“COOLING-OUT” IN OPEN ADMISSIONS: REVISING UNWRITTEN FAILURE
MECHANISMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Meghan Kelley Wagner
B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
(Composition)
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
FALL
2010
“COOLING-OUT” IN OPEN ADMISSIONS: REVISING UNWRITTEN FAILURE
MECHANISMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
A Thesis
by
Meghan Kelley Wagner
Approved by:
_____________________________________, Committee Chair
Daniel L. Melzer, Ph.D.
_____________________________________, Second Reader
Fiona Glade, Ph.D.
_____________________________________
Date
ii
Student: Meghan Kelley Wagner
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the thesis.
____________________________, Graduate Coordinator
David Toise, Ph.D.
Department of English
iii
_________________
Date
Abstract
of
“COOLING-OUT” IN OPEN ADMISSIONS: REVISING UNWRITTEN FAILURE
MECHANISMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
by
Meghan Kelley Wagner
A systematic student failure mechanism—known in sociological terms as “cooling-out”
in higher education—prevents countless community college students from obtaining a
college degree, and college writing programs often play a role in this process. This thesis
utilizes extensive historical and contemporary research as well as case study interviews
and questionnaires with four Sacramento City College students to formulate conclusions
about how two-year colleges and English programs can prevent “cooling-out” in open
admissions schools. Research and case study findings suggest that four major factors
may decrease the influence of “cooling out” in higher education. These factors include
increased communication inside and outside the academy, responsible and localized
college English assessment measures, positive and non-stigmatizing basic writing
pedagogies, and modified writing resources at the college level.
_____________________________________, Committee Chair
Daniel L. Melzer, Ph.D.
_____________________________________
Date
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my genuine thanks to:
The Sacramento City College RISE students who informed and participated in this study.
This research and writing is for you.
Professors Daniel Melzer, Fiona Glade, Amy Heckathorn, Nancy Sweet, and David Bell
for your continued guidance and mentorship. My understanding of the world and my
future work as an educator will reflect your influence.
The entire Sacramento City College RISE family, including Keith Muraki, Juan LaChica,
and all of the other counselors, interns, and professionals who understand the true value
of educational collaboration. I am indebted to you for the countless opportunities I have
been afforded to enact my ideas.
My friend and colleague, Jesús Limón for introducing me to RISE and challenging me to
think every day. Your unfailing support and intelligence have made me a better teacher
and a better person.
All of my friends and family, including my mom, dad, brothers, the Facciuto family, and
the love of my life, Michael Vincent Facciuto. You have always shown me unconditional
love and patience, and your selfless offerings have placed me here.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. v
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1
Purpose of Study ............................................................................................................. 1
The “Cooling-Out” Function in Higher Education ......................................................... 2
Open Admissions Systems—Paradox, Resistance, and Academic Standards ................ 4
Personal Interest in Topic ............................................................................................. 10
Research Methods and Scope ....................................................................................... 12
Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................... 16
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ....................................................................................... 18
The Ideology of Educational Meritocracy .................................................................... 19
Educational Tracking—Then and Now ........................................................................ 21
Assessment Testing and Its Role in “Cooling-Out” Systems ....................................... 28
Improving Assessment .................................................................................................. 31
Literacy, Academic Standards, and Problematic Basic Writing Pedagogies ................ 36
The Contemporary Face of “Cooling-Out” and Ways to Counteract It........................ 43
Writing Centers and Other Solutions ............................................................................ 48
Interdisciplinary Writing Resource Centers.................................................................. 53
3. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 63
vi
SCC’s Matriculation Process—Assessment and Writing Course Sequence ................ 64
RISE Conscious Writing Program—Background, Theory, and Practice ..................... 66
RISE Tutoring Approaches ........................................................................................... 73
Research Methods ......................................................................................................... 79
Student Selection for Study .......................................................................................... 81
4. AN INTERACTIVE EXAMINATION OF “COOLING-OUT”: POTENTIAL
LATENT TERMINAL STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ..................................................... 85
Case Studies .................................................................................................................. 87
Case Study #1: Teresa .................................................................................................. 87
Case Study #2: Diego................................................................................................... 99
Case Study #3: Laka .................................................................................................. 110
Case Study #4: James................................................................................................. 123
5. CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................... 136
Increased Collaboration in Education—Public, Institutional, & Departmental ......... 137
Rethinking Assessment ............................................................................................... 144
Promoting Positive and Productive Basic Writing Pedagogies .................................. 152
Writing Resource Centers—Resisting “Cooling-Out” through Interdisciplinary
Tutoring ...................................................................................................................... 159
A Renewed Look at “Cooling-Out” in Open Admissions Colleges ........................... 171
Appendix A ..................................................................................................................... 174
Appendix B ..................................................................................................................... 186
Appendix C ..................................................................................................................... 190
vii
Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 192
viii
1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Purpose of Study
America’s educational system functions upon the principles of democracy, yet the
educational experiences of America’s students are far from equal. A system in which all
students have an equal opportunity to succeed reflects the notion that learning is an
unalienable right and that all students—regardless of race, class, or creed—deserve a
chance to position themselves personally and professionally as centralized individuals
within our society. Since the advent of open enrollment, institutions of higher education
have granted non-traditional students access to a path toward a college degree, but over
time, this path has become riddled with obstacles and roadblocks that slow student
progress and lead to student attrition. Unfair educational tracking procedures, faulty
college assessment mechanisms, and complex remedial class sequences all lay a
foundation for the systematic “cooling-out” of college students, and they clutter the
challenging road many students must travel when transforming their academic objectives
into realities.
The goal-driven nature of many basic writing programs plays an undeniable role
in this complex puzzle of structured student limitation. For the past several decades, the
field of composition has been filled with profession-wide conversations about the
importance of placement, our pressing troubles with literacy, and the plummeting of
academic standards in higher education. Portions of these discussions and the actual
hoops they produce for students —standardized tests, required remedial classes, and
2
tightened withdrawal/ transfer policies—often paint a particularly undemocratic picture
of American education. They serve as a shrewd façade for the notion that students should
have a chance to succeed—as long as this success is achieved on the academy’s terms.
This austere academic landscape should not, however, discourage composition
professionals from believing that a more equitable system is possible for our students. In
the end, as with a responsibly functioning democracy, it is individuals who will induce
the local change necessary to guide our writing programs toward a place where the
university works with students rather than against them in their pursuit of achieving a
higher education.
The “Cooling-Out” Function in Higher Education
The conception of controlled student failure mechanisms in universities is not a
new topic of discussion among scholars. Despite the fact that the topic of structured
inequality exists in the background of contemporary discussions about American higher
education, this subject has been closely examined for decades. In a 1960 article entitled
“The ‘Cooling-Out’ Function in Higher Education,” sociologist and education theorist
Burton Clark defines and explains the process employed by American community
colleges to weed out low-performing students from the university system. Clark explains
that the open-door admissions policy of community colleges functions on the ideology of
equal opportunity; however, the institutional demand for high university standards
generally removes certain students from the arrangement, who often pose a threat to the
institution’s competition with other universities for faculty and resources. Clark states,
3
The conflict between open-door admission and performance of high quality often means a wide
discrepancy between the hopes of entering students and the means of their realization. Students
who pursue ends for which a college education is required but who have little academic ability
gain admission into colleges only to encounter standards of performance they cannot meet. As a
result, while some students of low promise are successful, for large numbers failure is inevitable
and structured. The denial is delayed, taking place within the college instead of at the edge of the
system. It requires that many colleges handle the student who intends to complete college and has
been allowed to become involved but whose destiny is to fail. (571)
This complex process takes place over time and generally includes the needed
participation of assessment centers, counseling departments, and vocational education
programs to function properly.
Furthermore, this method of maintaining limited student success demands that all
parties involved function largely within an ideology of meritocracy; the student’s ability
to obtain a degree ultimately rests upon his or her own capacity to succeed as an
individual. This notion of personal responsibility holds a great deal of significance and
validity in American society; indeed, it is a worthy ideal built into the very fiber of our
national culture. Nevertheless, this notion also serves to obscure the organizational
functioning of the university. Clark explains that “one dilemma of a cooling-out role is
that it must be kept reasonably away from public scrutiny and not clearly perceived or
understood by prospective clientele” (575). In effect, this practice must be kept “hidden”
in order for it to fulfill its purpose properly.
Of course, it is no secret that universities function within a hierarchical
framework; schools channel students into various facets of professional society by means
of academic programs that reflect varying levels of educational prestige. In an extensive
4
study of three U.S. states’ open admissions programs, David Rosen argues that higher
education
mirrors the organization of our society. It is a highly stratified structure, creating status divisions
among its various elements…It is highly predictable where graduates of each particular segment
of higher education (junior college, state college, university, etc) will find themselves in terms of
socio-economic status. It is also highly predictable where high school graduates will find
themselves in relation to the higher education community. (7)
Rosen and his colleagues report that institutions of higher education receive students with
previously-constructed academic labels and work to preserve these positions throughout
students’ educational careers (if these careers last). Unfortunately, studies have also
shown that this process of channeling students in American education starts long before
their college careers begin. Some of these studies include Jeannie Oakes’s
comprehensive research on tracking and ability grouping, Ira Shor’s and Mike Rose’s
extensive commentary about vocational education in America, and Jonathan Kozol’s
broad overview of the tiered educational system in America that greatly discourages poor
and minority children from developing high aspirations in school. All of this research
indicates that our country’s educational system functions quite differently than
Americans commonly believe it should based on our widely shared beliefs about
equality.
Open Admissions Systems—Paradox, Resistance, and Academic Standards
One of the central problems with open admissions systems in community colleges
is that all students have an equal opportunity to enter, but not all students are equally
prepared to face the academic work that lies in store for them. Although the open
5
admissions policy implemented at the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1970 is
not the first example of a move toward equal student access to higher education, it does
serve as a modern illustration of an institutional move to make equal opportunity a reality
for underprepared students. Open admissions took form as a result of organized student
action and a mass rejection of social inequality, but the educational structure that resulted
from it reflects the true extent of the larger social problems involved with American
education. In a book length study on the subject of open admissions, Anne Folger
Decker, Ruth Jody, and Felicia Brings explain,
The concept of Open Admissions is the result of economic reality, democratic political
philosophy, and educational theory. It is not an organic outgrowth of the university system, but
rather an attempt to solve a broad range of social, economic, and political problems through
education…City University became a funnel into which people of all classes, races, religions,
nationalities, and experiences were poured and out of which ‘college students’ emerged. This
truly democratic attempt to equalize opportunity through education, did not, in its planning stage,
take into account the full extent of the task. (10)
Shortly after the open admissions policy took effect, college students and educators faced
a period of “intellectual and physical chaos” (Decker, et. al. 5). Students and teachers
encountered a severe lack of classroom space, a broad range of discrepancies over
academic expectations, and a general meshing of largely disparate student populations. It
became abundantly clear just how unequal the quality of pre-collegiate level education
was during this time period, and despite the persistence of a modified open admissions
system in community colleges over the past several decades, it remains clear that many
problematic factors have since remained unchanged for incoming freshmen.
6
Conservative professional resistance to the practice of open admissions has
lingered in the academy over time due to the notion that by educating the masses, open
enrollment universities ultimately serve to dilute the validity and prestige of a higher
education. This resistance is abundantly evident in the writings of American academics
before CUNY opened its doors in 1970. In an article about lowered standards and
heightened student selectivity during the matriculation process, Harvard professor
Douglas Bush argues, “There is no use in priding ourselves on the operation of the
democratic principle if education loses much of its meaning in the process…” (24). Bush
contends that not all students are fit for a college education, but by claiming that they are,
the academy devalues its own mission and objectives. He claims that “If high school
graduates are illiterate, they have no business in college” (28); during this time, Bush
believes universities are filled with “an army of misfits, who lower educational standards
and increase expense” (27). This viewpoint is echoed in Louis G. Heller’s similarly
strong opposition to open admissions systems. In his book, The Death of the American
University: With Special Reference to the Collapse of City College of New York, Heller
states that because of plummeting standards in universities, the Open Admissions system
has become “a political device for giving a college diploma without giving a college
education” (93). These unyielding perspectives are evidence of the fact that the notion of
democratic education has met a great deal of opposition in the name of augmented
academic standards.
In contrast, during the 1970s, composition instructor and writing program
administrator Mina Shaughnessy served as an advocate for a more authentic, democratic
7
open admissions system at CUNY. A great deal of English scholarship produced
immediately after the arrival of open enrollment at CUNY points to the uncertainties
shared by many writing instructors about how to teach basic-skills students; some saw
this drastic transformation of our educational system as an abomination while others
viewed it as an opportunity. In her seminal basic writing text, Errors and Expectations,
Mina Shaughnessy argues that English teachers face a new challenge during this time;
they must develop a progressive view of language and a willingness to see basic writers
not as “uneducable” but as severely let down by their educational system thus far.
CUNY’s implementation of an open admissions policy challenges an extensive history
and tradition of exclusion in American education, and Shaughnessy endeavors to bring a
true sense of inclusion to writing programs. She says,
Colleges must be prepared to make more than a graceless and begrudging accommodation to
[basic writers’] unpreparedness, opening their doors with one hand and then leading students into
an endless corridor of remedial anterooms with the other…We cannot know how many students of
talent have left our programs not for want of ability but for the sense that they had of being done
in by short-cuts and misperceptions of educational efficiency. (293)
Shaughnessy’s statement reflects an astute awareness of the practical disconnect between
a democratic educational system’s claims and its actions. English programs have often
alleged to provide students with the writing skills they need for a competitive market
economy, yet the framework of these programs commonly forges basic writing, and
language itself, into a “gate-keeping” mechanism that furtively grants some students
access to the university and denies many others the same privileges.
8
A few decades later, Mary Soliday argues that the ideology of access present in
discussions about remediation and open enrollment systems tends to disregard outside
factors that serve as obstacles for students working to obtain a higher education. In her
article, “Ideologies of Access and the Politics of Agency,” Soliday explains that critics
have tied CUNY’s diminished retention rates to remedial programs rather than to a
general privatization of public higher education. She asserts that studies have shown that
“a constellation of institutional policies and economic factors” (66) have grown to affect
student progress toward a bachelor’s degree. Some of these obstacles to student success
include increased tuition, standardized tests, required remedial course sequences, and
narrowed withdrawal and transfer regulations (66). Soliday asserts that we tend to
downplay and/or disregard the fact that student progress exists within an actual,
socioeconomic context. She concludes that we should dispose of our neoliberal notions
of exclusive individual responsibility and complicate our ideas about the politics of
agency by paying attention to issues such as pervasive racism, university defunding, and
realistic student struggles (70-71). By doing so, we may view the subject of access in
open enrollment systems through a more practical and less microscopic lens.
In another progressive approach to this subject, CSU Chico English professor
Tom Fox argues that historically, the academy has used the ever-present subject of
academic standards in higher education to limit certain students from gaining access to
the university. He argues that the “use of standards, as a means to protect the status quo,
has historical precedents; we know each time standards are called into question, each
time professors or educational bureaucrats begin to moan about the falling quality of
9
student work, what’s really underfoot is a desire to make sure the same students who
have always gone to college still go” (7). This argument is a crucial one for the purpose
of my own study. Fox’s perspective is that “as writing teachers, we are institutionally
positioned to gatekeep, to do harm” and that “To create access, we must go against the
grain” (17). In essence, we are too often trained to act as participant members in an
academic system that ensures an existent “discrepancy between aspirations and avenue”
for the students who enter this system (Clark 576).
My own hope and intention in this thesis is to argue that in order for democratic
principles to exist in higher education, there is a pressing need for constant self- and
institutional reflection within university English departments. Without a willingness to
view education as a human enterprise, we cannot expect to create any change within the
problematic educational system that students presently face. More often than not, we
need to pay close attention to the viewpoints and perspectives of the real students in our
programs and work to modify our goals, objectives, and practices accordingly if they fail
to serve students responsibly. One of the most fruitful ways to gain an understanding of
students’ perspectives is to interact with students individually, and within English
departments, writing centers are an excellent space for this type of interaction. As I will
discuss later, writing centers have the potential to serve as a unique space which can help
to identify the specific needs of a university’s student population as well as encourage
educational professionals to reflect critically on their own assumptions and expectations
of students. In essence, we can use our direct contact with students in writing centers to
10
help ensure that locally constructed solutions guide the continued and/or improved
success of our English programs as a whole.
As such, in this thesis, I also intend to add authentic student voices to many of the
existing arguments present within the academy about open enrollment, “cooling-out,” and
student success via individualized questionnaires and interviews conducted with a
specific group of open enrollment students in Sacramento. By doing so, I hope to
provide a conscientious impression of how many factors—including educational and
language background, student perception of assessment, negative and positive
experiences with composition—create the incongruence we generally witness in our open
enrollment systems.
