Higher education systems and institutions across the country are overhauling their traditional placement process for college-level courses in mathematics and revisiting the role of developmental education.

Increasingly, students who would have been required to take, and succeed in, developmental coursework before enrolling in college-level courses are now being placed directly into those courses while also receiving remedial support. This approach — known as developmental corequisite remediation — pairs a college-level course with a corequisite course designed to help students succeed in the college-level work.

In response to the changing landscape, Carnegie Math Pathways (CMP) at WestEd created two new offerings based on this new approach that focus on quantitative reasoning and statistics: Quantway College with Corequisite and Statway College with Corequisite.

In the 2018/19 school year, six higher education institutions offered these courses to students. The courses were delivered by 15 faculty across 21 sections, reaching 410 students. Among these students, 65.1 percent earned the necessary grades to received college-level math credit in a single term.

This report illustrates how these new CMP courses provide an effective alternative to traditional remediation. It does so by

  • examining the experiences of faculty and students across these six institutions;
  • exploring the elements of successful implementation, such as number of contact hours, use of cohort models, and faculty preparedness;
  • and discussing implementation challenges, including managing class time and supporting students with varied levels of reading and of foundational math knowledge.

The brief also provides suggestions for the ongoing enhancement of these course offerings, such as streamlining materials and building mechanisms for faculty support, and it identifies how CMP plans to respond to those suggestions.

For more information about CMP, visit carnegiemathpathways.org.