Newsom sounds the death knell for remedial classes

Many faculty organizations have spoken out against the bill that puts lower-division students on a fast track to complete transfer-level classes.

By Isaac Dektor, Editor-in-Chief

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed assembly bill 1705 into law last week, a piece of legislation expediting the transfer process for students moving from community colleges to four-year universities by pushing remedial math and English courses further into extinction.

The bill follows up on the mandate of the five year old AB 705, which gave colleges until 2019 to tighten the criteria for students eligibility to enroll in pre-transfer level courses. Proponents of the new bill believe that requiring more students to be enrolled directly into transfer level math and English classes in their first year will accelerate the rate at which students complete degrees and move on to four-year universities. AB 1705 will severely impact the number of remedial courses being offered at the state’s community colleges starting next summer, as schools will be required to enroll all U.S. high school graduates directly into transfer-level English and math with few exceptions.

“I am concerned about the freedom of students being able to choose pre-transfer level math and English courses, as colleges will now be required to archive these classes,” said Holly Batty, Valley’s English department chair. “Though Valley would not require students to take these courses, I believe students should still have the option.”

In the three years since the implementation of AB 705, the throughput rate of transfer level English and math in the first year doubled.

“It was not AB 705. The biggest factor was COVID,” said Valley College math department chair Mostaha Barakat. “Students switched from in-person to Zoom and instructors had to be super flexible with everything. That is the biggest factor why the success rate shot up – because of the flexibility and the resources that the students had available to them when they were studying online and taking exams online.”

While many faculty organizations, including the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, oppose the latest crackdown on remedial classes, there is little support for returning to the pre-AB 705 standards.

“In defense of AB-705 — AB-705 is not bad,” said Barakat. “Students had to stay in college for two years before they made it to transfer level. That’s not fair to the student, that's not fair to anybody. We had to expedite things and get student throughput up in transfer level.”

The legislation also requires that the Chancellor of California Community Colleges publish data online in order to publicly track any effects on student completion in math and English courses.

K-12 student success in math and English declined throughout the pandemic, with six percent less students meeting the state’s standard for math from 2018-19 to 2020-21.

“Some students do need pretransfer level,” said Barakat. “Some students do not need pretransfer level. Students who do not need pretransfer level should go in transfer level right away. For the students who do need pretransfer level, and there’s a good quantity, we should keep offering that as an option.”