Personal Interest in Topic
I am personally invested in exploring the topic of the principles and practice of
democratic education—and the place of writing instruction within it—for a number of
reasons. First and foremost, I believe that looming above all professional debates and
aggravated student discussions about the topic of equal access to higher education is a
question not of practicalities, but of ethics. As a student and an educator, I am deeply
disturbed by the notion that some individuals in our society are deemed worthy of a high
quality education while others are not. Many American teachers, tutors, and school
administrators recognize that inequity in education is wrong; we want academic learning
to represent something that is right and good, and we continually work to promote this
principle. The unfortunate reality, however, is that if this principle does not apply to all
students, it holds little to no value in democratic educational practice. By denying some
11
students the right to wholly test their curiosities and develop their understanding of the
world around them, we perpetuate an educational system that is unequal, and thus,
undemocratic. Many Americans would argue that this scenario is not representative of
education in this country; however, a volume of disconcerting research certainly suggests
otherwise.
My interest in this topic is also driven by the notion that despite our fair intentions
to promote higher education as an opportunity that is equally accessible for all American
students, unfair educational practices persist as a result of our maintenance of
problematic traditions within the academy. Adherence to the status quo oftentimes
prevents educators and students alike from questioning their ability to reform the portions
of our educational system they see as problematic, and these problems remain fixed
among us despite our desire to change them. Our own country’s educational history,
however, reminds us that students have a great deal of power to resist social inequality in
schools, and my own personal work with critically conscious students reminds me of this
fact on a daily basis.
Perhaps my most immediate source of inspiration to complete this thesis stems
from my personal engagement with a group of dedicated individuals in a local
community college student resource center that works to resist social inequality and help
students succeed despite these inequities. For the past year, I have worked as a volunteer
writing tutor and program coordinator at Sacramento City College RISE (Respect,
Integrity, and Self-Determination through Education), an organization which aims at
providing all students with a space on campus where they may feel valued, respected, at
12
ease, and confident. RISE is a space where students have an opportunity share their
victories, defeats, opinions, and talents regardless of their educational and personal
backgrounds. A large number of the participant members of SCC RISE are students who
are commonly identified as “latent terminals,” or likely community college drop-outs, in
an open admissions “cooling-out” system (Clark 572). The students in this program,
however, do not allow their personal or educational histories to predict their academic
futures. Students visit RISE for individual educational counseling, tutoring, and support
from other students who understand the struggles they face, and many students utilize the
program’s collective promotion of student success to resist the obstacles they encounter
in order to achieve their academic goals. My own personal, academic, and professional
experiences in this program have guided my understanding of open enrollment systems,
college assessment, English department remediation procedures, and many of the other
topics of discussion in this thesis.
Research Methods and Scope
Because I recognize the abstract and largely theoretical nature of the concepts of
“cooling-out” and democracy in higher education, I plan to create a methodology for this
thesis which scrutinizes its presence in the actual lives of real students in order to
determine whether or not my notions about locally-imposed solutions to this omnipresent
problem seem feasible. “Cooling-out” is not an issue that can be reversed or “fixed” from
any single place; it is a problem which must be addressed in several different places
throughout the university—assessment centers, counseling programs, academic student
resource centers, and classroom communities. This scope is much too broad for my
13
study; the potential effects of program solutions in any of these areas are certainly worthy
of examination, but for the sake of my own research, I would like to narrow the scope of
my investigation specifically to writing resource centers.
Writing centers are a common component of most college campuses, and they
serve as a unique third space for students to connect their individual writing experiences
to the often unfamiliar culture of the academy. Writing centers exist as a location within
the university where students can actively function as individuals who are more complex
than the series of labels affixed to their transcripts and records. As Marilyn Cooper
suggests, writing centers are “places where students can go to continue the conversations
about ideas begun in class…to find people they can complain to, to work out solutions to
the problems they face in their writing, to find a friend and a colleague and an advocate—
all of those things [teachers] cannot really be for them” (54). Indeed, writing centers can
also act as a “contact zone” (Pratt 34) for students and the institution where historically
underrepresented individuals may examine their marginalized status from within a
“politically peripheral place” (Bawarshi and Pelkowski 81). Students seek out support
from the often community-oriented atmosphere of writing centers as one way to ensure
academic progress, yet as research suggests, the development of academic writing skills
is only one part of a student’s struggle in most “cooling-out” systems.
For the purpose of this project, I would like to conduct a sample of case studies
with students working toward a degree at Sacramento City College, a local open
admissions system. In these case studies, I would like to conduct interviews which aim
to allow students themselves to identify some of the issues and struggles they face in their
14
efforts to achieve their academic goals. All of the students selected for these case studies
will be members of Sacramento City College RISE (Respect, Integrity, and SelfDetermination through Education), the aforementioned interdisciplinary, primarily
student-run, resource center which aims at assisting underrepresented students toward a
college degree. RISE’s mission is to provide a community of support for nontraditional
students who, historically, are less likely to graduate college, and the program targets
students currently working to reverse their academic probationary status.
The students selected will also be participant members of RISE Conscious
Writing Program, a writing center-based project I co-created, -organized, and administered alongside fellow graduate student, Jesús Limón. As such, all students
involved will have received writing tutoring from some member of our program on a
regular or semi-regular basis. As a writing tutor and program co-coordinator, my subject
position in relation to this student sample will likely be a close one. Because many of our
program’s regular students have openly discussed their personal struggles in relation to
their academic lives during their tutoring sessions, I have constructed questions that will
effectively incorporate our running dialogue into the interviews. In much of my
interaction with SCC students in the past year, I have learned a great deal about their
specific, individual struggles with the university’s writing assessment process, the
confusions and anxieties they face in their basic writing courses, the run-around they
have encountered on campus, and the personal, financial, and familial difficulties many
of them have sought to overcome during their experience as college students.
15
I recognize that much of my research has led to bias about the unfairness of
university remediation practices; consequently, one of my goals in engaging students in
dialogue will be to listen to students’ perspectives more than I profess my own views
about writing programs. In conducting these case studies, I am particularly interested not
only in highlighting students’ struggles, but also in challenging my own beliefs about
educational fairness. The more I combine practical applications with composition theory,
I learn that our notions about concepts like student agency, program equity, and faculty
accountability do not always necessarily match the opinions of students. Rather than
foist my research perspective upon students, I mainly would like to use my position as an
interviewer and listener to establish a type of bridge between academic debate and
student experience. My purpose in selecting students from this program is to investigate
the perspectives and experiences of the individuals who are most likely to fail according
to the basic precepts of “cooling-out” in open admissions systems.
In addition to receiving verbal responses to my interview questions, I also plan to
collect student writing samples to include as appendices in my thesis to show physical
examples of the types of writing commonly viewed as skills-deficient according to this
open admission system’s assessment criteria. From these students’ writing samples, and
from their interview feedback about the conditions under which they write best or most
comfortably, I would like to examine the most effective ways that writing centers may
adopt nontraditional principles—like professional interdisciplinary involvement, revised
student behavior policies, and/or physical space reconsiderations—to help certain
populations of students remain engaged in and personally connected to their academic
16
lives as learners. Furthermore, my hope is that these students—who already have the
potential to use their intrinsic motivation effectively—will also gain an opportunity to
reflect on their own academic careers and writing processes to help further their progress
in Sacramento City College’s open admission system.
Specifically, I would like to interview a multilingual, long-term resident
immigrant or AB 540 student; a re-entry or returning female student; an English-speaking
student with significant dialect distinction from “Standard English”; and a first generation
college student. I believe this sample of nontraditional students could provide a wealth of
information about how and why concepts like Generation 1.5 status, legal residency,
personal culture, familial expectations, parenting, and outside work obligations contribute
to student attrition. I would like to examine the experiences of students who began their
college careers as individuals categorized as writing skills-deficient by Sacramento City
College in order to identify patterns of attitude, confusion, misperception, and/or aversion
toward composition at the college level. I have constructed a list of interview questions
that aim to connect the personal experiences of students as complex people to their
experiences as writers. My goal in doing so is to unite the practical, firsthand accounts of
real students with the theoretical texts which commonly seek to deconstruct these
students in order to provide concrete ways for writing centers to function with both the
authentic and the speculative in mind.
Overview of Chapters
In the second chapter of my thesis, I plan to delve deeply into the concept of
“cooling-out” in higher education and into the issues of controversy that have placed
17
basic writing in this system. Within this discussion, I will provide an overview of the
various structures that contribute to the “cooling-out” process, including educational
tracking, assessment mechanisms, and problematic basic writing pedagogies and
curricula. To this discussion, I would also like to add an overview of how writing centers
and other third spaces may help counteract the inequities created by these systems. In
Chapter 3, I plan to lay a foundation and rationale for my research methodology,
explaining how and why I selected specific students, interview questions, and logistical
criteria for my case studies. In Chapter 4, I plan to provide an overview of my findings,
detailing the feedback I receive from students about their experiences with open
enrollment, basic writing, and third space composition tutoring (inside and outside
traditional writing centers). Chapter 5 will summarize my conclusions about the
students’ feedback and outline ways in which writing centers may aim to better address
the needs of students traditionally targeted by the university as “undesirables.” Ideally,
this chapter will connect my initial research and case study findings to writing center
theory in order to build upon current work in the field.
18
Chapter 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
For several decades, open admissions community colleges have afforded
countless American students the opportunity to receive a higher education—an
opportunity that has not always existed for all individuals in this country. The opening of
CUNY’s doors in 1970 demonstrated a radical, political movement toward egalitarianism
in the United States, and many educational professionals would agree that this
progressive attempt to provide equal access is one of the positive residual effects of open
admissions. The fact remains that many American students have received and continue
to benefit from many of the advantages of this system of higher education. One of the
virtues of open admissions is that its organization is largely based on students’ individual
merit and diligence rather than on notions of exclusivity and elitism. Whether or not the
outcomes of this system match its ideology, however, is another matter of concern.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the complex institutional
structures, programs, and obstacles that many students face when they enter an open
admissions system. In many respects, these entities are rightfully considered necessary
for the proper functioning and legitimate academic status of the two-year college;
however, when merged together and placed into a sociopolitical context, this arrangement
also serves to limit students’ individual capacities to succeed. In order to delineate this
system and present it in light of Burton Clark’s notion of “cooling-out” in higher
education, this chapter will offer information on each individual element of the
organizational structure, including detailed accounts on meritocracy, educational
19
tracking, assessment testing, academic standards, and problematic basic writing
pedagogies. In addition, the chapter will discuss scholarship concerned with the way
“cooling-out” functions nowadays in open admissions colleges as well as possible ways
institutions may counteract these issues through writing centers and other student
resources.
The Ideology of Educational Meritocracy
The ideology of meritocracy is a crucial component of open admissions systems,
and this principle often acts as the driving force for both student success and failure.
According to this ideology, the student’s ability to obtain a college degree ultimately rests
upon his or her own capacity to succeed as an individual. A student’s personal choices—
to attend college, to obtain passing grades, to persevere through difficult circumstances,
to complete a university degree—require a great deal of self-determination and an
understanding of the academy’s culture. This notion of personal responsibility holds
significance and validity in American society; indeed, it is a worthy ideal built into the
very fiber of our national culture. Nevertheless, this concept is also much more
multifaceted and potentially problematic than we often care to culturally acknowledge.
Tom Fox asserts that the notion of meritocracy allows universities to maintain
their status quo by way of academic standards and inadvertently place blame on students
for their academic shortcomings. Fox states, “The university’s power to exclude is often
neither direct nor centralized. As a meritocracy, it operates on ideologies of
individualism and competition. And backing it up are seemingly ahistorical standards
that putatively distinguish between the smart and the stupid, the hard-working and the
20
lazy” (75). The academy often portrays educational success as the final product of a
student’s unwavering dedication or applied individual responsibility rather than as part of
a “material, socioeconomic reality” (Soliday 70).
According to this ideology, a student’s inability to accomplish his or her personal
and/or academic goals is ultimately the fault of the individual student in question. More
often than not, however, it can also be said that student “Underachievement is the
outcome of underinvestment in the inferior schools and colleges set aside for [the]
majority of students” (Shor “Errors and Economics” 31). Many scholars argue that
educational inequality—in terms of the college preparedness of students, the quality of
school faculties and curricula, etc—is, in fact, largely the result of social and economic
disparity (Fox, Kozol, Shor, Soliday).
This inequality is clearly evident among school districts with varying levels of
economic resources. In his book, The Sham of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid
Schooling in America, Jonathan Kozol discusses in stark detail the shocking differences
between rich and poor American schools. He says, “In a nation in which fairness was
respected, children of the poorest and least educated mothers would receive the most
extensive and most costly…education, not the least and cheapest, because children in
these families need it so much more than those whose educated parents can deliver the
same benefit of early learning to them in their homes (54). Kozol points out that we often
jump to blame parents in these poorer sections of the country without acknowledging that
they often were educated in these substandard conditions as well. As a result, a cycle of
poverty prevents educational reform, and children suffer the consequences.
21
Aside from the fact that such large discrepancies exist among schools with
varying levels of monetary resources, students in the K-12 public school system often
demonstrate wide gaps in academic achievement as well. These gaps can be found
within a range of individual schools among different student groups, starting at grade
levels well before college. Within public schools—both wealthy and poor—students are
commonly categorized and separated according to their perceived capacities to excel as
learners, and this practice produces a form of structured inequality within our public
school system. The broad range of intellectual achievement students carry with them
ultimately serves as a major precursor to community college students’ eventual failure in
open admissions systems. And despite the often expansive distance between students’
academic achievements, schools frequently consider this issue to be the result of the
individual student’s capacity to learn, or his or her own motivation to succeed. While
individual student disposition certainly does play a part in college failure and success, it
is also important to examine how students come to develop these dispositions.
Educational Tracking—Then and Now
Perhaps one of the most incongruous aspects of an American educational
meritocracy is the system of educational tracking. Tracking is the instructional process of
grouping students according to their perceived intellectual abilities within schools—a
process that is omnipresent in the United States but has few demonstrated positive
outcomes. In Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, Jeannie Oakes writes
extensively about this subject, examining not only its academic functioning and
propagation but its consequences and effects on student self-perception and behavior.
22
She describes this method of dividing students into categorical ability groups as a “wellchoreographed series of much-practiced and often-repeated steps” that leads to deeprooted manifestations of inequality (1). Many educational professionals believe that
students are liable to be more successful if grouped with other students who reflect their
academic abilities; however, Oakes’s research suggests something quite different. She
claims that her studies uncover “virtually mountains of research evidence indicating that
homogeneous grouping doesn’t consistently help anyone learn better” (7). Evidence of
this statement can be found in studies on ability grouping through the past several
decades from as far back as the 1930s (W.S. Miller and H.J. Otto) to later studies in the
1960s (Goodlad), 1970s (Esposito), and 1980s (R. D. Froman).
To gain insight about junior and senior high school students’ perceptions of and
experiences in their high and low track English classes, Oakes’s research team analyzed
twenty-five junior and senior high schools in the United States, surveying the experiences
of over 13,000 students from high and low track classes. During their study, they asked
students the question, “What is the most important thing you have learned or done so far
in this class?” (67). Students’ responses to this question are particularly disconcerting.
High track students answer with statements like, “I have learned things that will get me
ready for college entrance examinations. Also many things on how to write compositions
that will help me in college” (69). Another high track English student answers, “[I have]
Learned to analyze famous writings by famous people, and we have learned to
understand people’s different viewpoints on general ideas” (68). Low track English
students’ answers to the same question are decidedly different. One junior high school
23
student responds, “I’ve learned how to get a better job and how to act when at an
interview filling out forms” (70). Other low track English students answer, “[I] Learned
about how to get a job” (71), and “I learned that English is boring” (71). Responses like
these demonstrate a marked difference between students’ general attitudes and curiosities
about the subject of English. Furthermore, they reveal major differences in the types of
preparation students receive in their respective academic settings.
Tracking proponents also believe in placing individuals on separate pathways
because less capable students might be likely to develop negative attitudes about
themselves if merged with students who tend to learn faster. However, Oakes’s research
indicates that “students placed in average and low-track classes do not develop positive
attitudes. Rather than help students to feel more comfortable about themselves, the
tracking process seems to foster lowered self-esteem” (8). Furthermore, in her in-depth
study of students’ attitudes about their classes, Oakes shows that tracking and ability
grouping
play a major role in enabling students to internalize failure resulting from the stratification process
as an individual rather than a social or structural problem. Through the selection and allocation
system within schools and the differential educational treatments students receive, schools either
reinforce or modify students’ self-concepts and aspirations, so that they view their current and
easily predicted social-class roles as appropriate. (145)
Thus, students are assigned their educational roles at an early age and develop identities
that reflect these roles through years of institutional reinforcement—both positive and
negative. A “legitimation of inequality” results, causing students to view themselves as
ineffectual members of their educational environment (144). It seems unlikely that the
24
majority of American educators would see themselves as accomplices in a widespread
attempt to perpetuate an educational system that not only fails to yield results, but seems
remarkably undemocratic and unfair to young people in our country. Nonetheless,
professionals often seem to ignore systematic inequalities like these and work to get by
despite a status quo that limits student progress and individual autonomy.
