UIC Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative

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Vol. 2, Book 2

June 2013

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Toward Reforming Non-Credit-Bearing Remedial Mathematics Courses in Four-Year Universities

By Gregory V. Larnell

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gregory V. Larnell is an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Instruction department in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Over the past several decades, there has been a considerable increase in enrollments in noncredit-bearing remedial (NCBR) mathematics courses in both twoand four-year colleges and universities. These courses represent an important experience for many students entering college proponents view these courses as critical for helping students who are unprepared for college mathematics courses make a successful transition from high school to higher education. These courses also serve two central higher-education policy objectives: mission differentiation and institutional access for students from underrepresented racial groups. However, recent scholarship indicates that Blackand Latina/o-identified students are continually overrepresented in NCBR mathematics courses. Moreover, such research reveals that these courses have negative

effects on students mathematics learning experiences and threatening psychosocial impacts on students. NCBR courses, particularly in four-year universities, accordingly should be improved in two primary ways: (1) The curriculum of NCBR mathematics courses should be aligned with contemporary practices in mathematics education at large, and (2) Higher education institutions should take the shift to developmental courses seriously and coordinate institutional support services (compensatory education) with NCBR mathematics courses.

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INTRODUCTION
Over the past several decades, there has been a considerable increase in enrollments in non-credit-bearing remedial (NCBR) mathematics courses in both two- and four-year colleges and universities. These courses represent a crucially consequential experience for many students entering college proponents view these courses as critical for helping students who are unprepared for college mathematics courses make successful transitions from high school to postsecondary education. However, recent scholarship has clearly indicated that Black- and Latina/o-identified students are continually overrepresented in NCBR mathematics courses.1 The importance and relevance of the broader issue can hardly be overstated. As Astin stated: Let me begin by asserting what may seem like a radical proposition: The education of the remedial student is the most important educational problem in America today, more important than educational funding, affirmative action, vouchers, merit pay, teacher education, financial aid, curriculum reform, and the rest. Providing effective remedial education would do more to alleviate our most important social and economic problems than most
1

any other action we could take.2 While many have pointed to K-12 educational systems as the primary driver of the proliferation of NCBR courses, there has been very little attention to the ways that postsecondary institutions themselves participate in this enterprise. Moreover, the influence of these courses on students academic learning experiences has been remarkably absent in higher education policy. This brief accordingly considers the following questions: What are the purposes of NCBR courses in mathematics? What is the role(s) of these courses within higher education policy and four-year higher education institutions in particular? Do NCBR mathematics courses work (and what does it mean for them to do so)? For whom are these courses working or not working? What influence do NCBR mathematics courses have on the students who are required to experience them? The primary focus of this brief therefore is to review the research on NCBR mathematics courses and the higher education policy environment in which it is situated. In doing so, the brief aims to incorporate new and emerging evidence of the effects of these courses on students learning experiences. Given the higher education policies at play, the function and scale of NCBR mathematics courses are explored,

with particular attention to the worryingly and disproportionately high enrollments of African American and Latina/o students in these courses in recent decades. In doing so, this brief also discusses the influence of NCBR mathematics courses on students mathematics learning experiences and the threatening psychosocial impact of these courses on students. Lastly, recommendations are offered based on contemporary research and commentary.

WHAT ARE NCBR MATHEMATICS COURSES?

Non-credit-bearing remedial mathematics courses are offered in four-year universities to provide beginning college students with another chance to learn (or relearn) the mathematics supposedly taught to them in high school.3 This motive has engendered considerable controversy among a diverse assembly of direct and indirect stakeholders (e.g., educators, administrators, economists, sociologists, legislators). On the one hand, NCBR mathematics courses are indispensable tools for equalizing access to postsecondary institutions. On the other hand, the credits for these courses are nonadditive;4 that is, while students are required to enroll, pay for, and successfully pass NCBR courses in order to proceed to credit-bearing

2 3 4

See: Paul A. Attewell, David E. Lavin, Domina Thurston, and Tania Levey, New Evidence on College Remediation, The Journal of Higher Education 77, no. 5 (2006): 886-924; Peter Riley Bahr, Preparing the Underprepared: An Analysis of Racial Disparities in Postsecondary Mathematics Remediation, The Journal of Higher Education 81, no. 2 (2010): 209-237. Alexandar W. Astin, Remedial Education and Civic Responsibility, National Crosstalk, Summer 1998, www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/pdf/ ctsummer98.pdf, 12. Sally Andrea Lesik, Appling the Regression-Discontinuity Design to Infer Causality with Non-Random Assignment, The Review of Higher Education 30, no. 1 (2006): 2. Clifford Adelman, Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories of Postsecondary Education, 1972-2000 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2004).

