Developing a New Path for Students in Reading and Writing

Revisions to Developmental Reading and Writing at Onondaga Community College are making a significant impact on the educational path of students. Placement tests have been eliminated along with non-credit courses which require time and money students simply don't have. The decision to accelerate developmental education by keeping students of all entering abilities in class together is the product of a collaboration led by Dean Michael O'Connor, Dr. Matt DelConte, and Dr. Malkiel Choseed. Their work is being highlighted in a juried, national journal, Teaching English in the Two-Year College. "We have immense pride in the work we do here and have the conviction this is a good option for other campuses to explore," said Dr. DelConte. "There's the gratification someone is going to read this and say 'I think we can do something similar and it will have a similar impact.'"

This story is actually a decade in the making. Way back in the 2013-14 academic year, OCC brought the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) to campus. At the time it was considered the "gold standard" in developmental English instruction. Prior to ALP, OCC students would take a developmental course in one semester followed by a credit-bearing course the next semester. But too many students weren’t making it to the credit-bearing course.

Faculty at the Community College of Baltimore County had created the ALP program whereby students took the non-credit and credit-bearing courses in the same semester with greater success. News of its success rippled through the community college world. OCC sent faculty there to learn more, brought back ideas , and began piloting a program.

A few years later, OCC's success with ALP turned it into a leader within the SUNY system. The College was awarded a $600,000 grant from SUNY’s Performance Improvement Plan to support 10 community colleges as each either created or improved its co-requisite model for teaching ALP. Dr. DelConte was named the Project Director.

Despite the success with ALP, there was the belief within OCC's English department that more improvements could be made. The desire to accelerate developmental education was one of the pillars of OCC's Title III Guided Pathways Project, and it's that pillar which Dean O'Connor, Dr. DelConte, and Dr. Choseed focused on. "Taking an extra class that didn't count toward graduating was an obstacle," said Dr. Choseed. "We know what it meant in a dollar amount, and to a lesser quantifiable extent the time being put in and how that could be spent at a job or with child care. We wanted to remove the obstacle and give access to all students."

Through countless hours of conversation and study, the decision was made to eliminate placement testing, non-credit support courses, and the stigma which went along with being placed in one. Students of all entering abilities would be in class together. "We developed a program to meet every student where they are and get them where we need them to be in one semester by focusing on reading as it relates to writing and focusing on the full and complex knowledge of the student," said Dean O'Connor.

OCC's first semester without a single section of developmental writing or reading was the fall of 2020, which was also the first fall semester with Covid. There were 312 students with a GPA below 75 who in previous semesters would have been placed in non-credit courses. Combined they saved literally hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the incalculable benefits to their belief in their own ability to succeed.

"The classes for English 103 which have every student in it without any filter, the success rates are now the same as when all of those filters were on it. We're letting more students in and more students are passing even though the success rate has stayed the same. Our next big goal is to bring those success rates up," said Dr. Choseed. "Even without an increase in success, just keeping the numbers level showed we did something because of the saved time and money, plus the psychological benefit to students which we can't quantify," added Dr. DelConte. "We are taking the student on day one and saying 'you can be successful. We know it.' We are raising expectations and providing students the support they need to meet those expectations," said Dean O'Connor.