Oakes expresses a similar frustration about the inherent incongruity of our system.
She says, “Tracking seems to be one of those well-intended pathways that…has some
pretty hellish consequences for young people in schools. How can this happen? How
can well-intentioned people, trained educators, participate in a process that turns out to
affect many students in ways contrary to their intentions?” (5). Unfortunately, these
disappointing but “well-intentioned” corollaries trickle down throughout many facets of
higher education, pre-empting any opportunities students might otherwise encounter to
develop themselves as participant members of the system, and preventing students from
gaining access to the institutions which claim to keep their doors wide open.
One of the most disconcerting details about educational tracking is the historical
circumstances from which it emerged in the United States. During the early twentieth
century, as a result of a genuine societal acceptance of the concept of social Darwinism,
schools began creating separate programs for students based on the idea that depending
on their racial and economic backgrounds, students held particular, inherent abilities as
human beings. Based on the precepts of social Darwinism,
children of various social classes, those from native-born and long-established families and those
of recent immigrants, differed greatly in fundamental ways. Children of the affluent were
considered by school people to be abstract thinkers, head minded, and oriented toward literacy.
25
Those of the lower classes and the newly immigrated were considered laggards, ne’er-do-wells,
hand minded, and socially inefficient, ignorant, prejudiced, and highly excitable.” (35)
These social stereotypes determined students’ places in their educational system. Before
World War I, students were openly grouped into particular programs based on their
economic backgrounds as well as their ethnic and racial identities. Over time, however,
this obvious, class-based categorization of students was called into question since it so
plainly clashed with the American ideology of egalitarianism (Oakes 36).
Nonetheless, the problematic viewpoints and practices of social Darwinism
continued to prevail in the following decades. Instead of a blatant, class-based sorting of
students, however, schools reinforced and promulgated the concept of student
differentiation by way of academic testing. Lewis Termin’s Stanford-Binet IQ test
quickly became a widespread mechanism for assessing students’ intellectual abilities, and
this test gave schools a scientific rationale for sorting students into various intellectual
classifications. The IQ test was seen as an objective and unbiased instrument for
determining the type of education students should receive, despite the fact that shortly
after the test’s creation, eighty percent of immigrants tested were classified as
intellectually inferior (Oakes 36). Concerning these individuals, Termin writes,
Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least in the family stocks from which they come. The fact
that one meets this type which such extraordinary frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and
negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will
have to be taken up new…there will be discovered enormously significant racial
differences…which cannot be wiped out by any schemes of mental culture. Children of this group
26
should be segregated in special classes…They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be
made efficient workers. (Qtd. in Oakes 36-37)
Termin’s estimation of immigrants’ intellectual capacities demonstrates a particularly
troublesome history attached to the subject of educational ability grouping. Part of the
unsettling nature of this history is that it conflicts so drastically with American notions
about egalitarianism, and despite our present understanding of the unmitigated falsity of
Termin’s statements, our public school systems continue to utilize tracking as a central
practice in the education of our children nearly a hundred years later.
Considering the notion that all students have a right to a quality education, the
majority of educators today would likely agree that separating students according to their
ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds would be not only a harmful, but an unethical,
practice. We now know that these factors do not predict the intellectual capacities of
students, and we accept the notion that racial segregation is an indecent, and even
immoral, practice in our schools. And yet—despite the social integration victories of the
Civil Rights Movement in America—the ethnic and socioeconomic demographic of lowtrack classes in United States schools still reflects the educational portrait Termin paints
in the early 1900s. Although it is clearly illegitimate to separate students according to
these criteria, Oakes’s research again shows that the social makeup of our classrooms is,
nonetheless, unbalanced. She states,
While there is certainly no automatic placement of poor and minority children in low tracks or of
affluent white students in upper tracks, the odds of being assigned into particular tracks are not
equal. In virtually every study that has considered this question, poor and minority students have
been found in disproportionately large percentages in the bottom groups. (64)
27
This fact reflects the idea that although, in theory, we do not promote the notion of
inequality, our schools still do not appear equal in practice. In addition to the data
produced in much of Oakes’s public school research, students’ individual attitudes about
their high and low class tracks also serve to reinforce the discrepancy between ability
groups.
The responses Oakes’s research team received from these students concerning
their educational experiences serve to underscore the quantitative data produced in their
overall tracking study. Oakes’s survey questions prompted student responses which
reflect attitudes about learning that bear a peculiar resemblance to Lewis Termin’s
statements about the abstract thinking abilities of the affluent and the “feeble-minded”
nature of the lower classes in the early 1900s. It appears as though high track students
are—according to Termin’s outdated scientific model— encouraged to “master
abstractions” while low track students are trained as “efficient workers” (Oakes 37).
The problem with this discrepancy is that the fissure between high and low track
student achievement and attitudes broadens and deepens as students travel from
kindergarten to high school. Upon their arrival at open admissions community colleges,
students exhibit remarkable differences in knowledge and academic skills, and tracking is
one of the most prominent reasons for this phenomenon. The positive or negative
reinforcement students receive, the exposure they gain to valuable information, and the
amount of challenging work they complete over time in their individual tracks all play a
huge role in students’ abilities to engage in and be successful at a higher education. In
essence, some students are prepared for college while others are far behind. In open
28
admissions college systems, the first mechanism that often identifies this achievement
gap—and simultaneously works to eliminate lower-performing students—is assessment
testing.
Assessment Testing and Its Role in “Cooling-Out” Systems
In his study on “cooling-out” in higher education, Burton Clark identifies
assessment testing at San Jose City College as the preliminary step in the “reorienting
process” of students who demonstrate lower academic abilities. Clark explains that at
this particular college, “the initial move in a cooling-out process is pre-entrance testing:
low scores on achievement tests lead poorly qualified students into remedial classes.
Assignment to remedial work casts doubt and slows the student’s movement into bona
fide transfer courses. The remedial courses are, in effect, a subcollege” (572). Clark’s
contention is that, for many students, assessment testing creates an initial academic
hurdle that can be quite difficult to clear over time, and students are often relatively
unaware of the crucial nature of this first step in their higher educational career.
Throughout the subsequent decades, many composition scholars have argued that
the academy’s defense of its borders begins with the process of assessment testing. In her
article, “The Shadow of Testing,” Carolyn Matalene explains that open admissions
policies in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged an institutional need for student placement,
but that these tests can sometimes develop into systems that segregate rather than
integrate students. Matalene asserts that “Tests designed as instruments for measuring
can easily become instruments for eliminating” (40). She points out the irony inherent in
the idea that her own institution’s Writing Proficiency Test, which was “inspired by
29
responses to the Open Door policy at CCNY would now be used by many to Shut the
Door” (39).
Similarly, Judith Fishman’s professional experience leads her to believe that
writing assessment tests can not only discourage pluralistic thinking, but they also can
reflect “anomalies and contradictions between poor performance…and [students’]
apparent strengths of mind, intellectual talents, and verbal skills” (19). Oftentimes, the
time-constricted nature of these tests creates considerable challenges for many students
whose first language is not English. Multilingual writing professor Ilona Leki argues that
“many tertiary institutions in the United States have required writing entrance,
proficiency, and/or exit exams to ensure that those with weak writing skills would be
weeded out of academic institutions, prevented from progressing within those
institutions, or barred from graduating from them” (315). From an organizational
standpoint, “Testing regimes transfer power from classrooms, teachers, and students at
the bottom to administrators at the top, not a healthy outcome if we want education for
democracy” (Shor, “Our Apartheid” 96). Many proponents of large-scale testing argue
for its existence with the intention to benefit students, yet an excessive focus on academic
standards and literacy—a trend often created by testing—can certainly prove to be more
limiting than liberatory for students.
It is no secret that many unsuccessful forms of writing assessment serve to
manage the placement of the greatest number of students for the least amount of money.
Computerized or multiple-choice language tests are certainly convenient for entrance
administration, but composition research shows that they can demonstrate little about
30
students’ actual writing abilities. The unfortunate fact is that decisions involved with
testing implementation often have nothing to do with students as individuals who have
personal goals and intellectual aspirations. Carolyn Matalene explains, “Ever since the
media decided to make copy out of students’ language deficiencies, testing has become
chic. It sells. Some of us have even figured out that getting testing will also get our
pictures in the paper, our names on the governor’s committee, and our pay raises (and
travel requests) past the dean” (39). In effect, assessment frequently involves individuals
with special interests; unfortunately, these individuals often are not the students being
placed by the tests in question.
Ira Shor argues a similar point—that “Top-down testing has little to do with
bottom-up learning and a lot to do with institutional control” (“Our Apartheid” 98). He
states,
top-down assessment and required [basic writing]/comp are linguistic policy for containing three
things: the costs of mass higher education (while lavish funds are spent on elite campuses), the
potential of critically ‘writing and reading the world’ as the late Paulo Freire put it, and the output
of college grads whose aspiring numbers are already overwhelming a job market seeking cheap
labor…The structure now in place helps maintain the inequality built over the last century or
two,…rewarding those who speak and look like those already in power. This arrangement is
undemocratic and immoral. (98)
The organization Shor describes mirrors a system of education that has commoditized
learning in order to benefit the individuals and entities that may profit from student
enrollment. This system disengages students from authentic discovery and limits the
31
number of students who will eventually take part in our competitive market economy; it
is a system that is misleading, unfair, and inextricably combined with “cooling-out.”
To reverse this trend, professional employees of all levels at universities—
individuals who work inside and outside the classroom, in the presence and absence of
students—must consistently remind themselves that universities (and their payroll
departments) exist because of students. If the ultimate goal of the academy is to teach
students, it becomes important to integrate our goals for the classroom with our aims for
placing students in them. Matalene states, “If a rich model of writing should inform our
teaching, so should a complex model of testing inform our educational policies” (43). An
“informed” and appropriately complex educational policy model can undoubtedly better
serve individual students, but professionals must be prepared to work diligently for this
change. By revising our current modes of assessment testing, alongside developing
comprehensive, interdisciplinary writing resource centers, students might have a better
chance of succeeding in the open admissions systems that often push them toward the
margins of the academy and eventually out of the institution. Changing assessment
methods will require a great deal of trust in students and their ability to make informed
decisions, and interdisciplinary writing resource centers—which this chapter will later
discuss in more detail—will help support students once they have made these informed
decisions.
Improving Assessment
Even though funds-driven assessment mechanisms might benefit the university as
a whole, assessment scholars are in agreement that institutions should seek to implement
32
locally-constructed placement procedures that will most accurately benefit the specific
students entering these institutions (Huot). Depending on the size, location, history, and
overall missions of schools, writing program administrators should encourage
collaboration among teachers to determine how to best establish students’ positions at
their institutions. More importantly, if students constitute the backbone of university
systems, administrators should take students seriously as they make these decisions.
Today, many assessment scholars assert that one of the most pressing issues
involved with testing students’ writing abilities in college is that institutional methods for
doing so frequently fall out of line with the contemporary composition theories which
should guide these methods. Assessment expert and Kent State writing program
coordinator Brian Huot argues that placement methods should move away from the
common historical practices of overemphasizing the often faulty notion of reliability and
of holding students to an acontextual and “ideal version of writing quality” (561).
Instead, Huot contends that writing assessment should focus on the individual students in
our programs and work to construct localized assessment methods that will best serve
these individual students. He says,
Instead of current methods, we [should] have placement testing in which varying purposes,
contexts, and criteria would be linked together to create procedures built upon the rhetorical,
linguistic, practical, and pedagogical demands of reading and writing in a specific context…When
we begin to base writing evaluation on the context of a specific rhetorical situation adjudged by
experts from within a particular area, we can eliminate the guessing students now go through in
preparing for such examinations as well as the abstract debates and considerations about the best
procedures for a wide variety of assessment purposes. (560)
33
Huot points out that because writing programs and student populations differ depending
on a wide variety of factors, it becomes important for individual universities and colleges
to determine the contextualized types of writing assessment that will most benefit
students.
Edward M. White, assessment expert and supporter of holistic scoring during the
1980s, explains that assessment testing in California evolved quite productively during
what Kathleen Blake Yancey calls the “second wave” of writing assessment. This
evolution moved writing assessment from multiple choice exams, which involved little to
no actual writing, to essay tests that are practical, reliable, and encourage collaboration
among English faculty (Yancey 484). Although White strongly endorses the practice of
holistic scoring, he also notes some of this system’s limitations, saying,
The most important limitation of the holistic score is that it gives no meaningful diagnostic
information beyond the comparative ranking it represents. Even if we assume the score to be
reliable, we cannot tell much that we might want to know about the student. For example, a low
score might represent an inability to control sentence structure, a major spelling incapacity, a total
misreading of the question, or a misguided attempt to be whimsical or creative. A high score
might mean a correct but boring response or a genuinely creative piece of prose. All we have is a
single score, where we might wish to have a profile…It is an unfortunate fact that most users of
holistic scores act as if the ranking has some absolute meaning, when it does not. No two essay
questions make exactly the same demands upon students; no two groups of students have exactly
the same range of writing abilities. (406)
White’s explanation of the limitations of holistic scoring reflects Brian Huot’s contention
that a test’s reliability does not always necessarily guarantee its validity (557).
Furthermore, other scholars argue that a method of assessment like this says less about a
34
student’s individual potential and agency as a writer than it does about external standards
of academic language production.
Kathleen Blake Yancey explains this idea by claiming that the type of writing
assessment our universities choose to implement defines the “self, or selves” of the
students we serve in these schools. Yancey claims that it is important for us to consider
the makeup of a student’s “self” in each phase of writing assessment we have used at the
college level. She describes these “selves” during the first and second “waves” of
assessment testing—multiple choice exams and holistically scored essay tests—by
saying,
During the first wave of writing assessment, the tested self … took very narrow terms. In multiple
choice tests, the self is a passive, forced-choice response to an external expert’s understanding of
language conventions. Agency is neither desired nor allowed. During the second wave, the self
becomes a producer—of a holistically scored essay—and thus an agent who creates text. Still,
there is less agency there than it appears…the authorship of such a text is likely to be a static,
single-voiced self who can only anticipate and fulfill the expert’s expectations…The text does not
admit alternative discourses conceptually or pragmatically: it’s text as correct answer. (499)
Yancey asserts that both of these scenarios are constrictive for the students who
participate in them since outside evaluation and imposed essay prompts restrict student
potential for producing authentic texts. She argues that the “third wave” of testing—
utilizing portfolios and programmatic assessment measures—allows students a more
pluralistic approach to writing. In this context, “the self emerges, and it’s often multiple,
created through diverse texts and through the reflective text that accompanies those texts”
35
(499). Thus, students are viewed by professionals as increasingly individual, and their
choices as individuals becomes increasingly validated.
Other assessment scholars believe that the most effective way to ensure authentic
student agency is through directed self-placement, or DSP. Through directed selfplacement, students themselves make decisions about which composition classes they
should take, and they use their own opinions of their capabilities as writers to make this
decision. Daniel J. Royer and Roger Gilles explain the fundamental difference between
DSP and other methods of assessment by saying,
The initial consequence of all conventional placement methods is that students are told where to
go; they are told what course to take. Even the term, ‘placement,’ reveals the long-accepted
systemic relationship implied by the placement procedure: Teachers and administrators, as agents
of the university, ‘place’ students where they belong. Teachers are active, students are passive.
Teachers know, students do not. So no matter how ‘accurate’ the placement—and no matter how
well the students end up doing in their first and subsequent courses—the first consequence of
placement is always the same: student agency is denied…As an introduction to college life,
traditional course placement thus sends a message oddly discordant with the basic educational
values of agency, choice, and self-determination. (“Basic Writing”)
In order to reinstate these basic student rights, writing programs should consider the most
effective ways to involve students in the unfolding of their educational careers.
Assessment scholars such as Royer and Gilles argue that whatever the method—writing
exams, portfolio placement, DSP, etc.—universities need to pay attention to current
research about effective writing placement and never forget to “affirm the value
of…students’ past experiences as writers” (“Basic Writing”). This movement away from
institution-centered practice demands a great deal of acceptance of the idea that the
36
student’s better interest should drive the process of rule-setting—not individuals who aim
to profit from a marginalization of these students.
Literacy, Academic Standards, and Problematic Basic Writing Pedagogies
After the assessment process, a number of other factors play roles in the course of
“cooling-out” students in open admissions colleges. Clark explains that after students
assess, they often encounter “a gradual series of steps,” during which their “movement to
a goal may be stalled” (575). At the same time, during academic counseling sessions,
student “self-assessment [is] encouraged, and evidence [is] produced of [their]
performance” (575). During this process, students may become greatly discouraged by
various academic indicators that confirm their inadequacies as students. In the area of
English studies, students’ abilities to demonstrate appropriate language use are called into
question, and basic writing courses frequently stand between a student’s initial
assessment position and his or her eventual place in a credit-bearing, required collegiate
level English composition course.