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courses, NCBR courses do not count toward a credential (graduation). In this way, they serve as institutional gatekeepers. And too often, student placements in these courses produce a familiar result: a repetitive cycle of enrollment in NCBR courses before moving forward. In most cases, four-year universities require new students to complete a mathematics placement examination; students with scores below predetermined levels are then placed into remedial mathematics courses.5 There is considerable variation, however, in the specific content of these courses and the policies across higher education institutions that dictate placement and course content.6 While some universities offer multiple NCBR mathematics courses, these courses tend to focus on the basic and procedural skills of algebra. In addition, some of these course sequences begin with the fundamentals of middle-school arithmetic.
5 6 7

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), NCBR mathematics courses are listed in nearly 80% of four-year universities course catalogs.7 More than 90% of all traditional undergraduates take at least one NCBR course in reading, writing, mathematics or some other content area.8 This figure has risen considerably from the 22% reported by the NCES in 1989.9 NCBR mathematics courses are also the most frequently taken among all content areas.10 NCBR courses have become a highly controversial and political topic in education.11 At one end of the continuum, opponents contend that institutions offering these courses have lowered their standards and essentially dumbed down their curricula.12 At the other end, pundits point to the expense of NCBR mathematics course offerings at public universities13 some asserting that [students] are paying twice for education that [they] should have learned in high school.14 Combined with the fact that these courses are

typically filled with students, are taught by either graduate students or adjunct faculty, and are on the whole, cheaper per student than regular college coursework, some NCBR math courses and programs become de facto financial assets for university mathematics departments.15

THE HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY CONTEXT OF NCBR MATHEMATICS COURSES

NCBR mathematics courses generally serve two central highereducation policy objectives: mission differentiation and institutional access.16 Although both objectives are aimed at ensuring excellence and quality on college campuses within sometimes-sizable university systems, the two are not always commensurable. NCBR mathematics courses in higher education reflect the potential conflict between these two policy objectives.

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Eric Jacobson, Higher Placement Standards Increase Course Success but Reduce Program Completions, The Journal of Higher Education 55, no. 2 (2006): 138-159. Eric P. Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long, Addressing the Needs of Under-Prepared Students in Higher Education: Does College Remediation Work? No. w11325 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005). As cited in Lesik, Appling the Regression-Discontinuity Design to Infer Causality with Non-Random Assignment; National Center for Educational Statistics, Remedial Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions in Fall 2000, NCES 2004-010 (Washington, DC, U.S. Department of Education, Institute for Education Sciences, 2003). Attewell, et al., New Evidence on College Remediation, 886; Linda Serra Hagedorn, M. Vali Siadat, Fogel F. Shereen, Nora Amaury, and Ernest T. Pascarella, Success in College Mathematics: Comparisons between Remedial and Nonremedial First-Year College Students, Research in Higher Education 40, no. 3 (1999): 261-284. Jan M. Ignash, Who Should Provide Postsecondary Remedial/Developmental Education?, New Directions for Community Colleges 1997, no. 100 (1997): 5-20. Basmant Parsad, Laurie Lewis, and Bernard Greene, Remedial Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions in Fall 2000 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2003). Attewell, et al., New Evidence on College Remediation; Bettinger and Long, Addressing the Needs of Under-Prepared Students in Higher Education; Mary Soliday, The Politics of Remediation (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). Attewell, et al., New Evidence on College Remediation, 886. Bettinger and Long, Addressing the Needs of Under-Prepared Students in Higher Education. Jeff E. Hoyt and Colleen T. Sorenson, Promoting Academic Standards? The Link Between Remedial Education in College and Student Preparation in High School (Orem, UT: Utah Valley State College, Department of Institutional Research and Management Studies, 1999). Attewell, et al., New Evidence on College Remediation; Dennis Redovich, [Review of the book Increasing Access to College: Extending Possibilities for All Students], Teachers College Record 105, no. 1 (2003): 50-54. Michael N. Bastedo and Patricia J. Gumpert, Access to What? Mission Differentiation and Academic Stratification in U.S. Public Higher Education, Higher Education 46, no. 3: (2003) 341-359. NCBR Mathematics Courses

