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Our view: The open-admissions policy provides important educational safety net

PCC must not give up on students who need extra help

Posted: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 12:00 am A plan to end Pima Community College's long-standing open-admissions policy leaves us searching for answers: Why do many adults with high school diplomas, including those who have just graduated, score so low on reading, writing or math tests that they must take remedial classes before they can get into college-level courses? Why do so few of those students - motivated adults who want an education - make it to those college classes? Both questions require honest, detailed and forthright answers before the PCC Board of Governors seriously considers any change to PCC's admissions policy. Without this crucial information, PCC will be reacting to the end result of a broken system, and the only lasting result will be that people who don't have the basic academic skills they need will be set adrift. Yes, volunteer community organizations, such as those focused on adult literacy, can and do help. But they are not the remedy, and they're not equipped to deal with the level of need that PCC addresses. PCC has not required incoming students to have a high school diploma or a GED. Chancellor Roy Flores has put forward a plan that would change that - as well as requiring placement tests - and has stated that it's a disservice to admit people who are far from being able to do college-level math, reading or writing. "Students testing into the lowest levels of developmental education have virtually no chance of ever moving beyond remedial work and achieving their educational goals. For those students and their families, developmental education is expensive and demoralizing," Flores wrote in a February essay in Inside Higher Ed (insidehighered.com), an education news and opinion website. The numbers are sobering: Last fall, 6,338 students who were new to higher education enrolled at PCC. Of those, almost 80 percent needed one developmental education (remedial) course, and 76 percent needed it in math. Almost 2,600 students had to take a high-school level math course; 1,082 were placed in classes at a middle-school level, and 1,160 PCC students tested at the first-to-fifth-grade level. Only one in 20 students who took Math 82, the lowest-level class, finished any college-level class within two years, according to Flores. We agree with Flores that college is not the place to learn elementary skills. But, in Pima County, this is the educational safety net that has been woven over the years. Unraveling it in isolation isn't the answer. Adults without a high school diploma or GED can enroll in adult dducation classes through PCC's Community Campus. This is offered through PCC, and funded in part by PCC after the state Legislature eliminated all funding for adult education. Its survival remains year-to-year as a long-term funding source does not yet exist. In 2010-11, 5,830 adults took basic education classes or secondary education (GED prep) classes. These students do not have a high school diploma or GED, so while these classes offer a crucial service for many people they do nothing to help the adults who somehow made it through high school but still test at the elementary school level. Flores says that PCC literally cannot afford to continue to offer some remedial classes and that spending money on developmental classes takes away extremely limited funding from career education and other programs.

Generated by Foxit PDF Creator Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only. Essentially, to put it bluntly, his argument is that students should have to test into courses. Students who have no realistic expectation of ever passing such tests can save their money and effort.

But that translates into "give up now, rather than later." And that lesson is not acceptable. Arizona Daily Star Public Forum Pima Community College will hold a public forum on the admissions plan forum Aug. 23 and another in September. No deadline for a decision vote has been scheduled, as the college is still gathering public input. Find more information at www.pima.edu