Many traditional critiques of community college students’ writing abilities point
to crises of literacy in America—students cannot write effectively, and this fact threatens
the legitimacy of our universities. However, implicit within these arguments is the idea
that diversity threatens elitist notions of linguistic purity. Tom Fox examines the politics
couched in scholarly discussions concerning literacy and academic standards by arguing
that uninformed demands for literacy standards have been popular at various times in
American history, but our continued conversations about standards—encouraged by the
media and carried out by professionals and the public—are not grounded in any type of
37
actual, research-based evidence (1-2). Fox explains that our commentary concerning
plummeting standards surfaces whenever non-traditional students begin to gain access to
universities, and our discussions about illiteracy are actually aimed at excluding certain
students from the academy (41-42).
Once students do gain “access” and begin working toward their college degree,
Mina Shaugnessy claims that a general hyper-awareness of and focus on written “error”
in English studies also maintains the “gate-keeping” function of basic writing in higher
education. The demand for refined written prose and standardized English usage points
to an elitist view of language that is certainly more exclusive than inclusive of incoming
students. Shaughnessy writes:
English teachers are inclined to exaggerate the seriousness of error…This emphasis upon propriety
in the interest not of communication but of status has narrowed and debased the teaching of
writing, encouraging at least two tendencies in teachers—a tendency to view the work of their
students microscopically, with an eye for forms but with little interest in what is being said, and a
tendency to develop a repugnance for error that has made erring students feel like pariahs and
allowed teachers of mediocre talent too many easy victories. (120)
This tendency to view difference as undesirable, in effect, retains many students at the
margins of the academy. Some experts argue that basic writing curricula itself maintains
this separation, and again, this disconnection sometimes seems to persist unbeknownst to
working composition professionals.
Given the current nature of grading criteria for most college-level writing classes,
which stresses the importance of higher-order concerns and critical thinking, it seems
impractical to construct basic writing programs that aim to improve sentence-level skills
38
as a way to prepare students for their baccalaureate writing. Mike Rose discusses this
issue by examining the nature of basic writing courses in relation to the college classes
they prepare students to enter. He argues that “Many of our attempts to help college
remedial writers, attempts that are often well-intentioned and seemingly commonsensical,
may, in fact, be ineffective, even counterproductive, for these attempts reduce, fragment,
and possibly misrepresent the composing process” (“Remedial Writing Courses” 109).
Rose argues that many basic writing courses are “self-contained” and assign
“unacademic” tasks that fail to prepare remedial students for their forthcoming university
endeavors (“Remedial Writing Courses” 110). Thus, students become separated and
“gradually disengaged” (Clark 575) from their academic goals not only by the university
at large, but as a result of the ineffective pedagogies implemented by the teachers in their
classes.
Many skills-based, basic writing courses require students to complete tasks that
contain preconceived answers and little purpose outside of their existing contexts, and
this type of instruction tends to stifle students’ curiosity and truncate any interest they
might have in language as a means for discovery (Shaughnessy, Bartholomae, Rose).
Skills-based pedagogies often develop as a result of the popular notion that basic writers
are not yet ready to engage in the type of accomplished work that college students do.
Their basic writing reflects a type of “illiteracy” that marks them as intellectually
inadequate, sometimes as even incapable of learning; educators perceive them as unable
to think at the inventive or objective level of college students. Thus, teachers—again,
often with good intentions—designate ways for these students to build their sentence
39
skills, vocabulary, and paragraph-writing abilities in an effort to prepare them to
“remedy” their existing deficiencies before they enter classrooms that require more
refined usage. Pedagogies of this sort communicate the message that the teacher’s
language expertise should guide the student’s language inquiry and production. In
essence, teachers possess the answers to all classroom inquiries, and if students cannot
figure out these predetermined answers, they do not belong in baccalaureate-level writing
courses.
The serious problem with this type of basic writing class is that the teacher’s
perception of him or herself as an all-knowing authority—and of writing itself as a
formulaic, wholly objective task—tends to set students up for failure and invalidate their
previous language experiences. Mina Shaughnessy discusses the idea of instructor
expertise as a notion that actually prevents basic writing teachers from helping students
improve their writing. In her essay, “Diving In,” she explains that “the grammar and
rhetoric of formal written English have been shaped by the irrationalities of history and
habit and by the peculiar restrictions and rituals that come from putting words on paper
instead of into the air” (236). Our focus on students’ correct reproduction of these bits
and pieces of language prevents teachers from understanding their students’ written
idiosyncrasies, and this focus on flawless language accuracy sends the message that
“students, not teachers, are the people in education who must do the changing” (234).
Shaughnessy advocates for a form of “teacher remediation” that requires educators to
humble themselves to the idea that their own university degrees and writing competencies
do not, in fact, culminate in an absolute understanding of the English language. Teachers
40
must cultivate a sense of humility and tolerance for what and who they see as different if
they are to ever actually educate students (Freire Pedagogy of Freedom 65).
If basic writing teachers are to change the foundation of their classes by means of
this type of academic humility, they must also develop a “profound trust in people and
their creative power” to learn and perform in educative settings (Freire Pedagogy of the
Oppressed 75). Many basic writing instructors have set an excellent precedent for this
type of trust to guide their pedagogies and, in effect, their students to a sense of
empowerment and agency. At the University of Pittsburgh, David Bartholomae and
Anthony Petrosky created an unconventional basic writing program composed of classes
not unlike advanced writing courses. Bartholomae explains that most traditional basic
writing programs during this time period functioned according to
the assumption that the writing of basic writers is a ‘simpler’ version of a universal writing
process, or that it is evidence of unformed or partially developed language behavior, that the
performance of basic writers is random, incoherent, as if basic writers were not deliberately
composing utterances but responding, as the dominant metaphor would have it, mechanically and
doing so with unreliable machinery. (158)
Bartholomae and Petrosky reject this philosophy as “a way of saying that writing should
be offered as writing—not as sentence practice or paragraph practice—if the goal of a
program is to produce writers” (157). This stance implies that despite the fact that
educational experts deem some students unprepared for or even incapable of succeeding
in college, teachers should nonetheless construct their basic writing curricula from the
fundamental mindset that students can perform well if they are challenged accordingly.
41
Like Bartholomae and Petrosky, CUNY English professor Ann Del Principe
believes that basic writing teachers should focus more on students’ potential for success
than on their likelihood for failure. Her research suggests that “the focus of instruction in
writing, and in education in general, should be on how much a person can learn
with…assistance instead of on whether or not a person meets certain cognitive criteria
before instruction ever begins” (73). Pedagogies that deny students the time and the right
to prove their intellectual capabilities essentially exclude them from the educative
environment before they have a chance to enter it. If basic writing classes do indeed exist
to help prepare students for their college-level composition courses, teachers have the
responsibility to actually assign “college-level reading and writing projects” (Del
Principe 73). Otherwise, we may exist as part of the problem in students’ struggles to
achieve a higher education.
Mike Rose also insists that students are capable of meeting their teachers’
expectations if teachers are, in fact, willing to assign meaningful academic tasks. His
extensive and cogent analyses of language and cognition lead him to assert that many
students deemed “remedial” are not “cognitively ‘deficient’ in the clinical sense of the
term; if they were, they wouldn’t be able to make the progress they do. Our students are
not deficient: they are raw. Our job, then, is to create carefully thought-out, appropriate,
undemeaning pedagogies that introduce them to the conventions of academic inquiry”
(127). If, as educators, we choose to disconnect our basic writing students from the
academic culture of the university and the behaviors it promotes as “intellectual,” we also
deny them access to this community in the name of protecting them from failure. If this
42
protection prevents their inclusion in the academy, then our democratic intentions only
help to propagate undemocratic educational experiences.
Rather than disengage students from their university and their academic goals in
the interest of fairness and practicality, many university professionals believe we need to
turn our attention to students’ specific needs and construct appropriate programmatic
bridges that will allow these students a fair chance at access. Oftentimes, due to realistic
limitations like class sizes, impersonal matriculation procedures, and the individualistic
culture of the academy, this type of connection to students is difficult for colleges to
initiate. These connections are often more likely to take place in a “third space,”
academic setting where students can feel more comfortable blending their personal and
student identities.
Influenced by postcolonial theorist, Homi K. Bhabha, the notion of “third space”
signifies a location in which “thinking and writing are acts of [cultural] translation,” (ix).
In a third space, social groups may allow themselves to take part in a type of hybrid
identity which shares a common physical setting and social dialogue. Nontraditional
third spaces—resource centers that are bound specifically to students and their interests
rather than to departments and their concerns—have the potential to engage students by
way of personalized contact. They can be a place where students may form connections
not just with faculty and staff for the purpose of developing skill sets which make them
more valuable to the university, but with other students in order to help them develop the
type of agency that enhances their own empowerment. As this chapter will later discuss
43
in further detail, third spaces have the potential to keep students engaged when they are
interdisciplinary and offer more than compartmentalized services.
The Contemporary Face of “Cooling-Out” and Ways to Counteract It
Although much has changed since the 1960s when Clark conducted his
sociological study, many scholars still believe that community colleges serve to create a
layer in our educational system that reduces nontraditional students’ chances of receiving
a college degree. Some scholars claim that community colleges have taken on more of a
“weeding out” role as a result of the increased privatization of education throughout the
past few decades. In her article, “From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the
Democratic Mission of the Community College,” Alicia C. Dowd states,
critics have argued that community colleges serve mainly to stratify higher education and to shield
four-year institutions from new populations of students seeking upward mobility through
attainment of a baccalaureate degree…In the 1990s, state policy makers sought to emulate the
‘resurgence of productivity and performance in American business’ by providing incentives for
colleges and universities to focus on outcomes…Through the language and funding stipulations of
performance funding, performance budgeting, and outcomes assessment, state governments
signaled their preferences for colleges to act more like businesses. (93)
Dowd’s contention is that because community colleges have become more receptive to
the needs of the private sector than to the needs of individual students, these schools’
democratic properties—low-cost tuition, equitable access, non-selectivity—have
diminished significantly over time. As a result, many students face a number of obstacles
that paint an incredibly impersonal and unwelcoming picture of higher education.
44
In addition, the assessment process many students face at these schools during
matriculation can also encourage them to drop out in much the same way Clark described
fifty years ago. Currently, City College of San Francisco is a prominent example of an
open admissions school in which extensive remediation efforts have seemingly led to
high rates of student attrition. A recent New York Times article reports that “Some 90
percent of new CCSF students who take the placement test are unprepared for
introductory English 1A,” and as a result, chancellor Don Q. Griffin claims that “There
are more remedial…English classes at the school than college-level classes” (Pogash).
CCSF supports a population of 100,000 students, and according to the school’s 2009
equity report, only “4 percent of black students and 7 percent of Hispanic students who
began English remedial classes at the bottom rung eventually completed English 1A. The
rest are lost, either failing to enroll, failing a class or dropping out” (Pogash). Although
CCSF is the largest community college in California, other schools report similar
assessment statistics. For instance, Sacramento City College—the research site for this
study—supports nearly 25,000 students and reports that during the Spring 2009 semester
at SCC, seventy-nine percent of students either tested below the college writing level or
were considered “undetermined” placements due to “ESL issues and [were] referred to
take the ESL assessment” test (SCC Assessment Center).
Many students and a few CCSF trustees argue that the college’s lengthy, basicskills, English course sequence seems to be unsuccessful in bringing students up to speed
with their collegiate-level counterparts. Under the school’s current system, remedial
students face five semesters, or two-and-a-half years, of basic-skills classes before
45
English 1A. Compared to other schools’ programs nationally, CCSF’s sequence is fairly
extensive, but many of the school’s faculty members argue that these classes are
necessary to address the masses of undereducated students who arrive at the school’s
open doors. On the other hand, some composition experts argue that this type of
heightened focus on remedial programs leads to a “reductive, fundamentally behaviorist
model of the development and use of written language,” creating more exclusion than
access for students (Rose, “The Language of Exclusion” 341). In other words, the
program may do more to impair a student’s ability to transfer than to help him or her
succeed.
Other research indicates that certain causal factors still diminish a student’s
likelihood of transferring from a community college to a four-year university. In a 2006
study involving nationally representative data sets, Kevin J. Dougherty and Gregory S.
Kienzl argue that today, “the likelihood of transfer is strongly affected by parental SES
[socioeconomic status]. Students whose parents have higher incomes, more advanced
education, and more prestigious and remunerative jobs have a very large and statistically
significant advantage in transfer over less socioeconomically favored students” (479). In
addition, although race and ethnicity do not “significantly” affect transfer rates,
Dougherty and Keinzl do find that “blacks and Hispanics had lower transfer rates than
did whites and Asians” (480). And with regard to age, they argue that “Older college
entrants are much less likely to transfer than students entering right out of high school,
and a significant portion of this age gap is more often due to having children, lower
educational aspirations, and a vocational major, and being enrolled part time” (452).
46
These findings, though somewhat variant from the conclusions of earlier educational and
sociological studies, demonstrate that some groups of individuals are still more likely to
slip into Clark’s classification of “latent terminal students” in community colleges.
These are students who often intend to complete four years of college and obtain a
baccalaureate degree but who instead terminate their academic careers at the community
college level (Clark 572).
A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education provides similar data but
also indicates that there are certain measures community colleges can adopt in order to
promote transfer among students who might otherwise drop out of school. Jennifer
Gonzales discusses the findings of a 2009 report by the Pell Institute for the Study of
Opportunity in Higher Education, saying, “Every year, thousands of students enroll at
community colleges with the intent of transferring to a four-year institution. But many of
them languish in developmental education classes and eventually drop out. The situation
is especially acute among minorities and low-income students” (“Report Highlights
Characteristics”). In order to provide some insight about how to address this issue,
however, the study examines the practices of six community colleges with above average
student transfer rates. The report indicates that these colleges possess three similar traits
which help students succeed; they all have “structured academic pathways that aptly
prepare students to enroll at four-year colleges, a student-centered culture that
emphasizes personal attention, and culturally sensitive leaders who understand the
backgrounds of their students.” While these institutional characteristics may seem
47
commonsensical, they are often quite necessary in order for students to feel as though
they have some type of personal stake in their own education.
Despite research which shows that many students are more likely to drop out of
open admissions colleges, we do know that countless students from poor socioeconomic
environments, higher age groups, and ethnic minority backgrounds have persisted in open
admissions and have attained the degrees they originally sought. This fact is often the
result of high levels of intrinsic motivation among individual students and their ability to
effectively navigate the seemingly inescapable labyrinth of college. Many would also
argue, however, that students who are statistically less likely to succeed have a better
chance of achieving their goals if they can establish a network of professional and peer
support to supplement their academic motivation and provide constant exposure to
information that is essential to their agency as students. Community-based student
resource centers can provide a space where education may be perceived as less businessoriented and more driven by the personal needs of individual students.
Writing centers function as this type of supportive, third space resource—as
places where students may go to voice their confusions and concerns about writing, and
to improve their chances of succeeding as students in the process. However, if
community colleges can supplement their writing centers with other assistive resources,
we may be able to help students not only become better writers, but better students
overall. Subsequently, these students may increase their chances of staying in school.
The community colleges involved in the aforementioned Pell Institute transfer study also
considered these ideas, providing “one-stop shops” for students where multiple services
48
“are placed together in one central location” (Gonzales). In addition, these colleges work
to eliminate “physical barriers” between students and staff in these resource centers in
order to promote more “accessible and personal” interaction (Gonzales).
By broadening the scope of practical services offered, interdisciplinary, studentbased, writing resource centers have a great potential to provide community college
students with the tools they need for success. Considering the fact that many students are
still likely to develop “latent terminal” status with regard to their college completion, it
becomes important for educational professionals to become aware of the resources most
valued by community college students, and then to make these resources readily
accessible in one location. To do so, we need to consider a variety of factors—physical,
conceptual, practical, tactical—that may lead to increased student engagement as a result
of third space influence. When developing the writing program that guides the
methodology for this thesis, many of these factors were considered. Part of my argument
will be that an understanding and implementation of certain factors in third space writing
tutoring can improve students’ chances of both developing their academic writing skills
and increasing their agency as students.
Writing Centers and Other Solutions
If we accept the democratic notion that all students deserve a chance to prove
their intellectual abilities in an open enrollment system—yet we also realize that many of
these students have been severely miseducated thus far—we must be willing to provide
welcoming and effective learning resource centers to provide students with the extra
guidance they need to succeed. Writing centers can supply a counteractive force to
49
students’ negative assumptions and emotions about basic writing, which have been long
fostered by prescriptivist approaches to language assessment and instruction. As a
unique third space, writing centers serve to level the hierarchy that so often exists in
higher education and replace it with an intellectual “partnership” between the student and
the educator (Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed 75). In this third space context, peer and
professional writing tutors have the potential not only to encourage student confidence
and empowerment through trusting, one-on-one relationships, but they also act as
“cultural translators” for the academy, serving as an interesting bridge between students’
assumptions about college and the institution’s expectations of these students.
