By Emma Swinney, Public and Media Relations Coordinator, JCCC
A 2023 study by the American Psychological Association found that around 25% of students (elementary through post-secondary) report feeling “math anxiety” – and this isn’t just pre-test jitters. Experts who study the brain activity of students with math anxiety found that just thinking about doing math can make their brains react as if they’re being physically threatened — and they may even feel physical pain. They also found these students avoid using math in their adult lives and often struggle with personal finance.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, around 51% of 2-year degree students and 41% of 4-year degree students never pass their college algebra course. Failure to pass the required college math course is also a large contributor to students not finishing coursework for career and technical education programs. This applies to adult learners too, who fear going back to school due to long gaps in their math education.
Math is a daunting and challenging subject for many students. Young learners who lost years of in-person school due to the COVID-19 pandemic are testing astronomically lower in math. Some students will eventually catch up, but some won’t. To address this issue for present and future students, the JCCC math department is taking a new approach to help students navigate college-level math.
Multiple measures of evaluating our students
At JCCC, the pandemic prompted us to re-evaluate how we place students into our courses, which led to the College adopting “multiple measures” – using multiple academic achievements and experiences to determine which are the best first courses for a student to take in several subjects. Now, incoming students can provide several different academic prerequisites – or multiple measures – to place them into the math, reading, and English courses that best fit their skill levels.
Evaluating a student through multiple measures is extremely beneficial to the student – especially those who don’t perform well on tests or who struggle with high-stakes testing. Multiple measures also expanded the way JCCC can give credit for prior learning. For example, military-affiliated students can work with an admissions specialist to convert basic training experience to a Lifetime Fitness course that would count as an elective credit toward their degree.
Making math more relevant
In 2019, Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin published “The Case for Mathematics Pathways.” Part of their research found that students placed with multiple measures were more successful in their math courses. For example, at Davidson-Davie Community College in North Carolina, 65% of students who were placed into their math course based on high school GPA passed; as opposed to 48% for those placed by a placement or standardized test.
The Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) also recognized the current methods of teaching college students math are not serving them well. That’s why they commissioned the Kansas Math Pathways Taskforce – co-chaired by Whitney Turner, Associate Professor of Mathematics at JCCC, and Keith Dreiling, Mathematics Department Chair at Fort Hayes State University. The task force was tapped to develop the future of post-secondary math curriculum in Kansas and implement the Dana Center’s “Math Pathways” model at all public colleges across the state.
This volunteer task force of higher-ed experts includes equal representatives from Kansas’ 19 community colleges and 7 public 4-year institutions. Together, they designed an approach tailored to a student’s needs. Instead of all students having to take college algebra, each major will be placed into one of three math buckets. All math courses will be rigorous and challenging, just more relevant to the field of study, which broadens what mathematics looks like for Kansas college students. The gateway math courses will be:
- Contemporary Mathematics (non-algebraic math)
- For students who major in a humanities-related field of study, agriculture, some health sciences, and others
- Will cover topics like logic and reasoning, number sense, financial math
- Statistics
- For majors like sociology, business, communications, and others
- Will no longer have the traditional College Algebra pre-requisite
- College Algebra
- For STEM-related majors, including but not limited to nursing and engineering
- Improved methods of course delivery
KBOR’s Seamless Systemwide Transfer initiative will include all the new math courses, ensuring credits earned at all public post-secondary educational institutions in Kansas will be accepted if transferring within the system. Learn more about the Kansas Math Pathways Taskforce on the Kansas Board of Regents website.
Switching to a co-requisite model
Another major change is that Kansas colleges in the KBOR system will transition to a math co-requisite model instead of the pre-requisite model. Many students nationwide get stuck in the cycle of failing and repeating their College Algebra courses, which sometimes causes them to quit college entirely.
Thanks to the dedicated educators on the Kansas Math Pathways Task Force, Kansas college students will now immediately start in the gateway math course associated with their major, without a prerequisite requirement. Admissions specialists will evaluate students using multiple measures to determine if they need to take a simultaneous co-requisite support math class. This approach has been adopted by states like California, Georgia, and Tennessee and it’s proven to help students perform better in (and pass) their gateway math course.
What comes next?
Math Pathways is expected to soft launch at Kansas’ 7 public universities and 19 community colleges in the fall of 2025, and schools must have developed and adopted math pathways courses and a co-requisite support course. Full-scale adoption across the state must happen in the fall of 2026.
Marcelle Cooper, Ed. D., the Director of Testing and Assessment Services represented JCCC on the Math Course Placement Measures Committee, which worked alongside the Kansas Math Pathways Taskforce. For Cooper, participating in this project was personal, she didn’t like math when she was in school and had a particularly negative experience with algebra. She is excited about Math Pathways and is glad incoming students will get to experience math courses tailored to the specific math knowledge they need to succeed.
Read more about the successful implementation of the Dana Center’s Math Pathways plan at colleges in Oregon and Minnesota. A recording of the Kansas Math Pathways Informational meeting and Q&A from June 2024 is available on KBOR’s website. JCCC will provide curriculum updates to the public as they become available.
