The Problem
In the 1960s and 70s, colleges and universities throughout America adopted "open admissions" policies. Anyone who wanted to go to college could.
And shortly thereafter, as institutions began to develop or expand developmental education programs, an odd thing occurred. Developmental education was supported by people on the right and on the left, but for very different reasons. Those on the left saw developmental education as a path to success. Developmental courses would help underprepared students gain the skills they needed to succeed in college.
People on the right worried about open admissions. They worried that institutions would lower their standards because the influx of open admissions students wouldn't be able to measure up to the rigors of college-level courses. These folks were enthusiastic about developmental education because they saw it as a gate to keep students who couldn't do college-level work out of college-level courses.
At the Community College Baltimore County we worried about our developmental program. Was it serving as a pathway to college success or as a gate to "chill students out" so they would give up?
We in the English Department began to gather data on our writing courses, and it didn't look too bad.
Table 1: Success Rate in ENG 052
n=863
Table 2: Success Rate in ENG 101
n = 287
Table 3: Longitudinal Study of Students Who Took ENG 052 in 1988 or 1989
n = 863
ENG 052 is our upper-level developmental writing course. ENG 101 is our first-year composition course.
When we looked at success rates in each of these courses individually, we were generally happy with what we saw. We would have liked a little higher success rate in the developmental writing course, but 57% was not alarming, and the 81% success rate for students who passed developmental writing and took ENG 101 looked very good. Because a grade of C or higher is required for ENG 101 to satisfy the graduation requirement, we define success in that course as a grade of C or higher.
But then we took a closer look and discovered a problem. Looking at one course at a time masks the true picture. When we looked at the entire experience of students who attempted ENG 052 and ENG 101, we saw a picture that was truly alarming.
Table 3 shows the problem. Of the 863 students who took ENG 052 only 33% passed ENG 101 within the four years that we followed them. And almost exactly two thirds dropped out somewhere along the way.
These data answered our original question: for two thirds of our developmental writing students our traditional program was more of a "gate," keeping them from college success than a "path" leading them to it.
This is the problem the ALP program was designed to address. We hoped to increase the success rate and decrease the attrition rate for students placed in ENG 052.