Since the 1980s, many writing center scholars have often worked to disseminate
the message that the writing centers are spaces in which writers from all academic levels
and standings may talk about their work and grow as writers—not places where remedial
students go to have their writing “fixed” by language “experts.” In his 1984 article, “The
Idea of a Writing Center,” Stephen North discusses the idea that the main goal of these
spaces is to produce better writers, not necessarily better writing (38). In order to achieve
this goal, North argues that writing centers must take on a holistic approach to
understanding student writing, and this approach must be student-centered rather than
writing-centered or specifically goal-oriented. He states, “any curriculum—any plan of
action the tutor follows—is going to be student-centered in the strictest sense of that
term. That is, it will not derive from a generalized model of composing, or be based on
where the student ought to be because she is a freshman or sophomore, but will begin
from where the student is, and move where the student moves” (39). The model of
50
instruction within writing centers resists the external academic structures surrounding
them, in which students conform to course- and teacher-imposed requirements and
demonstrate proficiency over fixed university standards. These are spaces where students
themselves may set the agenda of a session, and tutors work to help facilitate a student’s
achievement of their own objectives during their meetings. Tutorials take place outside
the confines of the classroom but inside a legitimate academic setting where students may
feel comfortable to speak, question, and experiment.
In her article, “Collaboration in the Writing Center,” Andrea Lunsford points out
that students often identify their direct interaction with each other as “the most important
and helpful part of their school experience” (49). In the context of the writing center,
peer communication can lead to improved writing and overall academic growth.
Lunsford states, “Collaboration engages the whole student and encourages active
learning; it combines reading, talking, writing, thinking; it provides practice in both
synthetic and analytical skills” (49). Writing center collaboration serves to accomplish
the type of holistic approach to writing instruction that North promotes, and it often
builds an opportunity for students to find a place for themselves as individuals inside the
larger context of the university.
Marilyn Cooper argues that writing centers serve as intermediary spaces in which
many students may reflect upon not only their writing, but their goals, struggles,
aspirations, confusions, and achievements. In her article, “Really Useful Knowledge: A
Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing Centers,” Cooper insists that writing centers
represent a space where students can begin talking about the ideas and concepts
51
introduced to them in their courses. Here, students have an opportunity to relax outside
the often more formal setting of the classroom and take advantage of a different type of
academic space where they can share their thoughts, opinions, and uncertainties with
people they can trust (54). Student resource centers like these add an element of
“humanity” to the sometimes refined and confounding educational system that often
perplexes new and non-traditional students. In addition to providing a site of connection
for students to nurture a sense of self within their academic discourse communities,
Cooper also affirms that “writing centers are in a good position to serve as a site of
critique of the institutionalized structure of writing instruction in college” (54). This
encouragement of a “critical consciousness” about the social, historical, and political
implications of college writing can serve to empower students and urge them to view
writing as a purposeful heuristic for intellectual growth, rather than an arbitrary duty they
must perform.
Other writing center researchers acknowledge that remedial spaces historically
have served to acculturate students into the university setting; however, writing centers
also have the potential to work against traditional, assimilative college efforts that aim to
mould historically underrepresented students’ identities to fit the academy’s framework.
In their article, “Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing Center,” Anis Bawarshi and
Stephanie Pelkowski explore this complex topic, arguing that “the writing center is an
ideal place in which to begin teaching and practicing a critical and self-reflective form of
acculturation” to promote a space where “different discourses grapple with each other
and are negotiated” (81). Writing centers can act as a “contact zone” (Pratt 34) for
52
students and the institution where historically underrepresented individuals may examine
their marginalized status from within a “politically peripheral place” (81). In other
words, writing centers are spaces where students may distance themselves from the
traditional nature of the classroom—where grades and university standards determine
their progress—enough to hold meaningful conversations about their personal
perspectives of the academic discourse they produce.
Bawarshi and Pelkowski argue that this kind of reflective, academic scenario can
allow students to develop a level of critical consciousness about the study and use of
language in the university setting. In effect, they may
become aware of how and why academic discourses situate them within certain power
relationships and require of them particular subject positions. The goal of such a pedagogy is not
to subvert academic discourse or to suggest that students reject it, but rather to teach students how
self-consciously to use and be used by it—how rhetorically and critically to choose and construct
their subject positions within it. (83)
This type of writing-center based pedagogy allows students to view themselves in
relation to their academic environment, and when this occurs, Paulo Freire argues that
students may “begin to direct their observations towards previously inconspicuous
phenomena” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 82). Writing centers can certainly serve as one
location within the university where individuals engage in purposeful forms of critical
inquiry to evaluate the possible counterintuitive status of basic writing programs and the
undemocratic “cooling-out function” as a process that is “hidden” from the general public
and prospective students (Clark 575). Collaboration outside the classroom and
meaningful teacher/student solidarity inside the classroom must guide this inquiry.
53
Indeed, the very creation of open admissions in the 1960s is proof of the profound
potential of collaboration and informed social critique, and the process of questioning
that is so common in writing center environments must remain alive within universities
and individual composition classes if progressive and democratic forms of education are
to prosper in America. Freire advocates for a “problem-posing,” libertarian education
that aims at doing away with pedagogies that negate “education and knowledge as
processes of inquiry” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 72). He explains that instructors who
adhere to traditional, more grievous forms of instruction do not comprehend that
The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking. The
teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thoughts on them. Authentic
thinking…does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that
thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students
to teachers becomes impossible. (76-77)
This philosophy of activating students existing schemata and pushing for meaningful
engagement with subject matter derails teacher- and institution-centered pedagogies and
programs, which are driven by the notion of efficiency. Non-student-centered classes are
incredibly common in higher education, but they nonetheless represent a tired status quo
that needs revision.
Interdisciplinary Writing Resource Centers
Many scholars would agree that the act of writing, and the constant development
of an individual’s writing process as a whole, exists at the core of a successful student’s
academic experience. Composition teachers frequently acknowledge the crucial nature of
academic writing skills as critical to student achievement, and for justifiable reasons,
54
English departments promote quality composition instruction for the same purpose.
Students’ abilities to write in effective academic discourse throughout their educational
careers often play a huge role in bringing these careers to fruition.
As is evident in a great deal of composition research, writing centers can be
highly instrumental in providing students with the type of support they need to succeed in
their classes, and in many respects, their success can be connected to Stephen North’s
contention that writing centers aim at creating better writers, not better writing. Writing
center faculty and staff understand that the complex processes of language use and
meaning-making are not easily compartmentalized into skill sets that may be addressed
through systematic and predetermined modes of instruction. A more holistic approach
allows students to grow as writers rather than shape their compositions to fit a
predetermined mold set into place by teachers, departments, and/or universities. It is this
focus on the whole writer that lends a humanistic approach to a student’s development of
his or her own writing, and this methodology creates for meaningful student growth over
time.
In the same way, however, we also must recognize that a student’s capacity to
develop his or her writing skills is only one piece in the much larger puzzle of questions
involved with the subject of “cooling-out” in higher education. Attrition is a concept that
involves much more than individual students’ academic skills or motivation levels. A
2008 community college study known as the Sense Survey (Survey of Entering Student
Engagement)—conducted among twenty-two schools and yielding over 13,000 student
responses—indicates that a general lack of student awareness about available college
55
resources seems to account for many students dropping their classes in the first few
weeks of the semester (Sander). The majority of students surveyed either did not utilize
or were unaware of the roles of campus services like academic advising and planning,
financial aid, and orientation. Kay McClenny, the director of the Sense Survey, explains,
“Community colleges serve a much higher population of students who are firstgeneration students. They are students who do not have personally, or in their family, the
experience of going to college, how you find the resources, how you navigate the whole
process…They are more vulnerable” (qtd. in Sander). Findings like these demonstrate
that student attrition is an incredibly multifarious phenomenon, consisting of countless
causal factors that are difficult to track or quantify due to practical limitations.
In addition, the following year’s Sense Survey indicates that there are measures
community colleges can take to prevent students from dropping their classes near the
beginning of each semester. According to Steven Bushong, the 2009 Sense Survey
points to “six design principles that, if used together, could quickly engage students and
curb the rate of attrition. Those principles include helping students make personal
connections on campus, setting high expectations, and creating plans to meet academic
goals” (“Researchers Propose 6 Ways”). These principles address some of the factors
that lead to student disengagement—a lack of personal identity or feeling of belonging in
a new environment, a sense of deterrence or disillusionment with regard to basic skills
classes, or general misunderstandings about how to construct a long- or short-term
educational plan. Although numerous students are tagged as mainly unprepared for
college because they fail to meet academic standards when they arrive at an open
56
admissions system, a larger concern for many students is learning how to decode, and
situate themselves within, an often foreign and complicated scholastic environment.
Another report conducted by the Southern Regional Educational Board confirms
that with regard to retention, educational programs should focus on assisting individual
students rather than treating the subject of attrition as an unavoidable, structural
phenomenon. This report—“Promoting a Culture of Student Success: How Colleges and
Universities Are Improving Degree Completion”—involved fifteen universities with
large numbers of low-income student populations. At universities like these, many
factors affect a student’s persistence. Randy J. Dunn, president of Murray State
University in Kentucky, explains that “It’s never one thing that’s accomplished that gets
the retention effort won…It’s a matter of having a variety of initiatives. It’s a matter of
having a host of things that are going on in concert with one another” (qtd. in Fuller).
Because no two students’ individual obstacles are ever the same, many retention
specialists believe that it is important to create complex solutions to address the
complicated issue of students dropping out of college early in their educational careers.
Many community college writing centers work to counteract the problem of
attrition by providing high quality, individual assistance to their students because these
centers focus on students as writers rather than as owners of finished written texts.
However, with the aforementioned university retention literature in mind, it is also
important to for English professionals to consider the notion that students are not just
writers. In the highly diverse environment of many community colleges, students may be
working full- or part time jobs; they may have children of their own or be the first in their
57
family to set foot on a college campus. They are recent and long-term immigrants from
countries all over the world, and they are speakers of other languages. Many are visa
holders, and many are undocumented. Others are returning to college after decades of
experience in the workforce, unfamiliar not only with their individual academic
requirements, but with the changed face of school—computers, the internet, online and
technology supported courses. Many have families they must support, and many others
have families they must prove themselves to in order to receive support. Many are
recipients of financial aide, loans, and scholarships, and without these resources, they
could not be students. And at any given point in their academic careers, any combination
of these factors can affect student progress.
Considering this highly broad range of student backgrounds and experiences, it
becomes important to search for ways to approach the issue of student attrition from a
holistic standpoint, in much the same way writing centers approach the subject of student
writing. Community college composition teachers sometimes notice that writing ability
often seems to play less of a role in students dropping their classes than does a more
general lack of study skills. A recent national survey of community and technical college
students indicates that “Even though most community-college students say they are
motivated, many haven’t developed the habits that could lead them to actually achieve
their academic goals” (Marchand). This survey, which began in 2007 and involved 120
community colleges across the United States, demonstrates that although 90% of students
believe individually that they are academically prepared for college—and that they
possess the intrinsic motivation necessary to complete their goals—many of these
58
students also fail to submit assignments, and a good number tend to skip one or two of
their classes in the first three weeks of the semester. Evidence like this suggests that no
matter how successful a writing center’s staff carries out its methods of practice, we
cannot reach students as writers until we reach students as students.
To implement a more holistic type of writing center, it becomes important for
staff and peer tutors to become cognizant of the types of resources students need and the
type of environment that could best disseminate these resources. First, a community
college’s resources in general—programs like academic counseling, EOP&S,
CalWORKS, Financial Aid, Disability, academic tutoring centers, etc—often are
physically located all over campus. Because of this, students must not only find and
become acquainted with these resources, but they must travel throughout the campus to
receive them. Although this seems problematic in a very limited sense—after all,
students have had the wherewithal to navigate their way through college campuses for
quite some time—it is a rarely discussed issue with regard to the pattern behaviors of first
generation and returning community college students. A lack of familiarity with
university or academic culture combined with the various operating hours and staff
members of a wide variety of resource centers can become problematic for many of these
students. Housing useful portions of all of these resources under one roof, however, can
change the dynamic of a student’s behavior in relation to them.
In addition, providing students with writing tutoring in a center which focuses on
not just the whole writer, but the whole student, can be an exceptional way to improve
retention and persistence among nontraditional or historically underrepresented students.
59
Many writing tutors would agree that a number of variables can dictate the success of a
tutorial, and many of these variables have little to do with writing. As Christina Murphy
and Steve Sherwood suggest, “Tutors have been described as mentors, teachers,
therapists, editors, midwives, coaches, grammarmeisters, nurturers, diagnosticians,
guides, facilitators, rescuers, advisors, consultants, and allies. Perhaps we are all of these.
But primarily, tutors are collaborators: we assist writers in achieving their goals” (8).
Oftentimes during a writing tutorial, tutors find that a student’s immediate area of
concern is not organizing the research essay that is required by their history professor, but
figuring out a way to pay for their books for the upcoming semester, or finding a
babysitter for their children that they can afford, or constructing a class schedule that will
fulfill their major requirements. Writing tutors, understandably, are not experts in any of
these areas, nor should they be. Nevertheless, if tutors conduct their sessions in physical
spaces where they may act as “collaborators” by way of communication with
professionals and peer mentors from other disciplines and campus resource centers, the
writers they meet have a better chance of “achieving their goals” in the long run.
Although the concept of interdisciplinary writing resource centers seems
incredibly productive and comprehensive in terms of serving “whole students,” there has
been little experimentation or practice with them thus far in American community
colleges and four-year universities. One successful model exists at the University of
Washington, which currently houses its writing center within a larger comprehensive
instructional learning center (IC) within the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity.
Known formerly as the Educational Opportunity Program Writing Center, this student
60
resource has historically served to offer students with multiple services in addition to help
with writing. Students visiting this center can access a computer lab with trained
assistants who can help with EOP concerns; they can find tutoring for a variety of
subjects across the curriculum, workshops on study skills and test preparation, and a
space to study and meet other students. In the 1990s, Gail Y. Okawa states that the EOP
Writing Center is
not only a student-centered and process-oriented place where students of color and nontraditional
students can go to discuss their writing, but a place where these students can also feel comfortable
discussing their experiences with language as well as their thinking on any subject with people
who might share their complex experience in the academy. Such a center [has] the potential to
cultivate a safe and enriching environment for multiple views of reality so that students [can] feel
free to take risks. It [can] encourage student writers to find voices that would serve them in their
private and public worlds. And it [has] the potential to provide revised perspectives about where
authority should lie in writing so that students assume true authorship of their work. Our center
had this potential for cultivating the writing experiences of students from diverse backgrounds,
particularly those who felt dissonant with academic culture. (170)
The virtue of a writing center of this sort is that in addition to welcoming all students
throughout the university, it provides the plethora of resources that help students succeed.
Because it is fair to say that writing tutors are one small facet of the larger picture of
student success, it becomes important to surround writing center tutors with other student
resources in order to best serve the individuals who visit them.
While the University of Washington is a four-year institution, evidence of the
kind of writing center it provides is even less common among community colleges. Even
if writing centers welcome students from across the disciplines, these centers are often
61
housed inside the university’s English department and are subject to budgetary changes
within these departments. And even if they are located elsewhere, these centers tend to
provide resources that deal with writing exclusively. There is certainly no harm in this
type of practice; in fact, it consistently serves to lend an immense deal of support to
students across the country in open admissions colleges. According to Burton Clark’s
model of “cooling-out” in higher education, however, interdisciplinary writing centers do
have the potential to better serve students who are more likely to become “gradually
disengaged” with their academic experience and drop out of school.
A great deal of research currently exists on the subjects of student attrition and
engagement, assessment methods, basic writing curricula, literacy standards, etc. And
although these and many other factors play a role in students becoming disengaged in
open admissions colleges, decidedly little up-to-date research exists on the specific
subject of “cooling-out” in higher education. In the last fifty years, few scholars have
further examined and/or applied any additional studies to Burton Clark’s sociological
model for community college functioning. Part of the purpose of this study is to fill in
this research gap and to provide a realistic picture of the students who currently navigate
Clark’s still-existent “cooling-out” framework. Furthermore, although a great deal of
research indicates that student engagement begins with personalized contact with
students, and that “one-stop” resource centers have an great potential to initiate this
contact, there is also little existing research on the subject of tutoring writing in
interdisciplinary academic environments. Another intention of this study will be to
provide useful information to the fields of composition and student services about how
62
writing tutors may offer more specialized assistance in an interdisciplinary writing
resource center.
Another aim of this thesis is to examine ways in which writing centers may adopt
elements of principle and practice that will better serve the population of open admissions
students who tend to become disconnected from their individual academic goals over
time. As such, Chapter 3 will discuss the importance of examining community college
student perceptions within a system where “for large numbers, failure is inevitable and
structured’ (Clark 571). In order to do so, it will provide a detailed account of RISE
Conscious Writing Program, the pilot project from which my student subject sample
emerges. This chapter will also present a background for my research methods,
explaining how and why I selected specific students, interview questions, and logistical
criteria for the case studies that will provide these crucial student viewpoints.
