.edu/web-dbgen/narr/static/admission/freshma... )

Obviously, this scoring system is massively biased in favor of GPA over test scores (if you were running a college, would you rather admit someone with a 4.0 GPA and an 800 total SAT score, or someone with a 3.0 and a 1600?), which does a lot to explain why the caliber of students in CSUs is so low. I found it interesting, when I was looking into this a few years ago, that CSU San Francisco was impacted in their "social work" "major", but not in computer science.

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#68

Post by kerpele »

Unless the point is to have more people in regardless of whether they have any possibility to graduate I don't understand this. How many highly talented kids have already been lost just because they didn't know what they wanted in life at 15 and thus have much lower high school grades and sat scores and whatnot than what they are actually capable of?

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#69

Post by scruple »

oh_sigh wrote: post #2

"At Cal State, about 40% of freshmen each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees." This is crazy to me. I'm not familiar with Cal State but do they just let anyone in who applies?

A co-worker has his CS degree from CSU Long Beach. I mentioned this to him the other day when I saw it elsewhere. He said, "it was basically high school when I was there and that was a decade ago."

Re: Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams

#70

Post by lambdaphagy »

oculusthrift wrote: post #44
lambdaphagy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most directly, Ed. But now that you mention it, Justice is a close second.

jeff sessions justice department?

I'm commenting on trends that have persisted over administrations, and certainly accelerated under the last one. I don't pretend to know what's going on with this one, except to note that the career staff of many agencies are in semi-open revolt.
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