Last semester I ran into my colleague, Dr. White.  He mentioned that he thought he had a lot of my students in his class.  Pleased to hear this, and interested to know how my name had come up in his class, I asked Dr. White what gave him that idea.  He replied that he assumed he had a lot of developmental students in his class because so many students had missed an easy question on his last exam. 

Several years ago, when I first began teaching, Dr. Brown was a mentor and good friend to me.  One day he told me that I should expect that students exiting my developmental math program would probably earn no higher than a “C” in his college-level courses.   Later, we were talking again, and he commented on the impressive performance of his best calculus student.  He was surprised to learn that this student had taken developmental math with me.  

Last year, Dr. Green, an English faculty member, noted that a number of her students wrote poorly.  She submitted a list of these poor performers to my developmental English colleague so that my colleague would be aware that students exiting the developmental English program were not performing well.  My colleague looked at the list submitted to her by Dr. Green.  Not a single student on that list had placed into developmental English courses.

 

How Are Developmental Programs Perceived? 

Story after story just like these could be recounted where students in a developmental studies program were maligned or stereotyped.  Such encounters leave developmental educators wondering why their colleagues teaching college-level courses have such a skewed perception of developmental students.  It’s as if the college-level faculty believe a developmental educator’s role on campus is to look after a room full of academic underachievers who have been deluded into thinking they could earn a college degree.  Faculty who don’t teach developmental courses seem to perceive a developmental educator as a martyr on campus, one who must skillfully break the news to weak-minded, unmotivated students that they don’t belong in college. 

Based on literature involving developmental education, these skewed perceptions are mirrored throughout academe.  Pockets of individuals on college campuses contend that ideas like an open-door policy dumb down curricula and lower standards.  Such individuals believe that developmental education should not be a part of the collegiate system.   California State University put a plan in place to reduce the number of developmental education classes by 90 percent by 2007 in order to create needed space for the “truly deserving” (Damashek, 1999).  All around college campuses, students in remedial or developmental courses are not perceived as college material.  Hull, et al (1991) examined remediation as a social construct and illustrated how inaccurate and limiting notions of developmental learners as “cognitively defective” are sometimes created and played out in the classroom.  She traced a long and troubling history in American education of perceiving academic failure as deficits of character or worth.   Casazza (1999) states that, historically, words like remedial, underprepared, and developmental often have a highly negative connotation.  The term remedial is the most commonly used and implies that the function of developmental programs is to fix or correct a deficit.  These distorted perceptions of developmental education often result from simple ignorance.  Faculty members who are not directly involved in developmental education often do not fully understand the nature and purpose of developmental education programs.  Pitts and White (1996) interviewed fourteen faculty members at two southern universities to determine faculty perceptions of student underpreparedness.  Concerning the role of developmental education, Pitts and White noted that respondents “generally exhibited a mood of skepticism in regard to the effectiveness of remedial programs and, aside from the remedial aspect of the field of developmental education, there was a notable lack of awareness of its broader purposes and goals.”

So, why do educators outside of developmental areas have such limited perceptions of the purpose and goal of developmental education and of the population of students that are served?  McCabe (2001) states, “Few education programs are more misunderstood and less appreciated than community college developmental education.”  He urges developmental programs to better inform and educate their college community regarding their role, its effectiveness, and its contribution to the institution, the workforce, and the community. 

Pitts and White (1996) indicated that their study revealed little evidence of meaningful interaction of college-level faculty with developmental educators.  Their “findings suggest that there was a failure to capitalize on developmental education as a specialized field which could aid faculty members in their efforts to reach students who were academically underprepared.”

At Patrick Henry Community College, where research for this article was conducted, the developmental studies program has a centralized organizational structure with teaching faculty and academic support services housed in the same unit.  This centralized structure, established in 1992, used research from the National Center for Developmental Education as a guide and has served the program well – allowing greater access to support services and a unified purpose.  In fact, the developmental studies program credits much of its overall success to this structure.  However, despite constant work by developmental faculty and staff to integrate its activities into the organizational mainstream, and an extensive presence by developmental faculty and staff on college committees and teams, the work of the developmental studies program is still misunderstood by many on campus. 

