Vern Kays
>Subject: Re: Outsourcing Developmental Programs (fwd)
>
>I read this and thought some of you might have interest in the following
>ramblings....
>
>feel free to reply if you wish - or toss out!!!!
>
>sheryl
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:58:46 -0700
>From: Jon Davidson <jdavidso@SOUCC.SOUTHERN.CC.OH.US>
>Reply-To: COMMCOLL - Two-year College Discussions <COMMCOLL@LSV.UKY.EDU>
>To: Multiple recipients of list COMMCOLL <COMMCOLL@LSV.UKY.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Outsourcing Developmental Programs
>
> Just wondering about the idea of out-sourcing developmental education. Is
>this really a good idea? Bear with me, please, if you have any interest in
>this topic. Otherwise, bail out now--I'm going to ramble a bit.
> How are people placed into remedial/developmental math/writing/reading
>courses? Normally they take a placement test, which, with the exception of
>writing, is invariably a multiple guess timed test. This is because it takes
>no more skill to grade such a test than to feed forms into the hopper on one
>of those grading machines, whatever they're called. (Scan-tron?)
> If I were an entrepreneur seeking to capture this market because the local
>college doesn't want to deal with those troublesome developmental students who
>are expensive to teach and don't always have good retention rates, then I
>would think the path to creating a happy customer (the college) and attracting
>happy clients (the prospective students) would be to do my darndest to make
>sure my clients could pass those multiple guess timed tests to the
>satisfaction of the customer. My only priority would be to prepare my clients
>to be skillful timed test takers who could handle the exact types of questions
>that appear on the college's placement tests. I would drill them into
>submission on how to solve 2x + 7 = x - 4, how to convert 0.058 to a percent,
>how to pick out the grammar mistake in a sentence, and so forth. I'd drill
>them on how to write a paragraph that would pass muster.
> In short, I would teach to the tests.
> Is there a problem with all this? Well, uh . . .
> How did the prospective students who need remedial/developmental courses
>get there? Lots of reasons. I'll speculate that many of the under 25 group
>need developmental education because they were indifferent learners in high
>school. (Many of them freely admit this.) Why were they indifferent? Some
>grew up in a culture that under-values education or even trivializes it. But
>also look at the way many of them were taught in the public schools by
>otherwise wonderful teachers who were too burned out by the system or didn't
>know any better:
> Math is busy work computational drills for no useful purpose.
> Writing is getting the grammar correct and getting a few ideas on paper to
>satisfy the teacher and fill up the page. You only have to be careful about
>spelling and grammar in English class.
> Reading is boring if the stories are too long. Poetry is something you
>have to do; nobody really knows why.
> Science can be entertaining at times, but hard when you got to use math or
>memorize Latin names.
> History is learning dates and people and events.
> Social studies is boring government stuff.
> Sports really matters. Usually the popular folks are the sports jocks.
> So, when I get many of these remedial/developmental students in my classes
>they come in with preconceived notions of what school is and what learning is
>about, and it's usually close enough to my rambling above to be a bit
>frightful. Now why in the world would I want to out-source developmental
>courses to a learning factory that will only reinforce these students'
>perception that school is nothing but a bunch of senseless drills and hoops to
>jump through in order to get that sheepskin employers want to see?
> Furthermore, out-sourced R/D students would now come into my college-level
>classes without a good sense of how to get by in college, how to manage time,
>the importance of adhering to a schedule, the importance of coming to class
>and so on: basic college survival skills.
> Summarizing my concerns, I'd worry that although the out-sourced student
>could pass a multiple-guess timed test (I don't give those, by the way), they
>would have no experience in the independent thinking and problem-solving I and
>my colleagues will force them to do and little idea of the basic college
>survival skills that you build up in taking those R/D classes. I fear they'll
>get blown away walking into my college algebra class, and I won't water the
>course down for them because I do not want to hold back those who really were
>prepared for college-level courses to begin with.
> That said, I fully understand the interest in out-sourcing R/D stuff. To
>administrators who think more like managers than educators, it probably looks
>cheaper. It's close to suicide to run a basic math or developmental writing
>class with more than twenty students. Beginning algebra doesn't work well
>with more than twenty-five or thirty.
> To some faculty I've known in the past, out-sourcing looks good because
>they are too good to teach those low level classes. That's what you hire the
>part-timers for, right? Ugh! The best teachers you got ought to be teaching
>some of those low level classes--that's where you need the best teaching! Any
>math hacker can teach calculus; the students are good enough to take care of
>themselves (compared to the lowly R/D classes).
> In a world according to me, I'd wave my hands and change the culture of
>college education so that those R/D classes would be recognized as very
>important. I'd use them to wean students away from the mechanical rote
>thinking they are accustomed to and to really bring them up to college-level
>speed. These courses would be considered valuable investments instead of
>money drains, and out-sourcing would not be an option.
> Then again, someone will probably write in and contradict me with glowing
>results by Sylvan. Oh well, stuff happens.
> Jon
>
>Jon Davidson
>Mathematics Department
>Southern State Community College
>Hillsboro, Ohio
>jdavidso@soucc.southern.cc.oh.us
>
>
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