Part 3 of Degrees of Freedom hits home run with education media

I'm still hearing from people about the third report in Degrees of Freedom, which highlights how math placement exams designed to help students get to first base may be stalling some of them in remedial math courses they don't need. Check out my Huffington Post piece as well as the San Francisco Chronicle op-ed I wrote with Long Beach City College President Eloy Oakley. Why all the media interest? Here's one editor's comment: “I saw this in my own family — a crazy repeat of classes that seemed to be more focused on keeping community college teachers employed than tuning up faulty understanding of math.”

There’s more fodder for the editors today: My friends at Jobs for the Future and the Dana Center are out with a new “call to action” about math placement policies. Their recommendations for national reforms resonate with those in my Degrees of Freedom: Probing Math Placement Policies at California Colleges and Universities.