November 9, 2006
Developmental
Mathematics
One of the goals of
Achieving the Dream is to increase the percentage of students who complete
developmental courses and continue to college level work. Data show that
developmental mathematics is one barrier to student success.
Data from the 35
Achieving the Dream colleges documented this problem in an earlier report.
This report reviews the results from a 2003 and 2004 cohort of
Brazosport College
students.
Cohort is group studied
over time. This group has one statistical feature in common – they
enrolled at Brazosport
College for the first time in the fall semester 2003
and 2004.
The following analysis
examines developmental math referrals, attempts, and completions from the 2003
cohort over two years through the spring semester, 2005 and from the 2004 cohort
over two years through the spring semester, 2006.
Brazosport
College
Students – Fall 2003 and Fall 2004
The following
information shows the ethnicity of all students enrolled at
Brazosport College
for the fall semesters 2003 and 2004:
Students Referred to
Developmental Mathematics
Of these total populations, the 2003 fall cohort is comprised of the 61.02%
referred to developmental math and the 2004 fall cohort is comprised of the
51.17% referred to developmental math. For comparison, the percentage of
the total 2002 cohort of students referred to developmental math in the 35
Achieving the Dream colleges was 61%.
The graph shows lower
percentages of some student groups being referred to developmental mathematics.
These percentages are considerably lower than the percentages for students from
the Achieving the Dream colleges, suggesting that many students at
Brazosport College
were exempt based on enrollment in a certificate program or exempt based on
prior college work.
Percentage of
Students who Attempted and Completed Developmental Mathematics
The following graph shows the percentage of students who attempted and completed
developmental math by the end of year two from the 2003/2004
Brazosport College
cohort. This percentage is somewhat lower than that of the 35 Achieving
the Dream colleges where total percent completion rates were around 50%.
For the Brazosport
College cohort, the total percent completion rates
were around 40%.
The following table
shows the distribution of the 2003
Brazosport College
cohort by developmental math referral level and ethnicity. This includes
students not referred to developmental work and students referred to MATH 0404,
0406, and 0408. Interestingly, percentages are comparable for
developmental math courses at
Brazosport College
except for the smaller percentage of Black students referred to MATH 0406 and
the larger percentage of Black students referred to MATH 0408. Total
referrals are shown in comparison to the data from the 35 Achieving the Dream
colleges.
What Does This Mean?
Data from Brazosport
College shows that 51.17% of the 2003 fall cohort
and 61.02% of the 2004 fall cohort were referred to developmental mathematics.
From these cohorts, data show that almost 40% of the students had completed
developmental mathematics by the end of year two. Data also show that the
largest percentage of students placed in developmental math
were placed in MATH 0404.