Whose Life Are You Pivoting?

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a story about developmental education at the City University of New York’s community colleges. The article is a succinct description of the costs, benefits, and challenges of developmental education instruction. Dr. Gail Mellow, president of La Guardia Community College was interviewed for the article and declared her support for dev ed:

“I embrace developmental education because it pivots lives,” Dr. Mellow said. “If students get an associate’s degree, they can become nurses, making $85,000 a year. If they don’t make it through that developmental class, they’ll barely make minimum wage.”

Developmental education as a pivot point is a powerful image—a lot can turn on the experience students have in your dev ed courses. It can affect whether or not they return the next semester, whether or not they have the skills to be successful in the next class, and even whether or not they decide to become a part of the broader college community. As I thought about what this means for individual students, I couldn’t resist checking out what other readers had to say. As a general rule, I avoid reading comments for online newspaper stories. It usually goes something like this:

“Hear hear! ...oh…but no.”
“This one has it all wrong.”
“How could s/he possibly think that?”
“Where do these people come from?”

… and suddenly I’ve lost 30 minutes of my life. However, this time, I’m glad I took a few minutes because I found this in the comments section:

“I am one of those ‘remedial’ students and take offense to most of the comments here. Glad I didn't listen to all the naysayers and met the educational challenges that remedial math students require. The end result was a degree in biology and a six figure salary (after many more years of climbing the corp ladder). Don't give up on these students. I value everything I learned in college including math. There is hope in community college where none could be found in HS.”

Now, I know s/he’s still a bit cranky, and I know that climbing the ladder to a six-figure salary isn’t realistic for a majority of…well…any group of people, but what’s important is the plea that we don’t give up on these students. I applaud the educators, administrators, and policymakers who are willing to admit what’s not working, who are constantly improving their practices, and who are taking risks to deliver improved instruction to more students. That work can pivot lives in a positive, postsecondary-success, family-sustaining wage, community-building kind of way. And that’s a direction I think we’d all like to be facing.

Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.