Why Should People Care about Developmental Education?

In Oudenhoven’s article (2002) about pressing issues in remediation at community colleges, she examined several significant studies of remediation and remarked that “as a result of this increased study and scrutiny, many educators and researchers have reached the conclusion that remediation is one of the most important and most pressing educational, social, and economic issues in the United States today.” Although much of what developmental educators do dramatically impacts the college and the community, very few individuals on campus take interest.  Most are busy with their own jobs.  They prioritize other issues.  They follow more glamorous or “respectable” disciplines.  The following statistics illustrate how developmental education is an important issue for everyone.

·         100% of community colleges offer remediation (Oudenhoven, 2002).

·         41% of community college freshmen enroll in at least one precollegiate course (Oudenhoven, 2002).

·         38% of students coming to college need developmental English, 44% need math, and 34% need reading (Damashek, 1999).

·         Only 64% of youth earn a standard high school diploma (McCabe, 2001).

·         Approximately half of academically deficient students successfully complete remediation.  Those who succeed do as well in standard college classes as those who began without deficiencies  (McCabe, 2001).

·         Ten years after beginning developmental courses, 98% (of these students) are employed and 90% are in above-minimal-level jobs.  Nearly two-thirds are in new technical and office careers  (McCabe, 2001). 

 The Mission

As I sat in a developmental studies staff meeting one day at the end of the spring semester 2001, my colleagues and I lamented how no one outside our department seemed to know that there were wonderful, interesting, smart, motivated students taking developmental courses.  Despite all of the great things our program was accomplishing, there continued to be a misconception that highly motivated, academically strong students never come from developmental studies.  We knew that developmental students were quietly excelling all over campus, but no one seemed to notice.  Perhaps our students were excelling a little too quietly. 

That gave me an idea:  Why not tell everyone on my campus about our successes? I knew how wonderful and significant my students were.  I just needed to inform and educate my college-level peers about their significance.   I knew that there would always be those who would cling to the myth that developmental students were sub-par to their non-developmental counterparts, but if I were able to gather enough objective data, perhaps I could dispel the myth for some (and shut the mouths, if not change the minds, of others).

            So I set out on a mission:  to collect as much data regarding measures of success on my campus as I could and investigate how many of these successes were attained by students who had taken developmental courses.  I would compare the data I collected to the perceptions of my peers to see where their views agreed and differed from real results.  I would then share my findings throughout the college community so that everyone would finally know that many of the wonderful, interesting, smart, motivated students at my institution came through the developmental studies program. 

I requested the following data, separated by developmental versus non-developmental students, for use in my mission:

·         Retention rates of students

·         Graduation rates of students

·         Honors graduates

·         Success rates in college-level courses

·         Honorees for Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges

In addition, non-developmental faculty were asked to submit the names of five or more students from their spring 2001 rolls whom they considered to be their greatest success stories.  (These names were obtained under the guise of someone unaffiliated with developmental studies in order to ensure that the submissions were not skewed for or against developmental).  Also, all non-developmental faculty completed a survey regarding their perceptions of the performance of students exiting the developmental program.

Results

In all categories, developmental students performed at levels comparable to or beyond that of their non-developmental counterparts.  These results did not surprise anyone on the developmental staff, but some of the data surprised the non-developmental faculty.  Following is a summary of these results, along with information regarding survey responses from non-developmental faculty about their perceptions of how the data would turn out. 

Retention

Developmental students were retained at a level higher than non-developmental students.  Two cohorts of students were tracked: those representing students enrolled at the institution in fall 1998 and fall 1999.  The cohorts were then divided into two groups.  One group was identified as developmental, meaning that they were taking a developmental course that semester or had taken a developmental course in a previous semester.  The other group represented students who had never taken a developmental course.  For both cohorts, the trend showed that developmental students were retained at a higher rate than non-developmental students (See Table I). 

