Thread by @KatieHernCA

Whew – there is a LOT of misinformation about #ab1705! As a community college prof, I’m frustrated that faculty organizations are opposing the bill. Here’s a thread on why we must support #ab1705 @ASM_Irwin @AsmJoseMedina @AsmStevenChoi68 @ChrisHoldenNews @FrankBigelowCA (1/13)

By ensuring that capable students weren’t trapped in remedial courses, #AB705 dramatically increased student completion of transferable, college-level English and math (2/13)

Overall, students who begin in transfer-level courses are nearly 3x more likely to complete transfer-level English & over 4x more likely to complete transfer-level math (3/13)

Researchers have found that every group examined has higher completion starting in a transfer-level course than in a remedial one, including students often cited as “needing” remedial classes. We can’t identify any group that does better taking a remedial course first (4/13)

This includes Asian, Black, Hispanic, and white students. Students with low, medium, and high GPAs. Students with disabilities. Veterans. Foster youth. Low-income students. STEM students who didn’t complete Algebra 2. All do better starting at transfer level (5/13)

#AB1705 is needed because many colleges are weak implementers of #AB705, devoting substantial resources to remedial courses despite their ineffectiveness. Colleges with 2,000+ Black students are twice as likely to be weak implementers of AB 705 as other colleges (6/13)

#AB1705 clarifies that colleges should not enroll students in classes they’ve already successfully completed. In fall 2019, 44% of first-time math students continued to repeat classes they’d passed in high school (7/13)

#AB1705 corrects a common misinterpretation of #AB705, clarifying that it is not enough for colleges to simply provide *access* to transfer-level courses – we must ensure that students *enroll* in classes where they have the greatest chance of completion (8/13)

This is needed because colleges have continued to actively steer students into remedial courses, presenting them as good options and not informing students that they will be much less likely to make progress on their goals (9/13)

Opponents claim that the law will hurt students by taking away their access to remedial courses. But if research can’t identify a single group of students that benefits from these classes, who are we protecting? (10/13)

Opponents claim that AB 1705 will hurt career-tech education students by forcing them into inappropriate transfer-level classes. This is false. There are exceptions for CTE programs with specific math requirements, as well as programs with no math/English requirements (11/13)

Despite the dramatic completion gains documented by independent researchers, opponents claim that student success has declined under #ab705. This is an especially shady argument based on misleading, incomplete data. I’ll address it in a separate thread (12/13)

Bottom line: We need #AB1705 to ensure that colleges replace broken remedial structures with more effective forms of support, like corequisite models in which students receive extra assistance in transfer-level classes #coreqworks (13/13)