Modernizing College Course Placement by Using Multiple Measures

 
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Community colleges and open-access, four-year colleges admit nearly everyone who applies and enroll students with a wide range of skills. Many of these colleges run developmental education programs for students who they determine are underprepared for college-level courses. More than two-thirds of community college students are assigned to developmental courses — sometimes for several semesters. 

Colleges have traditionally placed students into developmental or college-level courses based on their performance on standardized math and English tests. Research, however, shows that these placement tests are poor predictors of student grades in college-level math and English courses, resulting in inappropriate placements for as many as a third of test-takers. Most of the misplaced students are assigned to developmental courses that are below their ability level and whose credits do not count toward a degree, creating an unnecessary hurdle on their path to graduation and potentially blocking their progress altogether. 

 Studies have found that alternative measures — particularly high school GPA, which captures both academic strengths and relevant nonacademic characteristics like motivation — offer substantially better predictions of which students will succeed in college-level courses.3Combining high school GPA with other measures — including state graduation tests, SAT or ACT scores, writing assessments, high school transcript information, years since high school graduation and noncognitive assessments — yields more predictive power, according to the studies. 

This approach, often called multiple measures placement, is gaining traction at colleges across the country: More than half of community colleges now use measures besides tests to place students into developmental or college-level courses.

 More than half of public, two-year colleges now use measures other than standardized placement tests — often high school GPA — to determine whether students need developmental math and English courses.Research shows that students assessed using multiple measures are more likely to be assigned to and pass college-level courses than students assessed using standardized tests alone.

A growing number of states — including California, Minnesota and North Carolina— are establishing policies mandating the use of multiple measures for course placement. 

Preliminary research on multiple measures placement systems suggests they enable colleges to make more accurate decisions about which students need developmental education. As a result, more students are being assigned to college-level math and English, passing those courses and moving ahead with their programs of study more quickly — saving time and tuition money in the process.