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Mission differentiation refers to the need for and capacity of public systems of higher education to distribute resources on campuses system-wide to achieve specific aspects of their varied missions.17 The higher education policy environment has become a complicated mosaic, a richly differentiated tapestry, revealing a hierarchically arrayed system of institutions and programs.18 A single institution can feature a number of intersecting aims: research-intensiveness, land-grant missions, region-serving institutional goals, and specific population-serving institutional goals. Serving diverse purposes within an institutiona necessary task for many colleges and universitiesmakes it difficult to maintain systemic mission diversity or to promote mission diversification. This crisscrossing of interests necessarily complicates this seemingly straightforward, overarching policy objective. Paradoxically, mission diversity is a major factor in the effective functioning of higher education systems.19 The goal of mission differentiation or diversity is connected to the goal of institutional access inasmuch as each provides for the social mobility of students. Despite the importance of social mobility and the relatively recent attentiveness to rates of college attendance and graduation among students from underrepresented racial groups (primarily, African American, Latina/o, and Native Americans), there is a general lack of scrutiny to issues of student access. Instead, mechanisms that enhance institutional efficiency, accountability, and effectiveness have predominated academic policy initiatives during recent decades.20 As curricular tools of higher education policy, NCBR mathematics courses represent a unique point of tension between the twin goals of mission differentiation and institutional access. NCBR mathematics courses both serve and perceivably compromise mission diversity and mission differentiation by vetting student entry to certain kinds of pathways within higher education systems. NCBR mathematics courses serve mission diversity by marking certain institutions within the system as more or less rigorous or selective than othersand allows others to differentiate themselves as elite institutions. In either case, however, the case for offering NCBR mathematics courses does not compromise the central policy objectives; that is, these courses should not be considered as an appendage with little connection to the mission of the institution but represents a core function of the higher education community that it has performed for hundreds of

A single institution can feature a number of intersecting aims: researchintensiveness, landgrant missions, region-serving institutional goals, and specific population-serving institutional goals.

17 Bastedo and Gumpert, Access to What? Mission Differentiation and Academic Stratification in U.S. Public Higher Education,; Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, The Purposes and the Performance of Higher Education in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973); Frans Van Vught, Mission Diversity and Reputation in Higher Education, Higher Education Policy 21, no. 2 (2008): 151-174. 18 Scott Davies and Neil Guppy, Field of Study, College Selectivity, and Student Inequalities in Higher Education, Social Forces 75, no. 4 (1997): 1417-1438. 19 Van Vught, Mission Diversity and Reputation in Higher Education. 20 Bastedo and Gumpert, Access to What? Mission Differentiation and Academic Stratification in U.S. Public Higher Education.

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years.21 So, in terms of mission differentiation and with respect to one of this briefs organizing questions, NCBR mathematics courses workthat is, they perform their intended function to allow systems of higher education to demarcate their constituent institutions. In contrast, NCBR mathematics courses are a contentious lever for institutional access. On the one hand, the courses are regarded as indispensable for students who need additional exposure to concepts and procedures that are fundamental to postsecondary mathematics. On the other, these courses constrict institutional access for many (while possibly serving mission differentiation), given the attrition rates for students who are required to enroll in NCBR mathematics courses. It is therefore unclear whether the courses work with regard to institutional accessthat is, whether students are able to gain the exposure to the rigorous and preparative mathematics content and pedagogy that will help them to advance fully to the postsecondary curriculum. guidelines, standards, expectations, or benchmarks that guide or inform curriculum articulation or implementation in NCBR mathematics courses. In this way, the largely decentralized higher education policy environment is structurally disconnected from the K-12 educational policy context. Instead, these courses tend to follow a time-honored tradition: the curriculum focuses narrowly on arithmetic, the procedural underpinnings of introductory algebra (high-school algebra I and II), and sometimes, selections of geometry content.22 Although NCBR courses are intended to bridge the curriculum from K-12 to higher education (in terms of policy), this narrow content focus instead exacerbates the divide and supports the autonomy of four-year institutions over NCBR courses. Although the higher education policy context is appreciably different from K-12 policy, the systemic use of algebra as a gatekeeping mechanism is not new to the mathematics education enterprise,23 and it is shared across both K-12 and postsecondary contexts. Algebra is traditionally regarded as a tightly integrated system of symbolic procedures, each of which is closely connected with a particular problem type.24 In NCBR mathematics courses, the curriculum typically obliges

Currently, there are no agreed-upon guidelines, standards, expectations, or benchmarks that guide or inform curriculum articulation or implementation in NCBR mathematics courses.

