On Thursday, legislation aimed at Community College student success advanced in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Assembly Bill 1705 will address remedial placement policies at California’s community colleges and help more students to achieve their educational goals.
Last month, the Assembly Higher Education Committee offered bipartisan support to the bill, voting unanimously to move it forward.
AB 1705 provides clarity and additional guidance to help ensure all California community college students benefit from the success of AB 705. This legislation:
• Makes clear that colleges must enroll students in math and English classes where they have the greatest likelihood of completing degree and transfer requirements.
• Clarifies that colleges should not require students to repeat math and English classes they passed in high school.
• Provides greater protections to ensure that students are not required to take extra math and English courses that don’t count towards their degree requirements.
• Clarifies that it is the responsibility of colleges to ensure that students have supports that help them make progress toward their goals.
“Pasadena City College has offered no below-transfer courses since 2019,” said Carrie Starbird, dean of math at Pasadena College. “For the most part, making these changes meant reallocating existing funds. We shifted the classes we were offering from remedial to transfer-level sections. We also reframed our thinking about what students could achieve with the right support. The results speak for themselves.”
AB 1705 is supported by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the Student Senate for California Community Colleges, Students Making a Change, the UC Student Association, and a diverse coalition of higher education equity, research, civil rights, social justice, and student leadership organizations.
In the last month, momentum has continued to build for the legislation, with new organizations offering their support for the bill including Complete College America, Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, Improve your Tomorrow, Promesa Boyle Heights, Southern California Access Network, the USC Race & Equity Center, and Young Invincibles.
Before AB 705, just 32% of Pasadena City students would complete transfer-level math in a year. In the first year of implementing the law, completion nearly doubled, with 59% of students completing transfer-level math. This is higher than the statewide average of 50%.
Prior to this landmark change, the vast majority of California community college students were denied access to transferable, college-level English and math courses. Eighty percent of incoming students started in remedial classes that cost time and money but did not earn credit toward a bachelor’s degree.
AB 705 changed this by restricting colleges from requiring remedial courses. After AB 705 became law, there was a dramatic and unprecedented increase in students completing their classes at the state’s community colleges. Student completion of transfer-level courses increased from 49% to 67% in English and from 26% to 50% in math statewide (2015-2019). This amounts to more than 41,000 additional students who completed transfer-level English and more than 30,000 additional students who completed transfer-level math than before the law (2015-2019).
Yet despite the clear evidence that changing placement policies benefits students, many of California’s community colleges have yet to implement the changes mandated by AB 705. As of fall 2020, only a handful of colleges had achieved 100% implementation of the law.
In particular, colleges have continued to devote substantial resources to remedial math, despite evidence that these classes do not meet the AB 705 standard of maximizing student completion. This is especially true at colleges with more than 2,000 Black students. Enrolling students in remedial courses — even if voluntary — lowers students’ completion and drives racial inequity.
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