Remedial Cal State Students Blame School System : Education: They put the onus on society for failing to ensure better preparation at high schools. More than 60% of freshmen at Northridge campus must take 'developmental' classes.

By JOCELYN Y. STEWART

Jan. 8, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Before beginning the day’s lesson on clarifying devices and transitional categories, Prof. Johnie Scott gave his freshman composition class an assignment that was as much about life and hope as it was about English.

Sitting in a trailer on the campus of Cal State Northridge, the students filled pages of spiral notebooks with responses to the question: “Can We Save Our Schools?: A Personal Reflection.”

“This is what I want you to keep in mind when you write,” Scott said, standing in front of the class. “What message would you give your child, your blood, your seed, about education? And what would you say if they found themselves also having to take developmental reading and math?”

The assignment was not pedantic.

More than 60% of the freshmen who entered Cal State Northridge this fall have been required to take one or more “developmental,” or remedial, classes in math or English to prepare for college-level courses. That’s higher than the average for the 20-campus California State University system, where almost half of the freshmen are required to take such courses.

Those statistics have sparked a heated debate over remedial education at the university level, with some questioning whether the university system should spend money to educate students who are deficient in basic skills. This month the CSU Board of Trustees will discuss a proposal to eliminate spending for all such courses and instead send students to community colleges for remedial classes.

Amid the quest among educators to explain the troubling statistics, students who have taken the remedial classes at Cal State Northridge expressed anger that they are now being looked upon as “the problem.” Instead, these students who were top achievers in high school say their poor performance in college is a reflection of a troubled school system and a society that does not seem to want to improve it.

“The problem needs to be corrected in the school system,” said freshman Tamika Morris, 18, who took remedial English before enrolling in Scott’s college-level composition class. “I don’t think it’s our fault we end up in developmental courses.”

Students who are accepted to CSU schools must be in the top third of their class. Although they may have received good grades in English and math in high school, some find that those grades are no guarantee of success at a four-year university.

Others discover that there are missing pieces--math classes that were considered optional in high school are now essential for success at a university.

At the Pasadena high school that Cal State Northridge senior Vickey Conerly attended, the only math requirement for graduation was pre-algebra. On her own she took an additional year of Algebra I.

But even that extra course was not enough. At CSUN, Conerly scored low on a math placement test and was required to take the remedial course.

“I just had never had it before,” Conerly said of the material on the test. “There was some advanced geometry and a little second-year algebra that I’d never seen. . . . I think it definitely would have helped to have geometry required” in high school.

Even a person who has studied the material before--and seemingly mastered it--may not perform well on the placement tests.

As a student at Chatsworth High School, Vu Ngan took math nearly every semester until graduation: Algebra I and II, geometry and trigonometry. She received mostly A’s and Bs and always thought of herself as a good math student.

“Until I failed the test,” she said. “I was surprised.” Last fall, Ngan took a remedial class at CSUN.

Phillip Emig, chairman of the CSUN math department, said the math placement test covers Algebra I and II and geometry.

“It’s the algebra skills that are absent,” he said of the students who score poorly on the test. “Their geometry skills are poor also, but they cause less difficulty for us.”

Those students who score low on the test must take either one or two semesters of a math course that covers basic algebra and geometry. Students who score in the lowest quartile take a two-semester remedial math course that covers the same material but at a slower pace.

In this class students “will actually spend some time doing arithmetic,” Emig said. “They need it.”

In the spring semester, 42 sections of remedial math will be offered, with about 40 students in each class, Emig said. He said that after taking the course, students generally succeed in other classes.

Although some students see the remedial classes as helpful, the courses do not count for college credit and can prolong their college years--particularly if they do not pass a remedial class.

“I know several students who have had to take it more than once,” Conerly said. “It can be very frustrating.”

William Walsh, who heads the English department at CSUN, said students who end up in remedial writing courses typically lack the ability to “add something of himself or herself” to their writing. “We’re looking for the ability not just to reconfigure information but to evaluate it and draw judgments from it,” he said.

Students who score low on the English placement test must take a one- or two-semester course in which they learn the steps involved in writing.

In the spring, the department will offer 23 sections of developmental writing, with a maximum of 19 students in each class. All of the ethnic studies departments--Pan African studies, Asian American studies and Chicano studies--also offer developmental writing courses.

The students who take developmental English through the Asian American studies department typically come from diverse backgrounds, said Kenyon Chan, department chair.

“In the majority of students that we see it’s a case of very competent students who are learning English as a second language,” Chan said. “They may be immigrants who have been in the country from middle to late childhood and still need to learn English and writing competency.”

Freshman Nghi Truong spoke no English before she came to this country in 1990. At Granada Hills High School she took courses in English as a second language and did well in other classes.

Truong remembers that when she took the English placement test at CSUN, she had not seen most of the vocabulary words on it before. When it came to the writing portion--an essay on rebellion--she could not fill the page.

“I only wrote four or five lines for the essay,” she said. “I failed the test.”

Last fall, Truong took a developmental writing course. The class covered the kinds of words she missed on the placement test and gave her an opportunity to practice writing essays.

“I do better now,” she said.

The idea that immigrants, minorities and the urban poor are the force behind the low performance rates is disputed by students and some faculty.

“I think it would be wrong to assume that all of these developmental courses are only for minority kids,” Chan said. “Even our middle-class white kids required remediation.”

Scott Burns, 21, a junior, was required to take two remedial writing courses. A graduate of Notre Dame, a private school, Burns said the courses allowed him to “catch up on what I had missed from high school.”

“I was caught up in other things, sports and stuff,” said Burns, who played football and ran track in high school. “I missed the beneficial things given in school.” He is one of the students enrolled in Scott’s freshman composition class.

Of the nine people in the class, six have previously taken a remedial writing course. But to Scott, an assistant professor of Pan African studies who coordinates the developmental writing program for the department, these are not remedial students, but adults who have made it.

CSUN students often work full-time jobs, he said. They are older and come from neighborhoods where they may have spent their high school years “negotiating between Raymond Street Crips and Inglewood Family Bloods” on the way home from school and then sat down at night to read Shakespeare.

“When people throw up their hands and say they’re shocked, it just smacks of hypocrisy,” Scott said. “You can look at high school test scores and see high schools are lagging behind the country in performance. If we know this then, why should we be surprised to see the correlatives on placement test scores?”

And the numbers are not new, Scott said, but part of a decline that has gone on for years.

Still, the students want to learn, they are paying for their education, and some faculty say the university has a responsibility to help them reach their potential.

“We’re forgetting this is a state school,” Scott said.

Students such junior Martha Chang, 20, remember. In her essay for Scott’s class, she outlined the problem as she sees it and her role in the solution.

“Most of America does not care enough to do something about this and take actions,” she wrote. “I want to be a teacher.”