NCBR MATHEMATICS COURSES AND ISSUES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

Currently, there are no agreed-upon

21 Jamie P. Merisotis and Ronald A. Phipps, Remedial Education in Colleges and Universities: Whats Really Going On?, The Review of Higher Education 24, no. 1 (2000): 67-85. 22 Hagedorn, et al., Success in College Mathematics: Comparisons between Remedial and Nonremedial First-Year College Students. 23 Robert P. Moses and Charles E. Cobb, Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); Elizabeth D. Phillips and Glenda T. Lappan, Algebra: The First Gate, in Mathematics in the Middle ed. Larry Leutzinger (Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1998) 10-19. 24 John P. Smith and Patrick W. Thompson, Quantitative Reasoning and the Development of Algebraic Reasoning, in Algebra in the Early Grades, eds. James J. Kaput, David W. Carraher, and Maria L. Blanton (New York, NY: Erlbaum, 2007), 4. NCBR Mathematics Courses

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students to interpret various commandssolve, reduce, factor, simplifyas calls to apply memorized procedures that have little meaning beyond the immediate context.25 In terms of mathematical content specifically, the narrow and procedure-driven focus on low cognitive-demand skills26NCBR mathematics courses are generally stuck in the past. Similarly, the general pedagogy of NCBR mathematics courses is, oftentimes, very traditional. The courses follow a lecture format in which the instructor is regarded as the expert and students are expected to acquire by rote the mathematical knowledge that the instructor presents and demonstrates on the board (or, perhaps, an overhead transparency projector or series of worksheets). Depending on the institution and the resources apportioned to NCBR programs, a discussion-oriented course add-on is sometimes required for students to practice their skills and seek additional assistance from teaching assistants. In other cases, the institution may appoint smaller seminar-style sections for NCBR mathematics courses. However, the pedagogy in smaller courses is usually similar to the larger lecture formats. The personnel who are appointed to teach NCBR mathematics courses generally reflect the teaching and learning philosophies of the courses as well. Although some full-time faculty members teach NCBR mathematics courses, many other institutions and their mathematics programs rely on part-time faculty (e.g., adjuncts) and graduate students to staff NCBR courses. These paraprofessional instructorswhile possibly more proficient than full-time, tenuretrack facultyare not systematically exposed to emergent effective or best pedagogical practices. Combined with the fact that these courses are typically filled with students across multiple sections, NCBR courses are on the whole, cheaper per student than regular college coursework, and in most institutions, [NCBR courses consume] a quite modest part of the budget.27 Overall, this particular combination of the issues (narrow curriculum and pedagogy and under-resourced courses and instructors) limits the opportunities that students may have to (re-) gain confidence with mathematics, especially if their exposure is limited to topics and exercises that are directly reminiscent of high school algebra courses and curricula. Arguably, this is true for all studentseven those for whom any exposure to the added support of NCBR mathematics would yield some benefit. Furthermore, straightforward repetition of highschool level tasks does not support or advance students capacities to see mathematics as something that is both worthwhile and perennially useful, because there are typically few opportunities to apply the mathematics to real-world and stage-appropriate contexts, issues, and problems. Lastly, the kind of curricular focus that is typical of these courses does not help students to shore up skills and dispositions that will help them to use mathematical reasoning successfully throughout their postsecondary trajectories.

EVIDENCE ON THE IMPACT OF NCBR MATHEMATICS COURSES: PSYCHOSOCIAL EFFECTS ON LEARNING

Recent evidence on NCBR mathematics courses suggests that NCBR mathematics courses may bring about unintended and threatening effects on student learning and, more broadly, students mathematical proficiency. The National Research Council (NRC), the arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Education that is charged with offering objective policy advice, has published several reports that raise issues directly relevant to NCBR mathematics courses.28 Although many of these and other related policy documents decry the growth of remediation in mathematics amid the transition to

25 Ibid. 26 Gregory V. Larnell and John P. Smith, III, Verb Use and Cognitive Demand in K8 Geometry and Measurement Grade-Level Expectations, in Variability is the Rule: A Companion Analysis of K8 State Mathematics Standards, ed. John P. Smith, III (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2010). 27 Attewell, et al., New Evidence on College Remediation, 889; Redovich, [Review of the book Increasing Access to College: Extending Possibilities for All Students]. 28 These reports include Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education (1989), From Analysis to Action: Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology (1996), and Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (2001).

