What developmental math needs: change at scale that endures

Author: Kathleen Almy

Less student engagement.

Wider equity gaps.

Less relevance in content.

More changes in placement.

Higher education already had problems before Covid-19. Now they're worse. Everything that was hobbling along has had its crutches knocked out from underneath it. The inconsistent and inequitable solutions colleges and universities were implementing to improve retention, persistence, and completion are insufficient. Remote learning only made the problems more apparent.

The result: the students who need the most help and have the greatest challenges actually now have it worse. No one wants this to be our reality, but the fact remains that it is.

I'm not a doom and gloom person. I believe in finding solutions and have spent my career finding, implementing, and improving them with the goal of helping more students. My dream for Almy Education has been to improve the college math experience of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of students. Why? Because I want to see students have appropriate math requirements, positive experiences, and ultimately success and completion so that they can have the quality of life they want. This was already an issue. Now it's an undeniable need.

Where do we go from here?

I spent the end of 2020 recuperating from Covid. The good part was that it gave me time to reflect on the mission of my business and the projects we worked on. Because of the pandemic, they were slightly aligned, but not completely. We worked hard in 2020 to address current problems, which were primarily moving to remote instruction. I'm fortunate to have some amazing subject matter experts in all aspects of STEM education including teaching online, hybrid, remote, and flipped classes. We also worked with many Illinois high schools and community colleges to help them implement transitional math.

That's great but it's not enough. The pandemic has made clear how much higher education has to evolve and improve if it's going to stay relevant and worthy of the time and expense spent. No one has extra time or funds for it to not work.

Remote and online learning are not going away. Online education has been a part of higher ed for decades, but it was still a niche delivery method for many colleges and faculty. It's those courses that someone else teaches. Now everyone teaches them. Everyone uses the campus LMS. Zoom is both a noun and a verb.

Students will expect more flexibility to accommodate their work and home lives. Remote learning isn't perfect (no delivery method is) but it has value and can function quite well. It offers options to both students and colleges that didn't exist before. But implementing it on scale shone a light on where resources are lacking or unavailable. It made us all look at our content and assessments. Do they even make sense anymore? Are we teaching any differently than 100 years ago? The economy and life as we know it has changed. So must higher ed.

Changes we're making in 2021

“The economy and life as we know it has changed. So must higher ed.”

One place all these problems appear in is developmental math. It's been an eyesore of higher ed for decades. Equity problems are worse there. Workforce development is even more important than for the traditional-aged student. College programs and protocols are often the worst for the students who need quality and organization the most. It's not for lack of trying. Colleges are trying to improve the student experience and their math programs.

What is not happening is change at scale that endures.

That's why Almy Education is shifting in 2021 to what we do best: helping colleges transform their developmental math approach. Not developmental math programs because some states and schools have done away with remedial programs. But underprepared students are here to stay. Colleges must serve them. And with the changes in placement, more underprepared students will be in college-level classes than before.

We'll still be providing and growing our membership platform, yourSTEM, with its professional development and ready-to-use resources. Both are needed and not just for developmental math. So we will be adding more to yourSTEM to serve more STEM faculty, high school and college, so that we ultimately serve more students.

We're not abandoning the issues we've focused on, like remote instruction and transitional math courses. Math reform, particularly developmental education reform, has tentacles. It touches all kinds of things and places in a college that aren't always expected: other math courses, other disciplines, high school connections, placement and testing, records and admissions, IR and IT, curriculum and instruction, and technical areas. We will still continue to work in the related areas that we have been but with a goal of increasing college readiness and improving college completion.

Developmental math transformation is where our substantial expertise lies. So we are shifting to have a laser focus on it to create the largest impact we can on the problems in higher ed affected by developmental education. We can't fix all of higher ed but we can make your developmental math approach work. When it works, it's like the clog from the drain has been removed. Things just flow more smoothly and easily.

My goal is for Almy Education to help transform the developmental math approaches of 100 colleges. Already I have 12 colleges I will be working with this year. That's the tip of the iceberg. I've worked to find ways to scale my expertise and that of my subject matter experts. If you want to know more, please reach out.

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