63
Chapter 3
METHODOLOGY
As is evident from the literature discussed in Chapter 2, the concept of “coolingout” in higher education is the result of a number of structures and institutional
mechanisms that, when compounded, create a seemingly inescapable, bureaucratic reality
for students. More often than not, these mechanisms have been set into place as a result
of both policy initiatives and academic research that aim at meeting the needs of
educational programs for the purpose of creating better universities. Indeed, college
faculty and administration would likely agree that at the heart of ongoing institutional
development and change is the better interest of students. We hypothesize, conduct
studies, and implement academic measures in order to ensure that we continually strive to
better teach our students, and much of the work the academy produces meets this end.
It is also important to acknowledge that a great deal of useful composition and
writing center research is the result of professional interaction with and purposeful
questioning of students about their individual identities and habits as members of the
academy. Throughout the past fifty years, American universities have demonstrated a
remarkable shift in student populations, and the changed face of college requires not only
constant reflection upon, but communication with the students who make up these
populations. Open admissions has given countless individuals from nontraditional
college backgrounds the opportunity to compete with students from more traditional
college backgrounds in order to obtain a university degree. Unfortunately, however,
despite the fair intentions of this system and all the academic and monetary resources it
64
provides, nontraditional students—first generation, multilingual, returning, etc—are still
most likely to meet the eventual “destiny” of “early termination” with respect to their
academic goals (Clark 571).
With the idea of institution and student contact in mind, this chapter will provide
some background information about Sacramento City College as a research site as well as
details about the overall course of bureaucratic procedures students experience when they
enroll at the college in the hopes of completing a degree. In addition, this chapter will
discuss the writing program model used for this study, which aims at counteracting
student attrition through interdisciplinary, third space, writing tutoring, and provide an
overview of the student selection process for this research. The purpose of this chapter is
to lay a foundation for the importance of student perspective and feedback in professional
decision-making processes regarding student retention.
SCC’s Matriculation Process—Assessment and Writing Course Sequence
The first step in the matriculation process for degree-seeking students at
Sacramento City College is to take a standardized assessment test for English and
Mathematics. SCC’s English assessment test is a product of ACCUPLACER®, a testing
system constructed and sold by College Board. This test consists of three separate,
multiple-choice portions—sentence skills, reading comprehension, and an essay exam.
Students visit the assessment center on campus to complete the first two portions of the
exam on a computer under no time constraints, and in the case that students receive a
score of ninety-six percent or above, they place directly into college-level English writing
(EngWr 300). For examples of the test’s sentence skills and reading comprehension
65
questions, please see Appendix A. If their overall score ranks below the ninety-sixth
percentile, students are required to take the written essay exam as well.
The essay portion of SCC’s assessment test is a thirty-five minute, timed writing
experience in which students are asked to respond to an open-ended, opinion-based
question. Some examples of essay questions used on the test are “If you had a day off,
how would you spend your time?” and “Where would you like to see yourself five years
from now?” While the multiple-choice portion of the assessment test provides an
immediate, computerized score, the essay exam is reviewed by two to three readers from
SCC’s English faculty, and students are provided with a final English placement within
three working days.
The English writing curricula into which students may place after taking their
assessment test consists of basic-skills courses to prepare students for college
performance as well as classes that count toward a two- or four-year degree. SCC’s
English writing course sequence provides practice in basic and college-level composition
and is comprised of eight classes—English Writing 40 (Writing Skills), 49
(Developmental English Skills), 50 (Developmental Writing), 59 (Intermediate Writing
Skills), 100 (College Writing), 300 (College Composition), 301 (College Composition
and Literature), and 302 (Advanced Composition and Critical Thinking). English
Writing 40 and 50 are three-unit, graded courses that bear no graduation or transfer
credits while 49 and 59 are two-unit, pass/fail courses that also do not count toward
graduation or transfer. English Writing 100 is a basic writing course that counts toward
graduation but not transfer, and 300 is the school’s first college-level writing course.
66
After completing 300, students may choose to take 301 or 302 to fulfill their final
transfer-level writing requirement.
During the Spring 2009 semester at SCC, seventy-nine percent of students either
tested below the college writing level or were considered “undetermined” placements due
to “ESL issues and [were] referred to take the ESL assessment” test. Of this population,
fifty-two percent of students assessed into English Writing 40 (13%), 50 (21%), or 100
(16%), and twenty-seven percent were referred to an ESL test (SCC Assessment Center).
In short, twenty-one percent of all students who tested during the Spring 2009 semester
placed into a college-level composition class.
When constructing our writing program, Jesús Limón and I paid close attention to
the grading criteria for each of the college’s writing classes, which SCC’s English
department makes available to students on its website. We also closely reviewed all
public information about the college’s assessment process in order to construct
appropriate workshops that would prepare students for their assessment experience and
help ensure suitable placement. Furthermore, we considered both issues when building
our base of tutors for student support in RISE.
RISE Conscious Writing Program—Background, Theory, and Practice
In order to give a clear picture of the environment surrounding the students
selected for this study, it is important to present a comprehensive overview of the
program from which these students receive writing tutoring. The details involved with
each student’s participation in and perception of this tutoring program will be further
67
discussed in Chapter 4. The writing program model used for the study informing this
thesis takes into account many criteria involved with student attrition.
RISE Conscious Writing Program is situated within Sacramento City College
RISE (Respect, Integrity, Self-Determination, Education), an interdisciplinary student
resource center located at SCC’s main campus. RISE’s primary institutional purpose as a
student service program is to target students who have been placed on academic dismissal
by the college and to provide every necessary resource that may help these students
reverse their educational status. As such, RISE provides a variety of resources to
students, including academic counseling and advising, peer tutoring in subjects across the
curriculum, a free book lending library, unlimited computer and internet access, printing
services, a welcoming study space, free school supplies, etc. Working with students on
the verge of dropping out of college can be viewed as a tall order, especially considering
the vast range of students at Sacramento City College who end up on academic dismissal.
Nevertheless, the variety of services provided by RISE has helped many students at this
college transfer, graduate, and/or otherwise fulfill their academic goals.
This mixture of students is understandable when considering the college’s makeup.
Established in 1916, Sacramento City College is one of the oldest public
community colleges in California, and it is the oldest public institution of higher learning
in Sacramento. The institution currently serves approximately 25,000 students
(Sacramento City College 5). This enrollment population falls between large, two-year
public institutions like Community College of San Francisco (approximately 100,000
students) and much smaller two-year public schools like Lassen College (approximately
68
2,000 students). Sacramento City College has a highly diverse student population that is
representative of many other community colleges in California. According to the
college’s 2009 Institutional Accreditation Self-Study, “no ethnic group represented more
than 33% of the student body” in the fall 2008 semester, and many students reported
having primary languages other than English (mainly Spanish, Cantonese, Russian, and
Vietnamese) (11-12). A large number of the historically underrepresented, multilingual,
first-generation, and returning students—who comprise much of SCC’s overall student
population—have been successfully served at RISE through a variety of student services
and have changed their unfavorable academic status as a result.
As a program at Sacramento City College, RISE has been identified as
“exemplary…through peer review [and] through award recognition…for its outstanding
work supporting the academic recovery and success of probationary students, many of
whom are from under-represented groups and/or first-generation College students”
(Sacramento City College 299). The type of success RISE has built demands a clear,
professional sensitivity to and understanding of the specific needs, behaviors,
backgrounds, and challenges of students who are likely to be placed on academic
dismissal—students Clark would categorize as “latent terminals” (572).
Because these students’ needs and obstacles are rarely singular or easy to isolate
entirely, it is important to create individualized contact with students and allow this
contact to guide attrition research. With this in mind, and because we wanted our work to
mirror RISE’s success, fellow CSUS English graduate student, Jesús Limón, and I
decided to model RISE Conscious Writing Program on the main principles and practices
69
of RISE. One of RISE’s major successes is its capacity to empower students to achieve
their full potential by putting them in touch with the information they need to reach
greater heights.
Consequently, we began working to theoretically construct a program that would
expose students to valuable public information that could give them authority as students.
Last summer, we began visiting Human Career Development classes to facilitate
workshops about Sacramento City College’s writing assessment process and remedial
English course sequences. We did this so as to encourage student self-empowerment
through what Paulo Freire calls “critical consciousness,” or a reflective understanding of
the world around oneself in order to act willingly upon it (Pedagogy of the Oppressed
85). Freire states,
A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to comprehend that situation as an
historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for
transformation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves to be in control. If people as
historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control
that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity… to alienate human beings from
their own decision-making is to change them into objects (85)
Freire asserts that distancing people from their own capacity to make choices is a form of
human degradation. In the context of our community college program, we considered it
possible for students to develop their own agency if they were properly informed, and
thus, properly able to make informed decisions about taking or re-taking their English
assessment test. This particular decision can be a critical one when considering
assessment’s relation to the overall process of “cooling-out” in open admissions systems.
70
An uninformed decision can oftentimes lead students toward several basic-skills courses,
more student fees, and a prolonged stay at their community college—all factors that can
lead students to “gradual disengagement” from their academic objectives (Clark 575).
Our other main programmatic goal was to provide appropriate tutorial support for
students after their assessment experience. We decided to accomplish this by creating a
framework for a style of writing tutoring that could help students in a practical sense to
pass their classes, but also to utilize best practice composition theory to help students
become aware of the many rhetorical conventions and expectations of college writing.
Oftentimes, students who visit RISE have been placed into basic-skills classes, which
have the potential to prevent them from achieving their academic goals. Thus, we wanted
to establish a type of tutoring that would assist students through these classes but also
validate their existence as learners and human beings in the process.
Because community colleges have become increasingly privatized, students often
feel more like numbers than individuals, and we wanted our program to counteract this
sense of disconnection and hierarchy. Freire further explains that a
movement of inquiry must be directed towards humanization—the people’s historical vocation.
The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only
in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between
oppressors and oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from
being so. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 85)
With the concept of “humanization” ever present in our minds, we began encouraging
tutors to strongly internalize the notion of personal and individual respect with regard to
student writers. We began to continually stress the importance of patience, open-
71
mindedness, and non-judgmental attitudes. Because many of our program’s students are
speakers of other languages or dialects that are variant from Standard Written or
Academic English, and because these students have a vast range of lifestyles, educational
histories, and cultural backgrounds, we wanted to ensure that our tutors would not only
appreciate students’ differences but honor them. This standpoint demands personal
humility, receptivity to other people’s needs, acceptance of individual differences, and
compassion for human beings. These are all characteristics we urged tutors to adopt.
On a more pragmatic note, because we had no monetary funding and/or
institutionally-provided employees when creating our writing program, Jesús and I
started our work and research from the ground-up. We began building RISE Conscious
Writing Program during SCC’s Summer 2009 term after a great deal of budget cuts to
community colleges throughout the state of California. These budget cuts eliminated all
of RISE’s English writing and reading tutors and prevented SCC’s writing center from
remaining open during the summer. At the time, we realized these budgetary changes
could have a particularly negative impact on SCC’s students. Jesús and I saw these
unfortunate circumstances as an opportunity for CSUS graduate and undergraduate
students in our English program to collaborate in order to both help SCC students with
their writing assignments and gain some professional work experience in the process.
We found that many CSUS students were interested in volunteering, given that these
same budget cuts had greatly constricted the functioning of our own English program as
well.
72
Since June 2009 when we started our volunteer work, RISE Conscious Writing
Program has provided students with writing and assessment workshops, mini-lessons, and
one-on-one, best practice English tutoring across the curriculum at various levels of
study. We have recruited and trained dozens of graduate and undergraduate English
students from CSUS to provide tutoring for our students at RISE, using the current
writing center theories and practices we have learned and engaged in at CSUS. As a
result, we have recorded hundreds of tutoring sessions and helped many students achieve
passing grades in their courses across the curriculum. This work was conducted in the
spirit of “hope, as an ontological need” for which Freire advocates among educators
(Pedagogy of Hope 2).
With the state of our educational system growing seemingly more dismal by the
minute, we struggled through the work of constructing our program with a deep sense of
hope in mind. As Freire explains,
There is a lot of fatalism around us. An immobilizing ideology of fatalism, with its flighty
postmodern pragmatism, which insists that we can do nothing to change the march of socialhistorical and cultural reality because that is how the world is anyway. The most dominant
contemporary version of such fatalism is neoliberalism…From the standpoint of such an ideology,
only one road is open as far as educative practice is concerned: adapt the student to what is
inevitable, to what cannot be changed. (Pedagogy of Freedom 26-7)
Despite the unprecedented nature of negative political changes to our educational system
during this time, we worked to counteract them with small measures of positivity—
namely, one tutoring session after another. Although we could not be sure the program
would make any kind of large-scale difference in the long-run, we considered individual
73
student successes important enough to maintain hope. During this time, we worked to
resist structural forces that were seen as “inevitable” and struggled to adapt the institution
to these changes rather than students.
While building RISE Conscious Writing Program over the past five semesters,
Jesús and I collaborated daily as organizers and tutors to construct a writing resource that
would most appropriately serve our highly diverse—and sometimes borderline “latent
terminal”—student population. The students we have tutored in our program are all
members of SCC RISE. RISE members oftentimes are students facing academic
dismissal; however, the program is open to any and all students on campus, and
participation in our program is entirely voluntary. As such, we have encountered an
incredibly broad range of individuals with an equally extensive range of academic writing
abilities. We have met with highly motivated, university-bound students on the verge of
transfer alongside returning students who are unfamiliar with how to effectively operate a
computer mouse. We have tutored international students, students with disabilities,
homeless students, undocumented students, students with children, newly immigrated,
permanent resident students, and many others. Consistent contact with these students has
shown us and our tutors that their needs and challenges as academic writers oftentimes
differ quite significantly from the obstacles of traditional four-year university students.
RISE Tutoring Approaches
For good reasons, composition and writing center research studies commonly
stress the value of global writing concerns over sentence-level error, and writing tutors
are frequently encouraged to focus on students’ “big picture” shortcomings before their
74
grammatical inconsistencies. This type of attention to student writing is often promoted
through what Jeff Brooks calls “Minimalist Tutoring,” or the process of placing the onus
of revision and/or editing during a tutorial on students themselves. While this tutoring
theory is highly valuable since it promotes active learning on the student’s part, it is also
indicative of the type of composition research that oftentimes overlooks contradictory
TESOL and ESL studies—studies that frequently typify the students who utilize our
writing program. Brooks states,
There are many students who fight a non-editing tutor all the way. They know you know how to
fix their paper, and this is what they came to have done. Some find ingenious ways of forcing you
into the role of editor…Don’t underestimate the abilities of these students; they will fatigue you
into submission if they can. To fight back, I would suggest we learn some techniques from the
experts: the uncooperative students themselves. (172)
Brooks goes on to give practical tutoring tips that allow the tutor to perform effectively in
what seems like a grammatical tug-of-war. It is perfectly appropriate to discourage the
kind of unproductive editing that merely leads students to believe a writing tutor exists to
“fix” their deficiencies. However, it can be equally unproductive to assume that all
students seeking a tutor have the same struggles with writing and/or the same
understanding of the English language.
A great deal of TESOL and ESL research indicates that hedging, open-ended
questioning, and grammar avoidance on the part of a writing tutor or teacher can be
incredibly frustrating and unproductive practices when working with ELL students
(Ferris and Hedgecock, Ferris and Roberts, Myers, Reid, Valdés, etc). We have found
that the vast range of multilingual students who have sought tutoring from our program
75
come from highly variant language-acquisition backgrounds and sometimes quite
different educational cultures. While these factors do not and should not negate the
importance of a focus on global writing concerns, they do complicate this type of
composition and tutoring theory.
When approaching our tutoring sessions, we have kept in mind TESOL and ESL
research studies that argue it is a tutor’s responsibility not only to pull information out of
students, but to inform students when pertinent information could assist their writing
skills or English language acquisition. Oftentimes, this information takes the form of
focused mini-lessons or discussions about patterns of grammatical error, and it always
accompanies answers for why certain language features exist. Texas Tech University
ESL composition professor, Sharon A. Myers, explains the importance of a focus on
grammar for ELL students, saying,
what ‘English grammar’ means to a native speaker of English…is very different from what it
means to a second-language learner. The need to learn the many complex ways a language
determines, subordinates, coordinates, lexicalizes and so on are often demeaned in composition
literature, pooh-poohed as mere ‘sentence-level grammar’ resulting in ‘sentence-level errors.’