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postsecondary coursework, the recommendations of these documents have had modest discernable influence on the broader debate. The tension regarding NCBR mathematics courses is typically centered on completion rates, costs, and institutional missions, whereas the question of whether these courses influence students learning of mathematicsand students muchneeded proficiency in the subject is largely absent. As the NRC Adding It Up report asserts, however, it is crucially important for all students to successfully learn mathematics and that it is much more than just the accumulation or rehashing of mathematical skills and concepts.29 The reports framework specifies five interwoven strands that contribute to proficiency in mathematics: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, adaptive reasoning, strategic competence, and productive disposition.30 Along with conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, adaptive reasoning and strategic competence describe aspects of mathematical processes in which students should engage. Productive disposition, however, describes the affective aspect of mathematics learning, emphasizing that learners should develop a habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile, coupled with the belief in diligence and ones own efficacy.31 Typically, NCBR mathematics courses tend to place unusually burdensome emphasis on procedural fluency, or the capacity to carry out computational methods flexibly, accurately, and efficiently.32 The underlying assumption is that students who exhibit underperformance on placement exams and are subsequently placed in NCBR mathematics courses necessarily lack the requisite procedure-driven skills that are foundational to algebra. To a lesser extent, these courses may incorporate the other conceptual or process-oriented aspects of proficiency, but there has been no attentiveness in research or practice to the influence of NCBR mathematics courses on students dispositions or their identities as mathematics learners. Specifically, we know little about the potential psychosocial threats or damage that NCBR mathematics courses may pose for students who either succeed or struggle. In short, many ask if the courses are effectiveif they work. But we have generally not asked whether the very experiences of these kinds of courses are damaging for students in other ways. A series of recent studies has begun to unpack the experiences that students actually have in these coursesthat is, the extent to which students enrolled in NCBR mathematics courses may

Recent evidence on NCBR mathematics courses suggests that NCBR mathematics courses may bring about unintended and threatening effects on student learning and, more broadly, students mathematical proficiency.

29 Although the main charge for the Committee on Mathematics Learning, the group of mathematics education scholars appointed by the NRC to produce the report, was to synthesize research on mathematics learning at earlier levels (and not at the transition to postsecondary study), the framework for mathematical proficiency represents theories on mathematics learning at large, not only for young (K-8) learners. 30 National Research Council, Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Mathematics (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001). 31 Ibid, 5. 32 Ibid. NCBR Mathematics Courses

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encounter affirmation or threat vis-vis their mathematics learning experiences.33 These studies have focused particularly on African American students, taking as cause this groups overrepresentation in NCBR mathematics courses at higher education institutions around the country. These studies are part of a new wave of research in mathematics education that find that and explore the ways in which mathematics courses (NCBR and otherwise) serve as contexts about which students actively make sense of both mathematics learning and other kinds of identities like race and gender.34 A major finding of these studies is that students enrolled in NCBR mathematics coursesespecially those who were successful in high school (e.g., high-grade earners, salutatorians, honor students) were experiencing what social psychologist Claude Steele and his colleagues have termed stereotype threat.35 Stereotype or identity threat is evoked in situations where a certain identity that a person has is cued up or signaled in ways that cause the person to feel pressure. This psychosocial phenomenon gives a person an additional task (in addition to learning), akin to trying to slay a ghost in the room.36 For the students in NCBR mathematics coursesspecifically, the African American students for whom the overrepresentation of students from the same group was an apparent and chronic featurethe huge task of disproving the stereotype of African American students underperformance in mathematics changed the nature of their experience. Consider the following excerpts from Cedric, one of the primary participants in of these studies: It just; okay, when [the instructor] explained that this was[the instructor] basically said that this was a remedial course. [The instructor] was like, um, this is the lowest course that you will take at [this university]. [The instructor] said that it doesnt get any easier than this. And then I kinda looked around, you know, and I see that most of even when I go to the [math help sessions]I see that most of the students there in [the remedial course] are African American. I mean I see it. I walk these halls everyday. I see whos in these classes. Ill see calculus on the board, and no black students in the seats. Sometimes one or two... Okay. I just feel like [...] it [...] I dont know, it kinda hurts me to see so many black people, like me, in the classroom. I just feel like were [.........] I feel like we could do better. [......] Like, if were going to come to [this university], then um, and just be put in the [remedial] class, and then to see people, like um, just drop out of it; that just, kinda like, hurts me, because it, kinda like, says to me, okay, African American students cant succeed in this class, you know. And its remedial, the lowest class, so [...] So, its kinda [...] I dont know. Put differently, some of the studentsfor Cedric and many of his peers, the NCBR mathematics course experience was about much more than mathematical procedures and concepts; it became stocked with stress and distraction, inefficient strategies and rigidities, and ultimately, an issue of college survival versus discontinuity.37 Even among students who did not identify as successful mathematics students, who had spotty mathematics backgrounds and for whom the mathematics content of NCBR was a needed refreshmentstudents for whom this course could would otherwise interpreted as a benefit there is evidence that they also encounter identity threat in

