By Angela Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-875350.mp3
Murray, KY – In less than a year, the student population at colleges and universities in Kentucky will change. In the fall 2010 semester, new statewide ACT standards will raise the scores needed in Math and Reading for incoming freshmen. For community colleges and regional universities like Murray State University, this means a significant increase in the number of students coming in below the college benchmark. Angela Hatton reports on how these institutions are bracing for more remedial students.
Lana Jennings and her staff know how to use space creatively. No, she's not an interior decorator. Jennings is the director of Murray State University's Community College. She coordinates classes for students who need some remedial preparation before tackling college curriculum. As she gives a tour of the office's two floors, Jennings says space is one of the biggest challenges they have.
"And you must see the math room where we've put 28, 29, sometimes 30 students in to give everyone a chance to get enrolled."
This "classroom" is one of several created with partitions. Chairs squeeze around four long tables tucked neatly into the compact space. Next door is an English classroom, and a few feet away cooling fans hum in a makeshift computer lab that does double duty for Math and English. Jennings says the space will likely get even more crowded next fall with the increase in remedial classes.
"We are looking at having to add just in the fall five sections of Math 100, seven sections of Reading 100, and six sections of Reading 120. We do have two reading courses that the developmental students are required to take."
The state Council on Post-Secondary Education has decided that incoming freshman must score a 19 in Math on the ACT and a 20 in Reading. That's an increase from 2001 standards, which said an 18 across the board was satisfactory. Jennings says previously 18 percent of incoming freshman needed remedial Math.
"We will go to 27 percent needing Math when we jump that one point from eighteen to nineteen. We will go from 10 to 20 percent, we're truly doubling the numbers, for the reading."
Kentucky community colleges serve the largest percentage of remedial students because of their open enrollment system. They can't turn anyone away who wants to get a degree. Kentucky Community and Technical College Chancellor Jay Box.
"We currently have thirteen thousand students enrolled in at least one developmental course. And we're projecting based just on the current students, if we change to the cut scores, that we would have an additional five to seven thousand students enrolled in developmental course work."
Box says in the best case scenario, they would hire fifty new full-time teachers, about three for each college. However, that takes money, something the state has in short supply right now. Box says he's requested between three and four million dollars through the Council on Post Secondary Education, but he can't be sure they will get that.
"The bottom line is that this is a mandate, we must do it. So, if we don't get any additional funding from the legislature to address this, then of course, there would have to be reallocation of the funds at the colleges to make sure we could cover the increase in students."
That means possibly cutting from other programs to cover remedial classes, a measure Box says would be up to individual college presidents. At Murray State, Lana Jennings says hiring new adjunct teachers would cost 20,000 - 25,000 dollars for one semester, but, really, that's theoretical.
"Those instructors are not out there, however. I mean there, there are very, very few people who get reading specialist degrees, they just don't go through that kind of certification. And so those literally do not exist. The math might be a little easier, but I don't know how we're going to come up with five additional adjunct instructors."
And there's still the problem of space. Jennings says the Community College department will likely get one new computer classroom. Renovations to that space are set to begin in February. However, she says they aren't slated for completion until mid-July, and if work gets off schedule, the room might not be finished when classes start in August.
Jennings says the department plans to utilize technology to help deal with the instructor and space issues.
"Both with our reading and math 100 classes we're gone to an online homework program so that students can almost have a tutor with them when they're sitting back in the dorm room working on their math and reading homework at midnight."
Jennings says they are also working to rearrange classes to have students work with an instructor part of the week and then work independently on a computer. Jay Box says KCTCS is doing the same thing.
"There's also quite a bit of research being done by our colleges and on the national scene about different way to deliver developmental education course. Everything from purely online to a hybrid model to a very intense shortening of the classes so that the students get just the piece that they need and then are able to move on."
To compound the challenge presented by the new standards, Kentucky's Senate Bill 1, passed this year, mandates that the number of students taking developmental course be reduced by half between now and 2014.
"So really that piece of the goal is on the public schools. Now that would help us tremendously if they were able to accomplish that."
Box says a joint effort between the K - 12 system and higher education is underway to meet that goal. But their efforts won't help the college freshman next year. For 2010, institutions are simply hoping they'll find the money, the space, and the personnel to give everyone a chance to succeed in college.