These language structures should not be somehow divorced from culture or our roles as cultural
informants. Errors in vocabulary and syntax occur within the structural constraints of a language
and constitute ‘culture’ just as much as every other feature of language below (phonetic) or above
(rhetorical) the sentence level. Enabling the members of a different culture to express themselves
in a new culture is work that cultural informants do. Being a culture informant includes being a
language informant. (224)
Because many of our students have asked specific questions about language features or
grammar—and because many others may have faced “stigmatization” due to their
76
grammatical errors—we have chosen to engage in the role of “cultural and language
informant” that Myers describes above. Furthermore, in many cases, direct feedback and
shared information can encourage students to reflect on their own language use, identify
patterns of error, and work to change them.
Likewise, we have encouraged our writing tutors to take on the role of “cultural
and language informant” when working with returning and/or first generation college
students who might be unfamiliar with the various axioms involved with academic
writing. For example, many returning students are particularly unaware of the general
structure of a college essay; many others have never heard of a thesis statement, and a
good number are entirely unfamiliar with common sentence patterns frequently found in
academic paragraphs. Because of this, we have also spent a good deal of time explaining
these concepts and the general expectations readers commonly attach to them. We have
worked to elucidate the concept of academic writing by explaining the rhetorical
rationales behind its seemingly arbitrary conventions, and this type of explicit instruction
often serves to supplement the divergent educational backgrounds that seem to prevent
many students from writing successfully in college.
In addition to all of the “inner” workings of RISE Conscious Writing Program’s
theoretical and practical tutoring tactics, we also paid close attention to the “outer”
influence of the physical space of our academic environment. Aside from its studentcentered principles and practices, RISE’s physical layout was also constructed with
students in mind; at the center of the room, one extensive table is always available for
student study, conversation, snacking, tutoring, etc. Along the walls surrounding this
77
table are computers, which are also designated for student use. Lining the walls of the
room are photographs of students participating in a school-construction project in Belize,
students at political rallies and marches, and students taking part in other local,
community-based activities. In addition, there are posters and images of iconic and
revolutionary leaders of color, including Malcolm X, Che Guevarra, Cesar Chavez, Bob
Marley, Emiliano Zapata, and Rosa Parks. These images evoke a sense of political
resistance to social injustice throughout history, and they serve as an appropriate
embellishment for a resource center focused on empowering historically
underrepresented college students.
To emphasize the accomplishments of these students, an entire wall in the room is
designated as RISE’s “Wall of Fame.” This wall includes individual photographs of
students who have transferred to four-year universities alongside the university emblems
of the schools to which they were accepted. Many of these schools are considered
prestigious universities, and many of the students who transferred to them were once
facing academic dismissal at Sacramento City College. Students working and visiting in
RISE often stare up at this wall and make comments about when their own picture will be
added.
Interestingly, the only administrative or professional staff members in RISE—two
academic counselors and one full-time student personnel assistant—are located in the
margins of the room. Each academic counselor has an office at the back of the room,
outside of which a single cubicle is used for adjunct academic counseling on occasion.
The student personnel assistant’s desk and cubicle are located in the opposite corner of
78
the room, but the first presence students meet when they enter RISE is that of their fellow
SCC students who operate the front desk. Aside from these professionally designated
spaces, most every other area in RISE is accessed, utilized, and influenced by students
themselves.
In many respects, the physical makeup of RISE allows students to feel as though
the space is their own. Because RISE is not presented as a place where students must
conform to predetermined mandates set in place by authority figures, students often feel
comfortable, welcome, and valued because their better interest is situated at the heart of
the program and all the services it provides. Students possess the freedom to use RISE
when and how they feel appropriate with little bureaucratic presence involved, and this
liberty frequently means that students themselves set the rules for the program. In fact,
many of the services offered in RISE—including its donation-based book lending library,
high school outreach program, peer tutoring system, and our writing program—have all
been proposed, organized, operated, and managed by students. This type of initiative and
dedication encourages students to develop and carry out responsibilities. In the process,
students share their interests with one another; their motivation grows, and many students
benefit from the community-based collaboration. What results is a sense among students
that a higher education can serve concrete purposes and that students are the greatest
stakeholders in their own schooling.
Chapter 4 will closely examine the educational experiences of four RISE students
who have taken advantage of many of the resources the center provides, including the
tutorial services of RISE Conscious Writing Program. As a result of their assessment
79
process, these students were all identified by Sacramento City College as writing-skills
deficient near the beginning of their college careers. In addition, they each exemplify
personal traits, cultural backgrounds, and/or educational histories that place them into the
category of students that is most likely to face “cooling-out” in an open admissions
college. Before delineating their personal experiences within this system, however, it is
important to consider the research methodology behind this study and to explain why
each student’s involvement is appropriate for this study.
Research Methods
In contrast to the common forms of quantifiable research conducted to support the
monetary funding required for privatized education, the methods used for this study are
largely qualitative for the purpose of underscoring students’ individual experiences. As
such, the study involves a largely “Freirian” research methodology that focuses mainly
on student voices in a collaborative way. The purpose behind collecting these student
voices is to create a broader conversation about “cooling-out” that is grounded in
students’ individual perceptions of their educational system. Freire argues that in order
for an education to serve human beings, it must be seen as an “integral” activity. He
states,
Indifference to the integral education of the human person and the reductionist mentality that talks
only of training skills strengthens the authoritarian manner of speaking from the top down. In
such a situation, speaking ‘with,’ which is part and parcel of any democratic vision of the world, is
always absent, replaced by the more authoritarian form: speaking ‘to.’ This type of speaking
from the top down is in itself a clear demonstration of the absence of a democratizing mentality,
the absence of the intention to speak ‘with.’ (Pedagogy of Freedom 103)
80
Freire’s conception of “integral” education deals largely with classroom instruction, but it
is also applicable to academic research, and this model forms the theoretical foundation
for my study. Academic institutions must consider student voices when determining the
best measures for educational improvement. In addition, writing resource centers
themselves are “integral” spaces where students may collaborate and share their personal
thoughts and opinions, and this research is intended to further “integrate” these
collaborative spaces to provide more comprehensive assistance for potential “latent
terminal” students. As such, instead of composing detailed questions to be disseminated
in questionnaires to a large sample of anonymous students (i.e. in a “top-down” manner),
I chose to delve deeply into the specific, personal experiences of a few students in order
to obtain qualitative findings that reflect a “bottom-up” strategy.
In addition, academic research on the subject education often utilizes empirical
evidence to determine the best ways to assist student success, yet at times, this type of
quantitative data can dissociate research findings from the human behaviors that create
them. In many respects, the “Freirian” methodology used for this study is grounded in
the holistic notion that “cooling-out” in higher education is not a wholly quantifiable
subject. Although we can use quantitative data to determine the answers to certain
questions pertaining to “cooling-out”—like how many students arrive at open admissions
underprepared for collegiate-level writing or how many students become disengaged
from their classes before completing their degrees—we cannot assume that any one
experience causes a student’s eventual attrition. In gathering data that is more
comprehensive and explanatory of individual students’ personal life experiences, my
81
intention is to provide a broader and deeper look at statistics that are often divorced of
student experience. As Freire explains, to reduce education to “a matter of simple
technique is to impoverish what is fundamentally human in this experience: namely, its
capacity to form the human person” (Pedagogy of Freedom 121-22). The methods
behind this research are intended to provide data that is informed with rich human
experiences.
Student Selection for Study
The questionnaires and interviews distributed and conducted for this research
study were designed to ascertain the specific obstacles faced by a small sample of local
community college students. In selecting human subjects for this study, I employed a
method of purposeful sampling in order to identify students who exemplify the
educational and/or character traits that lead many individuals to drop out of—or become
“cooled-out” at—open admissions community colleges. These students all face specific
challenges common among “latent terminal” students, yet despite these challenges, they
each remain engaged in their studies in the hopes of achieving their academic goals. By
showcasing their personal opinions and individual perspectives of our educational
system, my hope is to utilize student input to better inform anti-attrition measures in
community colleges.
Also, because student confidentiality and anonymity are both of utmost importance
in this research, all students’ names have been changed for the purpose of concealing
their identities. For the study, students completed a detailed questionnaire, answering
questions about their educational backgrounds, academic goals, language backgrounds,
82
and affective responses to the subject of writing (see Appendix B). Next, students
participated in an audio-recorded interview during which they verbally answered a
number of questions concerning their educational backgrounds, experiences with college
assessment and remedial courses, and perspectives of writing tutoring in RISE Conscious
Writing Program (see Appendix C). The questions used in these interviews have been
designed in such a way so as to allow students to share their perspectives of how and why
open admissions systems can be a challenge to individual students’ efforts to succeed. In
Chapter 4, these questionnaires and interviews will be discussed in conjunction with
existing research in the field of composition and writing center theory.
The first student to be discussed in this study will be referred to as Teresa. Teresa
is a first-generation, returning college student and the single-parent mother. She is a
Mexican-American woman in her forties and has worked for several years to become
acquainted with the norms and expectations of an educational system that differs greatly
from her high school experience. Teresa was placed into ESL classes, and later, remedial
English writing courses during her matriculation process at SCC, and she has spent a
considerable amount of time working toward her goal of completing her general
education in order to transfer to a four-year university. It seems as though Teresa’s parttime student status as well as her outside commitment to her family are the main
obstacles that could play a role in her potential “latent terminal” status.
Student number two will be referred to as Diego. Diego is a Mexican-American
male in his twenties who immigrated to the United States during his early childhood.
After moving back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, and graduating from a
83
California public high school, Diego enlisted in the U.S. military and spent four years
serving his country abroad. Although his assessment scores placed him into a course two
levels below Sacramento City’s first college-level composition course, Diego has worked
diligently to become better acquainted with the rhetorical conventions and reader
expectations of university writing for the past several semesters and has completed all of
his general education writing requirements. Diego’s bilingualism and his returningstudent status seem to have played the largest roles in his challenges as an open
admissions college student, yet he also seems to be using them to his advantage to further
his educational career.
The third student interviewed for this research study will be referred to as Laka.
Laka is a first-generation, female, Pacific Islander student who immigrated to the United
States during her childhood. She attended a public, California high school and enrolled at
Sacramento City College shortly after her graduation. Although she came to the U.S. as a
result of her parents’ decision to leave their native country, Laka has not received her
American citizenship since her family’s arrival. Consequently, she attends community
college by means of California Assembly Bill 540, or the Nonresident Tuition Exemption
for eligible California high school graduates. As an undocumented student, Laka can
only afford to attend school part-time, and this enrollment status, alongside her
bilingualism, serves as one of her major obstacles as a community college student.
Nevertheless, she also seems to possess certain characteristics which suggest she can
succeed despite these challenges.
84
The final student to be discussed in Chapter 4 will be referred to as James. James
is an African-American male in his twenties who attended a California public high
school. He is a monolingual speaker of an English dialect variant from Standard Written
or Academic English. During his elementary, middle, and high school experiences,
James was tracked in low-level English classes, and this educational history seems to
play a major role in his status as an open enrollment community college student. When
he took Sacramento City College’s assessment test, James placed into the lowest level
English writing course offered at the university, and with tutoring, he has been working
his way toward collegiate-level English courses ever since.
In the next chapter, I will give a detailed account of each student’s perspectives
concerning their experience with academic writing in Sacramento City College’s open
admissions system. The goal in delineating this information will be to provide
conclusions in Chapter 5 for the best ways to help potential “latent terminal” students
succeed by way of appropriately constructed writing resource centers.
85
Chapter 4
AN INTERACTIVE EXAMINATION OF “COOLING-OUT”: POTENTIAL LATENT
TERMINAL STUDENT PERSPECTIVES
In order to determine the best ways to construct anti-attrition programs and
effective writing resource centers, it is important to examine the specific needs and
challenges of open admissions community college students. This chapter focuses on the
perspectives of a small sample of students who each exhibit characteristics of individuals
who are commonly “cooled-out” at open admissions colleges. For this research, I
conducted case studies with four students at Sacramento City College, all of whom
participated willingly in the research. As mentioned in previous chapters, all of these
students were categorized as writing-skills deficient during their matriculation process,
and they all have taken basic writing courses at SCC as a result.
While preparing to conduct these case studies, I employed a method of purposeful
sampling when choosing students to interview. A process of purposeful sampling
seemed appropriate for my study because I preferred to use information-rich illustrations
of the factors involved with “cooling-out” for the purpose of in-depth study rather than
large-scale data collection. The type of purposeful sampling method I chose to employ is
typical case sampling. This method involves obtaining a sample of what researchers
might call typical, common, or average cases for the particular subject matter in question.
This type of sampling seems fitting for my research since a random sample would yield
too broad a depiction of community college students and perhaps a group of students who
do not fall into the demographic categories associated with the phenomenon of “coolingout.” My purpose in utilizing this typical case sampling method was to examine the
86
experiences of a group of students whose personal histories would provide relevant
context for the functional properties and elemental factors of “cooling-out” in open
admissions systems.
As part of their participation in this study, students completed a questionnaire
comprised of seventeen questions concerning their educational background, academic
goals, and language background. The last portion of this questionnaire asks students to
reflect on their writing background affectively by providing responses to ten partially
composed sentences about English writing. Please see Appendix B for a copy of this
questionnaire.
Finally, students participated in an audio recorded interview conducted by myself.
Generally, each interview lasted from forty-five to sixty minutes and consisted of eight
relatively open-ended questions, all of which were constructed to elicit a wide variety of
individual responses about students’ educational experiences and personal perspectives of
academic writing at the community college level. During these interviews, I asked
students to give detailed descriptions of their experiences with K-12 education, the
assessment process at community college, basic writing curricula, and writing tutoring,
including the tutoring offered by RISE Conscious Writing Program. My purpose in
asking these particular questions was to determine if these students had experienced any
of the common components of the “‘cooling-out’ function of higher education” that
Burton Clark described among California community colleges fifty years ago, and to
uncover students’ individual opinions about what constitutes effective practice in student
services, particularly in writing resource centers.
87
Case Studies
The following case studies will discuss four Sacramento City College students
who took the aforementioned ACCUPLACER® assessment test, and as a result, placed
into basic writing classes in the aforementioned SCC English writing course sequence. In
addition to this information, these case studies will provide a larger look at the
surrounding framework of the systemic components involved in the “cooling-out” of
students in open admissions colleges in order to draw conclusions about effective ways to
resist this system.
Case Study #1: Teresa
The first student to be discussed in detail in this chapter is Teresa. Teresa is a
Mexican-American woman who immigrated to the U.S. during childhood and began her
current higher educational career as a result of a return to school to improve her
occupation and lifestyle. She is a single mother, and she explains that creating a better
life for her family is her motivation to succeed in college. Teresa’s status as a returning
student and a mother serve as major obstacles to her success as a student in open
admissions; however, her high level of intrinsic motivation to create a change for her
children as well as her willingness to seek out a wide variety of student resources seem to
play major roles in her likely avoidance of a “latent terminal” student status (Clark 575).
Teresa’s Personal and Educational Background
Teresa’s family immigrated to California when she was eleven years old, at which
time she began seventh grade at a public middle school. Her immigration to California
from a relatively small city in Mexico—prompted by her mother’s decision to seek better
88
opportunities for her children—proved to be a significant environmental transition. In
addition to adjusting to the larger city and schools to which she moved, Teresa describes
language as her biggest obstacle during this time period. She explains that when she
arrived in California and began middle school, she felt somewhat defeated due to her lack
of ability to communicate, saying “I was unable to…express myself…[or] to put all my
effort into my classes…I [felt] …hopeless …because of my English. I didn’t know [any]
English, so it was kinda hard for me to…do my work.” Teresa explains that before she
arrived in California, she had received no English language instruction of any kind, so
she felt entirely lost when she began her classes. In addition, she explains that “back
then, the programs [in school] were not like they are right now. They were very limited
for immigrant students.”
Although there were “very few” Spanish-speaking professionals at her school,
Teresa explains that there were some teachers who were “willing to help” with her
language acquisition, and this fact improved her negative feelings about school. She
explains that she interacted with one teacher at the school who taught her and a few other
students “elementary” English for about thirty minutes each day in her office. Outside of
this one-on-one assistance, however, Teresa’s reading instruction was limited. She
explains that during class, her teacher made a seat for Teresa next to her own desk in the
classroom, gave her an English book, and told her to try her best to “just go ahead and
read.” During this time, while the rest of her classmates proceeded with their regular
instruction, Teresa says she did her best to silently read English by pronouncing each
word in Spanish even though she did not comprehend the words she was reading. Teresa
89
explains that she has witnessed many changes in bilingual education in California since
her children have received markedly different instruction. However, “back then,” she
explains, “it was hard. You were on your own, basically.” Teresa’s choppy middle
school English education was likely not due to careless teachers who held little concern
for ESL students so much as the result of limited L2 instructor preparation during this
time period (Matsuda “Second Language Writing” 21).
