Adding It Up

In yesterday’s Community College Week, Paul Bradley’s cover story was all about developmental math. Bradley highlights a number of Achieving the Dream colleges that are working hard to solve the developmental math puzzle—and seeing promising results. Of particular interest is the description of the Montgomery County Community College redesign of the lowest-level developmental math course curriculum. Rather than the traditional topical approach to arithmetic instruction, MCCC’s new course, “Concepts of Numbers,” begins with an introduction to the history of math; students then focus more on understanding concepts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), rather than memorizing and doing drills (the dreaded “plug and chug!”) Students solve problems together—and they’re succeeding at much higher rates. In spring 2010, seven faculty taught the new course; their students’ success rate was 60 percent, compared with 40 percent in the traditional course. This year at MCCC all introductory courses are using the new curriculum. While there are still challenges, like aligning the new curriculum with subsequent courses, it looks like this new approach to instruction is going to stick at MCCC.