This document discusses measuring the alignment between high school math assessments and community college placement tests. It introduces the topic, describes the methodology used to analyze consistency between the California Standards Tests and a community college placement exam, and concludes that the assessments are not fully aligned with college expectations and that changes may need to be made to better prepare high school students for college-level math.
There are concerns that K-12 education does not provide the opportunity for students to learn skills needed to be successful in college courses. The purpose of this article is to investigate the consistency of expectations in high school and community colleges. This study is building on the work done by Brown and Niemi except Brown and Shelton (2010) are focusing on math because over 80% of California students take the math assessments. This study uses a modified Webb approach of content alignment (Brown & Shelton, 2010).
High rates of remediation in California colleges suggests a lack of preparation for recent high school graduates. G-coefficient is a measure of reliability. A score of .70 is considered acceptable. General Mathematics-.90 Geometry- .84 and .83 Algebra- .79 and .77 showing less consistency.
CST did not show a considerable amount of alignment with the CCC (Brown & Shelton, 2010). One-third of the objectives scene on college placement exams are not seen on the CST. College expectations “need to be more explicitly articulated” (Brown and & Shelton, 2010). Students that master standards in high school can still be denied access to college courses because of the lack of alignment. Currently, high school standards are not preparing students for college expectations.
This study suggests Three policy changes. High school standards and assessments can be changed to reflect college expectations. Colleges can align placement tests with high school standards. A combination of the two.
High school and college expectations do not align. Students that succeed in mastering standards in high school will not necessarily be prepared to enter college courses. Change in either high school and/or college expectations need to be made in order to have a more effective system. High schools need to be able to prepare students for expectations for college-level courses.
![Introduction ,[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)