Improving Placement Accuracy in California’s Community Colleges Using Multiple Measures of High School Achievement

Abstract

Objective: Standardized placement tests remain the primary means by which new community college students are assessed and placed in the hierarchy of math and English coursework. A growing body of evidence indicates that placement tests tend to underestimate students’ likelihood of achieving passing grades in college-level courses, leading to students being misplaced in developmental coursework, slowing their academic progress, and increasing their likelihood of dropping out of college. This article discusses the results of a statewide research effort to improve the accuracy of student placement in math and English in the California Community College system. Method: Decision tree methods were applied to high school and college transcript data to identify key measures of high school achievement that predict performance in nine levels of community college math courses (three developmental and six college level) and four levels of community college English courses (three developmental and one college level). Results: Cumulative high school grade point average (GPA) is the most consistently useful predictor of performance across levels of math and English coursework, and a higher GPA is necessary to signal readiness for college-level coursework in math than is necessary to signal readiness for college-level coursework in English. In addition, cumulative GPA combined with specific indications of progress in the high school curriculum is frequently useful for predicting performance in math among direct matriculants and for predicting performance in both math and English among nondirect matriculants. Conclusion: Drawing on the findings, placement rules that colleges can apply directly in their placement processes are developed and validated.

Giving Community College Students Choice: The Impact of Self-Placement in Math Courses

“…Furthermore, although researchers from the RAND Corporation, American Institutes for Research, and the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness are conducting studies to test the impact of alternative placement approaches on placement accuracy, institutions still lack evidence-based guidance to determine which factors actually improve placement for students with different characteristics. 2 Although high school GPA has been shown to be the best predictor of success in both college math and English courses (Bahr et al, 2019), research finds that there are few examples of high-quality data collaboration between K–12 and postsecondary education institutions (Grady, 2016). It is thus logistically difficult that community colleges would transition to a GPA placement policy to assign students to developmental education.…”

Mis/Alignment Between High School and Community College Standards

“…First, we considered cumulative high school GPA, the measure being championed by the broader multiple measures movement, including in California via Assembly Bill 705 (Bahr et al, 2019).…”

“…ISMM therefore offers an inter-sector metric to assess mis/alignment between high school and college readiness standards. We note that we are not seeking to determine which measures would increase the likelihood of success in college math courses, as done in other studies (Bahr et al, 2019; Ngo & Kwon, 2015; Scott-Clayton et al, 2014). Our goal instead is to develop a naming device, ISMM, that can be used to promote inter-sector alignment and thereby increase access to college-level math courses.…”

A Business Rule for a B-School using Machine Learning

“…The model had an accuracy of 60.46% and used 16 predictor variables to predict the performance of a student in first semester examination. Decision trees method were used by [8] to analyse the relationships between the measures of high school achievement and successful completion of students' first math and English courses in community college. Placement rules that colleges can apply directly in their placement processes are developed and validated.…”