33 Gregory V. Larnell, The Product of Many Factors: Exploring Remedial Mathematics Education through One Students Background and Experience (Unpublished Manuscript, Michigan State University, 2008); Gregory V. Larnell, More Than Just Skill: Mathematics Identities, Socialization, and Remediation among African American Undergraduates (PhD diss, Michigan State University, 2011); Gregory V. Larnell, On New Waves in Mathematics Education: Identity, Power, and the Mathematics Learning Experiences of All Children, New WavesEducational Research and Development, 16, no. 1 (2013): 146-156; Gregory V. Larnell, More than Just Skill: Mathematics Identities, Inequity, and Agency Amid Transitions to Postsecondary Mathematics (Under Review, Journal for Research on Mathematics Education); Gregory V. Larnell, Project REMATH: Investigating the Mathematics Learning Experiences of Students Enrolled in a Non-Credit Bearing Remedial Mathematics Courses at an Urban University (in progress). 34 Larnell, On New Waves in Mathematics Education: Identity, Power, and the Mathematics Learning Experiences of All Children 35 Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time) (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). 36 Steele, Whistling Vivaldi, 110-110. 37 Ibid.

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relation to their course experience. More related studies are underway, and additional study is needed.

PRIMARY ISSUES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Although many have challenged the role of NCBR mathematics courses at four-year universities, they are indispensable policy levers for institutions to address their twin objectives of mission differentiation and institutional access. Nevertheless, many institutions are cutting them out (which places more pressure on two-year institutions) or are converting the courses to onlineonly environments. From a policy perspective, this may allow universities to maintain their status and sufficiently differentiate themselves, but it also may exacerbate inequities regarding institutional access for populations of students that continue to be underrepresented at the postsecondary level. From a teaching and learning perspective, these broad changes in NCBR mathematics courses also exacerbate the already narrow curricular focus on procedural fluency and cognitively undemanding skills. In an online environment, it may be even easier to emphasize and assess highly procedural mathematics content, and the pedagogical intervention although more individualized would simultaneously become even less personal. NCBR mathematics courses are among the most important courses at a university, and as such, they need more resources, not fewer. As it is, the courses are often stripped-

down, bare-bones teaching and learning experiences in which students are expected to acquire basic facts and skills. They are often taught by relatively inexperienced paraprofessionals (e.g., graduate students who are often in their first teaching appointment) or professional adjunct instructors to whom professional development is not routinely or systematically offered. Based on the research and policy dimensions presented in this brief, there are three main recommendations that may effectively lead to reforming NCBR mathematics courses at four-year universities. Universities should modify placement processes to take into account other measures of students mathematics performances. Mathematics is used as a measure of quantitative aptitude throughout students transitions to postsecondary education. Students complete PSAT exams, SAT or ACT exams, and/or university-specific placement exams, depending on the institutions given role within a higher education system and the extent to which institutional access (or selectivity) is central to that institutions mission. Furthermore, students complete mathematicsspecific, standardized assessments throughout more than ten years of prior schooling before applying for postsecondary study. And in the new era of Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, these assessments will become even more broadly standardized than ever before, producing scores at intervals throughout students K-12 trajectories. These assessments have and will continue to produce many arrays of data available from which to determine a students

