Today, we welcome Andy Rusnak, assistant professor of English and assistant director of Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), to Accelerating Achievement. Andy introduces us to Peter Adams, the founder of CCBC’s ALP program, and invites dev ed skeptics to change the way they think about the whole enterprise—both assumptions about who dev ed students are and assumptions about the best way for those students to make their way to credit-bearing work.
How to think about developmental education? Should it be thought of as a gate, keeping out those not qualified for college work, the gathering convention of many universities? Or, should it be thought of as a pathway to success, the open-door policy of some community colleges that are now implementing more expeditious means to persistence?
One slide in the Community College of Baltimore County’s PowerPoint presentation on the history and success of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) pictures an austere, locked, wrought-iron gate between two Grecian-style columns. The gate protects everyone’s archetypal image of the ivory tower. One can almost envision a “No Trespassing” sign. The next slide is a pristine path through the woods, very promising, the mythological hero journey with ethereal rays of lambent light pointing the way.
ALP Founder and Director Peter Adams contemplated these two competing concepts before laying the foundation for the ALP program and giving it direction. He chose the path metaphor, one that leads directly to our liberally educated sensibilities, our ideas of fairness, and our desire to offer access and upward mobility to what may be economically disadvantaged students.
Makes perfect sense right? To think of developmental education in this way especially at community college? Political ideologues wielding the budget axe might not think so. “Why should we appropriate tax dollars for college-level developmental education?” they might ask. “If a student passes a state-mandated writing test before he or she graduates high school, why aren’t they ready for college-level work?” Their underlying assumptions would post guards at the gates of higher education after sending out hit squads to patrol the wooded paths. But the biggest assumption, that those who need developmental writing, math, and/or reading just graduated high school, turns out to be false. At many community colleges, the median student age is upper twenties. At CCBC it’s 29. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. The politicos might respond by saying, “Well, ok, but why does it take three-to-four semesters, three-to-four levels of developmental classes before a student is even eligible for credited work? This appears to be a self-serving enterprise, designed to enhance revenue, not a pathway to success.”
It might be hard to argue this point. Not to mention how daunting it must look to an aspiring and expeditious student who returns to school after a long absence to improve his or her life. Adams took all this into consideration when he conceived ALP at CCBC. And, I might add, did so in a cost-effective manner. ALP takes eight students who test out via the Accuplacer at developmental levels and places them into a credited freshman composition class with 12 students who passed the Accuplacer. After this English 101 class, the eight students then meet with the same instructor to satisfy developmental writing requirements. Both courses are conducted concurrently and the need for a two semester sequence is eliminated.
From the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008, the Community College Research Center of Columbia University tracked 2,070 of CCBC’s traditional developmental writing students and 104 ALP students. Even though the sample for ALP is much smaller as it was still in a pilot phase, only 40 percent of the traditional, two-semester sequence students went on to pass English 101 the following semester, compared to 75 percent of ALP students who passed English 101 concurrently with their developmental course. CCBC’s own data reflect consistent English 101 pass rates for ALP students, 59 to 66 percent from the 2007 fall semester through spring semester, 2010. In the fall semester of 2006, traditional developmental writers who went on to take and pass English 101 shook out to only 27 percent.
ALP is an intriguing, innovative program. It’s a different animal and requires non-traditional, non-linear logic and approaches. Many community colleges that are now replicating versions of ALP must seek even greater imaginative and critical resources as entrenched cultures and bureaucratic challenges change from state-to-state and even campus-to-campus. Change is hard, but not impossible. At CCBC, administrators and professors involved in ALP oftentimes cite business models that replicate technologies within months to jump start discussions on what factors in community college culture inhibit similar expediency. There is a danger, of course, of institutions of higher learning assuming a strictly business model, but being able to respond quickly to change, to “self-evaluate” and to augment, streamline, or, if necessary, tear down and start over is the sign of a healthy, progressive institution, especially in today’s fast-paced, demanding, mutable climate. It pays to cultivate a proactive ethos, to challenge methods, processes, and systems, to welcome and support idea-generation. There is no “eureka” in sluggish, reactionary organizations.
Adams paints a nervous, good-natured figure. He rolls up his sleeves, projects the value of hard work. He is driven. His eyes dart from side-to-side to meet a world that is obviously a huge question mark. Beneath it all is a strong drive to champion the educational needs of those who may not have enjoyed the economic advantages of those in the upper middle class, but who can make important (maybe the most important) contributions to society. These are the students who fight our wars, fix our brakes, take our X-rays, make our music, and build our aircraft. And through CCBC’s ALP steering committee and inquiry network (ALPIN) the pedagogy most professors embrace is sympathetic to the ever-demanding lifestyles of today’s community college student—work, children, transportation, bills, studying. Sympathetic, but demanding. Principled and ideological, but ideology is not a bad word when it comes to making a better student, and it’s certainly not delusional when one looks at the very pragmatic success Adams has built via ALP. Ideology underlies many of our pedagogical pursuits. We’re fortunate that way. In higher education, more so than in other environments, there are more successful outcomes, more direct and positive results, that come from hard work—a cause and effect formula that adds value and is worth pursuing. For professors and students. Perhaps this is how we all should think about developmental education.
Andy Rusnak is an assistant professor of English and assistant director of the Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County
Tera GoldRift Goldthe educational needs of those who may not have enjoyed the economic advantages of those in the upper middle class, but who can make important (maybe the most important) contributions to society. These are the students who fight our wars, fix our brakes, take our X-rays, make our music, and build our aircraft.
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