Table I:  RetentionTracking:  Non-Developmental and Developmental Students Fall 1998 Cohort
Group	Fall 1998		Spring 1999		Fall 1999		Spring 2000		Fall 2000
	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%
Non-Devel.	1928	100	981	50.9	640	33.2	465	24.1	298	15.4
Developmental	1086	100	784	72.2	578	53.2	503	46.3	359	33.1
Total	3014	100	1765	58.6	1218	40.4	968	32.1	657	21.8

  

 

Table I:  RetentionTracking:  Non-Developmental and Developmental Students Fall 1999 Cohort
Group	Fall 1999		Spring 2000		Fall 2000		Spring 2001		Fall 2001		Spring 2002
	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%
Non-Devel.	2144	100	932	43.5	586	27.3	484	22.6	358	16.7	219	10.2
Developmental	1180	100	862	73.1	637	54.0	548	46.4	388	32.9	347	29.4
Total	3324	100	1794	54.0	1223	36.8	1032	31.0	746	22.4	566	17.0

 

When asked about retention on their perception survey, only 22 percent of faculty respondents believed that developmental students were retained at a rate higher than non-developmental students.  Another 22 percent believed that they were retained at a lower rate, and 56 percent believed they were about the same.  When asked if they believed that a student who had taken developmental courses would be more or less likely to drop out of school, 36 percent thought developmental students would be more likely to drop out, 28 percent thought they would be less likely to drop out, and 36 percent thought they would be neither more nor less likely to drop out.

The perceptions of non-developmental faculty are quite different from the actual results for this item.  In both questions regarding retention, very few faculty thought developmental students were retained at a rate higher than non-developmental students.  In discussion of the data, the college’s Assessment Coordinator said that the trend for higher retention of developmental students has existed for many years at this institution.  Yet, few people outside of developmental studies knew this.

Graduation

There was no statistical difference between the graduation rates of students who placed into developmental courses and that of non-developmental students.  In addition, there was no statistical difference between the grade point average (GPA) of developmental students at graduation and those of non-developmental students at graduation.  To make these comparisons, the cohorts examined were first-time, full-time, program-placed students separated into developmental and non-developmental groups.  There were three cohorts representing academic years for 97/98, 98/99, ad 99/00.  For all cohorts, there was no statistical difference in the graduation rates or GPAs of developmental versus non-developmental students (See Table II).

 

In another examination, it was noted that 48 percent of the honors graduates at the college (combined graduates for 2000 and 2001) took developmental courses (See Table III). 

 

According to the perception survey, 65 percent of respondents believed that graduates who took developmental courses had about the same GPAs as graduates who were non-developmental.  Regarding honors graduates, 64 percent of respondents believed that fewer than 45 percent of the college’s honors graduates were developmental.  Only 22 percent of respondents believed that between 45 percent and 55 percent of the honors graduates were developmental.

It was interesting to note that although respondents generally thought that there was no difference in the GPAs of developmental versus non-developmental graduates, when asked about honors graduates, whose designation is based upon GPA, respondents generally thought that fewer developmental students would be given the honors distinction.  

College-level Course Success

There was no statistical difference between the success rates of students enrolled in college-level courses who successfully completed the required developmental prerequisites and that of non-developmental students.  Four college-level math courses and one college-level English course were examined, all with developmental prerequisites.  Because the school has mandatory testing and mandatory placement, students either place directly into their college-level course based upon their placement test score, or they take (and pass) the appropriate developmental prerequisite.  Students were enrolled in these courses for semesters fall 1999 through fall 2001.

These groups of students were separated into three categories: (1) students who never took the appropriate developmental prerequisite for the college-level course, (2) students who took and passed the appropriate developmental prerequisite for the college-level course, and (3) students who took the developmental prerequisite before college-level, but did not pass it.  The third category of students represented a very small number for each of the comparisons and was excluded from the study.  According to the statistical comparison, for all college-level courses, there was no statistical difference in the mean GPA earned by students in their college-level course for students in category (2) versus category (1)  (See Table IV for an example of one of the courses examined).