Something impressive is happening at California’s community colleges. In fall 2024, 58% of students taking a transfer-level math course for the first time completed that class on their first attempt — a 7 percentage-point gain in just two years.
Since California overhauled how it places students in college math courses, the number of students completing transfer-level math in their first term has more than doubled, to 62,000. Latine and Black students are now completing college math courses at rates three to four times higher than before.
For decades, California’s community colleges, like institutions across the country, steered most students into long sequences of remedial courses before deeming them ready to attempt college-level math. Because these courses did not count toward a degree or certificate, remediation has been shown to derail college aspirations.
A national study of 250,000 community college students found that only 20% of those required to take remedial math went on to the gatekeeper college course within three years. Unable to access courses that awarded academic credit, many students ran out of time, money or patience — and stopped out of college entirely. Students of color are also disproportionately placed into remedial math, compounding the barriers they face to complete a degree. Intended to help students, this dead-end approach has been more accurately labeled a “remedial education trap.”
Policy shifts
To its credit, California tried something different. Legislation signed in 2017 and 2022 required community colleges to recognize a student’s prior course-taking history and high school GPA — rather than inaccurate placement tests — and to enroll students in gateway math and English courses that allow them to make faster progress toward a degree.
The legislation eliminated the use of prerequisite math courses and required community colleges to place students directly into transfer-level classes: precalculus and calculus for students majoring in STEM and business; statistics and quantitative reasoning for those focusing on liberal arts or social and behavioral sciences.
In many cases, students receive robust corequisite support, which can include tutoring, extended instruction time and companion courses that improve the odds of success.
This change opened the door for faculty and staff to build on the strengths students bring with them to college. It also shifted the question from whether students are “college-ready” to whether community colleges are “student-ready.”
Moving the needle
As dean of math, science and engineering and a former math instructor and department chair at Cuyamaca College in San Diego’s eastern suburbs, I have seen firsthand the impact these reforms are having on students. Starting in fall 2023, we’ve allowed STEM majors to skip Precalculus and enroll directly in Calculus I, paired with a concurrent class that provides corequisite support. Nearly 80% of Cuyamaca students who enroll in our new course, Calculus I with Support, pass Calculus I in one semester. Previously, only a quarter of students who started with Precalculus passed Calculus I within two semesters.
The majority of our math students are now choosing Calculus with Support, which has yielded some remarkable downstream effects. We have seen significant enrollment growth in Calculus II and Calculus III, as well as in key engineering and physics courses. We are producing more STEM graduates — and a more diverse group of students prepared to transfer to four-year universities.
To answer our critics: this new course is rigorous, not watered down. Students who take it are doing just as well (and sometimes even better) in their next calculus and other STEM courses than students who took Calculus I without extra support.
This improved performance is not just limited to our campus. Across California, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California, enrolling directly in a transfer-level math class has become the default option for nearly all first-time math students, and one-term completion rates are rising for all student populations, including adult learners.
College transfer rates are growing, too. Between 2015 and 2018, only 6.5% of community college students enrolled in a math course on average transferred to a four-year institution within two years of enrolling. Today, 11% are transferring after two years.
Room to grow
Of course, any change this ambitious will have its challenges. This approach still has room for improvement in implementation, professional development and campus-level support. It might be tempting to conclude that these reforms moved too fast — or that they’re not working fast enough. But the data tells a different story. And so do the tens of thousands of students now completing both gateway and advanced courses they might never have had the chance to take. If the state stays the course on remedial math reform, these results are only the beginning of what California and the country can accomplish.
