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Fractions in College: How Basic Math Remediation Impacts Community College Students

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Abstract

This study investigates the link between basic math skills, remediation, and the educational opportunity and outcomes of community college students. Capitalizing on a unique placement policy in one community college that assigns students to remedial coursework based on multiple math skill cutoffs, I first identify the skills that most commonly inhibit student access to higher-level math courses; these are procedural fluency with fractions and the ability to solve word problems. I then estimate the impact of “just missing” these skill cutoffs using multiple rating-score regression discontinuity design. Missing just one fractions question on the placement diagnostic, and therefore starting college in a lower-level math course, had negative effects on college persistence and attainment. Missing other skill cutoffs did not have the same impacts. The findings suggest the need to reconsider the specific math expectations that regulate access to college math coursework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    Federick Ngo

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  1. Federick Ngo
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Correspondence to Federick Ngo.

Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 7 and Tables 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Density of the running variable (McCrary density test)

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Table 9 Discontinuity in covariates at one-point bandwidth, binding-score regression discontinuity estimates
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Table 10 Characteristics of “one-off” students (means)
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Table 11 Robustness of binding-score RD at basic math/pre-algebra (BM/PA) cutoff; outcome: passing PA w/C or better
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Table 12 Robustness of frontier-score RD at pre-algebra/elementary algebra cutoff (bandwidth = 1); outcome: passing EA w/C or better
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Table 13 Binding-score RD estimates with PA/EA compliers only (1) and conditional on attempting EA (2)
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Ngo, F. Fractions in College: How Basic Math Remediation Impacts Community College Students. Res High Educ 60, 485–520 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-018-9519-x

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