performance over time for mathematics assessments. Despite all of these different measures, only one scoreon one test taken on one occasion and often with little preparationis used to determine students mathematics placements at a single institution. Simple changes like considering a students ACT or SAT score along with placement exam scores could also be effectively used to place students into mathematics courses. A more sophisticated model would include points of data from previous years of assessments, particularly in high school, along with other precollege tests. Such a model would effectively involve digital data records for students and the capacity to share those records between school districts and universities. Universities should shift the mathematical focus of NCBR mathematics courses from rote procedural skills to emphasize mathematical problem solving that connects to other disciplines. Instead of focusing exclusively on rote skills and procedures, NCBR mathematics courses should foreground complex mathematical tasks, mathematical problemsolving skills, modeling real-world situations with mathematics, and otherwise unpacking mathematical concepts and procedures. In doing so, NCBR courses would achieve both the goals of repairing students mathematical backgrounds as well as offering students scenarios through which they may learn to view mathematics as an instrumentally useful discipline. Furthermore, expanding the scope of NCBR mathematics courses in this way
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would improve the alignment of these courses with recommendations from wellregarded organizations such as the National Research Council and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. A more promising approach to reforming NCBR mathematics courses would not only expand the mathematical scope of these courses but also situate the activities of the course in an interdisciplinary context. A curriculum that featured richly multilayered, group-based tasks could include the concepts and procedural topics that are included in typical algebra courses and embed those skills within real-world problem contexts. Following recent theoretical approaches to teaching and learning mathematics, these kinds of problem-solving contexts can enhance students engagement and participationand possibly mitigate the potential effects of identity threats related to mathematics learning experience. Universities should offer holistic academic programming to compliment NCBR mathematics courses that aim to militate against identity threats. Unlike the reform of teaching and learning mathematics at the K-12 level, there is much less known about the psychosocial effects of course experiences in mathematics. This is slowly improving. However, there currently seems to be a push to strip away resources from NCBR mathematics programs in ways that enable the outsourcing of these courses to online environments. If four-year institutions are serious about providing institutional access and world-class educational experiences (as is often the slogan), then apportioning the professional development resources for NCBR mathematics course instructors is imperative. Furthermore, coordinating resources and strategies among curricular stakeholders and extracurricular program administrators to moderate the psychosocial threats about specific groups posed by NCBR mathematics courses is a muchneeded but underdeveloped effort at many four-year universities.

If four-year institutions are serious about providing institutional access and world-class educational experiences (as is often the slogan), then apportioning the professional development resources for NCBR mathematics course instructors is imperative.

CONCLUSION
NCBR mathematics courses are one of the most important educational issues in higher education policy. Each year, scores of students leave universities each year because they are unable to jump through the hoop that has become introductory mathematics. As many of the students have claimed, they aspire to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, and all-too-frequently, first-generation college students, African Americans, and Latinos. Still, there must be the will to implement the best practices that have developed in the field during the past few decades. As it stands, NCBR mathematics courses are not just a slippery rung on the ladder of institutional and societal access, they are broken and themselves in need of remediation. In order to do this, we much apportion the resources to bolster instruction, support cross-campus collaboration among institutional stakeholders, and fundamentally alter the ways in which mathematics instruction is conceptualized in these course settings.

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ABOUT US
The Research on Urban Education Policy Initiative (RUEPI) is an education policy research project based in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education. RUEPI was created in response to one of the most significant problems facing urban education policy: dialogue about urban education policy consistently fails to reflect what we know and what we do not about the problems education policies are aimed at remedying. Instead of being polemic and grounded primarily in ideology, public conversations about education should be constructive and informed by the best available evidence.

OUR MISSION
RUEPIs work is aimed at fostering more informed dialogue and decision-making about education policy in Chicago and other urban areas. To achieve this, we engage in research and analysis on major policy issues facing these areas, including early childhood education, inclusion, testing, STEM education, and teacher workforce policy. We offer timely analysis and recommendations that are grounded in the best available evidence.

OUR APPROACH
Given RUEPIs mission, the projects work is rooted in three guiding principles. While these principles are not grounded in any particular political ideology and do not specify any particular course of action, they lay a foundation for ensuring that debates about urban education policy are framed by an understanding of how education policies have fared in the past. The principles are as follows: Education policies should be coherent and strategic Education policies should directly engage with what happens in schools and classrooms Education policies should account for local context RUEPI policy briefs are rooted in these principles, written by faculty in the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education and other affiliated parties, and go through a rigorous peer-review process.

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