Shortly thereafter, Teresa began attending a public high school, and although
during this time she still felt “uncomfortable” with her ability use English, she “did [her]
best” to work toward improving her skills. Because there were more Latino students in
her high school, she explains that she felt more peer support and guidance while
completing her schoolwork, and this helped with her English acquisition. Although she
does not remember any specific English class-level distinctions for each grade, she does
recall her high school having specialized “immigrant,” or ESL, classes for students who
knew very little English. Teresa explains that her language skills had improved by that
point, so she took classes among other students like herself. When asked about the nature
and level of difficulty of these courses, Teresa could not point to any specific distinction
from other students’ English classes, but she says she believes these classes were not
necessarily preparing her for college. Aside from one “awesome” English teacher who
“really got [the students] engaged” in class and “[motivated] students to be there,” Teresa
does not remember many instances of otherwise challenging English classes.
After high school, Teresa enrolled in a one-year cosmetology program at her local
community college and completed this program successfully. She worked in the beauty
90
industry for a number of years before deciding to open her own business. She explains
that after opening her business, one of her regular customers—a community college
counselor—encouraged her to go back to school, and in an effort to better provide for her
children, Teresa decided to take this advice and begin working toward changing careers.
“Being a single mom…is…hard,” she explains, especially on her wages, so she decided
to change paths and become a medical professional. In order to make this change, Teresa
began attending a nearby community college and started taking classes toward her
associate’s degree.
Teresa’s Community College Assessment and Counseling Experiences
Teresa attended her community college for a few semesters before transferring to
Sacramento City College to continue her coursework, and her assessment process for
each of these schools differed from one another. At her first community college, Teresa
was required to take a timed English essay exam, which placed her into a “very low”
remedial writing course. Teresa explains, “I had to do an ESL class, and I was very
surprised...because…as I was writing…I thought I was doing it right…To me, it was
good English, but…now, I realize that…my English level was very low, especially…in
writing.” As a result of her placement, Teresa took ESL courses for writing, grammar,
speaking, and listening, and she believes these courses helped prepare her for the classes
she later enrolled in at Sacramento City College. During her matriculation process at
SCC, however, Teresa learned that the assessment test she took might have slowed her
overall progress had she not met with an academic advisor.
91
In order to enroll in courses at SCC, Teresa took both the computerized
ACCUPLACER® multiple-choice tests for sentence skills and reading comprehension as
well as the college’s essay exam. Teresa explains that she was surprised by her
placement in English Writing 50 at SCC since she had already completed a number of
courses at her previous community college; instead, she had anticipated placement in
English Writing 100. Unlike many other students who are dissatisfied with their
placement results, however, Teresa questioned a counselor about her options to overturn
her results. After finding RISE by coincidence, Teresa met with one of the program’s
counselors who helped her petition against what she saw as unreasonable placement
results. She says, “I explained [to the counselor]…I said, ‘You know, I spent so many
semesters doing these classes, and I don’t think it’s fair for me to go back again’…that
means that whatever I did over there [didn’t] count. And [the counselor] said, “No…let
me talk to them…just bring me all those transcripts, and I’ll try to do something.’” She
explains that the counselor at RISE presented her with the forms she needed to petition a
change of placement, and that her interaction with this counselor was different from her
experiences with counselors outside of RISE, saying, “I…felt like [the other counselors]
were always rushing, …[saying], ‘Well, you know, just come back later,’…I feel like
they were…not really taking their time. But I feel very comfortable coming [to RISE]
because [this counselor] takes…time [to help students].”
Teresa’s explanation of her rushed counseling experience could simply be due to
incompetence on the part of some academic advisors; however, this situation is more
likely due to the unfortunate fact that academic professionals are being laid off
92
throughout the state despite increased student enrollment at California community
colleges. For example, a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education states that
Sacramento’s “Consumnes River College has 21 counselors on its staff,” to support the
community college’s 16,000 students, “and every day they turn away students” (Fogg).
As more students sign up at community colleges, and as we slip further into our
recession, student service programs have not experienced any increase in funding. As a
result, colleges lack the counseling resources they need for their students’ success, and
many of these students are not receiving the quality academic advising they require
(Fogg). Sacramento City College’s counseling staff consists of approximately twentyfive full-time professionals, suggesting that this issue is a problem throughout Los Rios
Community College District. Teresa’s experience may be the consequence of faulty
professionalism, or it could simply be the result of a heavily impacted counseling center
at SCC. Either way, the result is liable to turn students away from a higher education and
promote the “cooling-out” or attrition effect that so often occurs among students like
Teresa.
Teresa’s Experience with Basic Writing
Teresa’s assessment petition was successful, and when asked about the English
Writing 100 course she eventually took after her placement change, Teresa describes the
class as “hard” because “the teacher was…a tough grader.” She explains that by the time
she dropped this class later in the semester, only about six students remained enrolled
even though their section had begun with an overloaded waiting list. Teresa explains that
she became one of the many students who dropped this course because she was afraid she
93
would receive a failing grade at the end of the semester, and she attributes part of this
anxiety to the teacher’s attitude during class. She says, “[On] the first day, [the teacher]
said…‘I can guarantee you that most of you will not pass this class.’ So that gets
[discouraging]...I was afraid, and I said, ‘Oh my God, what if I don’t make it?’…and
sometimes I felt like quitting, but then I said, ‘No, no, I’m not gonna quit. I’m just gonna
change…to another teacher.’” Teresa explains that one of her most difficult challenges in
this class was the confusing nature of the teacher’s expectations. She says, “We [asked
the teacher], ‘Can you please tell us…what are you looking for?’...And [the teacher] said,
‘Well, it’s [in] the [assignment] question.’” Students like Teresa—indeed, all students—
can benefit from instruction in which the teacher explicitly states his or her expectations
for student writing. This may take the form of departmental rubric deconstruction, class
discussions about assignments, or anything else that will give students a better
understanding of the sometimes new and foreign environment in which they are
participating.
In addition, studies show that due to certain factors such as anxiety and
discouragement, students at community colleges drop their classes at a much higher rate
than other institutions, and this class-dropping ultimately weakens their chances at degree
completion. In fact, “for every 100 students who begin at a public 2-year college with the
intention of earning a degree, 31 complete an associate’s or bachelor’s degree within 6
years” (Cox). Rebecca Cox’s study on community college student behavior and success
examines strategies that effective writing teachers use to prevent this type of drop-out
statistic. She conducted in-depth interviews with two composition teachers with
94
consistently high rates of student completion in their courses and states that these
instructors
enacted a threefold pedagogical approach, which served to interrupt students’ defensive strategies
and helped them engage with the coursework. First, these two professors maintained high
expectations, assigning challenging work and making students responsible for participating in
class. This suggested to students that they were both responsible for and capable of contributing to
the class. Second, they provided a great amount of detailed, explicit instruction for every
assignment, so that students could attempt the work without being crippled by confusion and
insecurity. Finally, and most important, they enacted a more personal and encouraging relationship
with students than the stereotypical ‘college professor.’ This allowed them to address the fear
factor, which both of them recognized as a potential obstacle to student success.
The fear of failure Teresa describes with regard to her English Writing 100 class may
have been addressed not only through an instructor’s high expectations, but through
increased explicit instruction and an overall welcoming and supportive environment
within the classroom.
Interestingly, after re-enrolling in the course, Teresa claims to have experienced
these positive changes with a new teacher at SCC, and due to a number of instructional
factors she describes as effective, she passed this course with a “B” grade. Teresa
categorizes this class as “excellent,” explaining, “[the teacher would] explain
everything,” and the assignments “were [simpler].” After approximately six weeks of
instruction, another teacher took over the class who displayed the same effective teaching
strategies. Teresa explains, “[this teacher would] explain everything on the board
and…take…time and answer…students’ questions. And [the teacher made] us
participate…[There was] more active work” and more “practice” with writing through
95
low-stakes homework assignments, for which students received class points even if their
answers to some questions were incorrect.
Teresa says that these teachers “motivated” her and her classmates, and as a
result, her work in the class and her confidence as a writer improved over time. She says,
“I think by us getting…good grades, that…[encouraged]…the students and motivated
them to stay in the class.” This statement reflects the sentiments of Cox’s research
study’s student participants, who often “attributed their success in the composition course
to the validation they received from their instructors. Without active intervention from
their instructor or some other ‘validating agent’…they might have cooled themselves
out.” When she learned she had successfully completed the course, Teresa says, “I was
so happy.” Ultimately, her courage to re-enroll in English Writing 100 proved to be
highly valuable in the long-run. Teresa eventually moved on to English Writing 300,
passed the course successfully, and is currently enrolled in English Writing 302—her
final composition requirement—for next semester.
Teresa’s Experience with Composition Tutoring in RISE
Teresa explains that she has utilized peer tutoring services at both of her
community colleges to assist her academic writing, and this tutoring has helped her
through all of her writing classes. At her previous college, Teresa’s ESL teacher
informed her class about their campus writing center where she received assistance from
peer tutors as well as composition instructors. Having met with positive experiences at
her previous writing center, Teresa looked for something similar at Sacramento City
96
College. When she arrived at SCC, she found RISE and began utilizing the tutoring
services offered through RISE Conscious Writing Program.
Teresa has met with two to three of our writing tutors on a consistent basis over
time, and she values the writing tutors in RISE for a variety of reasons. During our
interview, she explains that she appreciates a tutor who is patient and does not expect her
to read, write, or think at a preconceived level before she arrives for a tutoring session,
and she says that RISE’s writing tutors are able to provide this patience during tutorials.
She also mentions that she appreciates our tutors’ abilities to not impose their personal
judgments on the opinions she displays in her argumentative essays. In addition, Teresa
explains that her bilingualism often complicates her writing because expressing her ideas
in English can be a struggle. Concerning this issue, Teresa says, “[RISE writing tutors]
give you…tips, and they help you to…get your point across when you’re writing…cause
sometimes that’s what happens to me. I don’t know how to get my point across. I mean,
even though I have it in my mind…I don’t know how to express it…in English, and they
try to…help me…develop that.” She attributes this successful communication in RISE to
the patience the tutors are able to demonstrate during their tutorials. She also says that
she appreciates the one-on-one tutorial support she receives in RISE because there are
few time constraints placed on sessions.
Concerning the physical space of RISE Conscious Writing Program’s tutoring
environment, Teresa says, “I like it [in RISE] because [it’s not]…too quiet…When
you…express your opinions [about] something…[you don’t want someone to] hear
it…[In RISE], you can talk loud. That’s comfortable…[for me] cause sometimes…my
97
tone [of] voice is not too low…I don’t want [people] to say, ‘Hey, be quiet…keep it
low!’” In addition, Teresa uses the study space in RISE to work on her essays and other
homework assignments, and she prefers the high noise level for these activities as well.
She says, “I cannot concentrate…when it’s too quiet…It feels…weird…I need…noise.”
This elevated noise level also allows Teresa to feel comfortable about bringing
her children to school when she cannot otherwise find childcare, and she feels
particularly comfortable bringing her children around the RISE community. She explains
that because they are young and “cannot be quiet,” she feels as though it is inappropriate
to bring them with her to some places on campus. She says,
One thing I really like, and I’m very…grateful [for is that]… I remember one time, I had to take a
test, and I didn’t have [anyone] who [could]…watch my [kids]. And…[one of RISE’s staff
members]…said, ‘You know, go ahead and take the test, and…I’ll take care of ‘em.’ So, that
made me feel very…special…I was surprised…A lot of [people are]…very supportive…They
understand…your situation…[It was] a relief.
Teresa explains that she knew the staff member was a trustworthy individual, and she
greatly appreciated the assistance since it alleviated a great deal of her stress. During this
time, she felt quite anxious about how to handle the situation on her own; she had
considered telling her children to sit outside her classroom while she took her test, but she
explains, “I… [thought]…‘I’m not gonna perform [well on] my test cause I…have that
stress...[of thinking]…‘What if…something happened?’…and ‘What if I [asked] the
teacher…[if I could] bring them’…I [knew the teacher was] gonna say, ‘No.’” This
situation is a perfect example of the struggle many single-parent students face when they
must choose between their family and their education. Indeed, difficult daily choices like
98
Teresa’s correlate with statistics about older college entrants being less likely to transfer
to a four-year university since having children can create major personal and academic
obstacles (Dougherty and Kienzl 452). Although it may be entirely unreasonable for
campus resource centers to incorporate childcare into their offered services, writing
resource centers might be able to provide more effective tutoring sessions if the academic
environment surrounding them were less formal than the traditional classroom and more
reflective of students’ home environments.
“Cooling-Out” Conclusions
Certainly, there are a number of factors that place Teresa into a category of
students who frequently faces “cooling-out” in higher education, yet Teresa’s persistence
in open admissions seems to be the result of a few resistant characteristics. First, despite
what seems to be her biggest challenge to academics—single-parenthood—Teresa seems
to have learned how to strike a careful balance between her family life and her higher
education. Because she is a returning student, Teresa runs the risk of becoming
disengaged with her education since the environment of the academy is often so different
from the world outside of it. As numerous studies have shown, many students like
Teresa leave school out of despair or frustration before they finish (Cox, Penrose).
Teresa’s children, however, seem to be the driving motivation for her success; throughout
her interview and questionnaire, she frequently mentions her strong desire to use her
education to create a better lifestyle and increased opportunities for her children. In
addition, despite the length of her college career thus far, Teresa retains a good deal of
hope that she will achieve her goals. She says, “One thing I learned [is] that…nothing is
99
impossible, and there’s a lot of support…We just have to reach [out for it]…That’s one
thing…students…are not aware [of]…what’s around them, what support they can get.”
However difficult finding this initial support may have been for Teresa, she is now aware
that she has the ability to locate it at any school if she searches extensively enough. She
says that if she does not find what she needs in one place, she will look for it in another.
This personal initiative is likely to improve her chances of success.
Additionally, Teresa seems confident in her academic abilities as a student at this
point in her educational career; she has ventured into her collegiate-level composition
courses and has proved to herself and the college that she is capable of functioning
effectively according to its standards. She says that she feels “comfortable” with her
ability to achieve her goals. She has reached a level of reflective self-validation that,
ultimately, enables her to push through feelings of inadequacy about her writing.
Case Study #2: Diego
I conducted my second case study with a student named Diego. Diego is a
Mexican-American male who immigrated to the United States at the age of two. After
serving in the military shortly after graduating high school, Diego began his higher
educational career at Sacramento City College and has sustained this education for the
past five semesters. Diego’s language acquisition has played a role in his English
remediation, yet his intrinsic motivation and personal drive as a student have kept him
focused on transferring to a four-year university to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Diego has been a member of RISE for four semesters, and he uses many of our center’s
100
academic resources to supplement his educational work, including RISE Conscious
Writing Program’s tutoring services.
Diego’s Personal and Educational Background
Diego’s long-term educational history and Spanish language background have
created some challenges for his academic writing. After living in California during his
early childhood, Diego moved back to Mexico with his family in order for his mother to
further her professional career as a schoolteacher. Consequently, Diego began his first
grade year in central Mexico and thereafter continued his schooling until the end of his
seventh grade year. At twelve years old, he moved back to California to live with his
father and begin the eighth grade. This movement back and forth between Mexico and
the U.S. is common among long-term resident immigrants in California, and it can have
lasting effects on an individual’s language acquisition (Roberge).
During his interview, Diego explains that he had to adjust to a number of different
changes at his new school. Instead of having separate teachers for all subjects as he did
in Mexico, Diego had one teacher for his entire school day in California. And although
he learned what he calls “the basics” of English in Mexico, his main challenge became
immersing himself in the language to ensure that he could communicate effectively with
his peers. TESOL scholars argue that children who immigrate to the United States face a
number of educational challenges that native-born students do not. San Francisco State
English professor Mark Morgan Roberge argues, “Adolescent immigrants who arrive
during middle school or high school experience a major disruption when they face a new
schooling system, curriculum, language of instruction, and school culture” (115).
101
Nevertheless, Diego categorizes his English immersion experience as generally positive,
saying that “because…in that middle school there [were] only…a few persons that
[spoke] Spanish, I was forced to learn English fast…That’s why within three months, I
was able to pick up the English that I spoke.” He explains that one of his assistant
teachers played a role in making this experience positive because she translated for him
during his quizzes and tests. Diego says that this instructional assistant’s personal
attention was a constructive supplement to his language learning, and the assistant’s oneon-one support allowed him to effectively develop his English skills.
Interestingly, Diego’s experience with his instructional assistant took place in
1997—one year before the state passed Proposition 227, effectively ending bilingual K12 instruction in the state of California. Beginning in 1998, California public schools
began implementing the Structured English-Immersion Model—or English-only
instruction—in an effort to bring Limited English Proficient (LEP) students like Diego up
to speed with their native speaking peers in a one-year, accelerated program. The
proposition’s fifth-year evaluation report explains that in 1999, the California Department
of Education conducted an extensive survey, indicating that although
teachers were well informed about the policy’s requirements, they also…had not received
adequate staff development in the instructional strategies, curriculum, and materials needed to
serve English learners through structured English immersion, an alternative course of study, or
English mainstream classrooms. Other studies have also cited a lack of appropriate instructional
materials (including primary language materials) as a significant challenge faced by teachers. (I24)
102
Although research conducted on the overall success of California Proposition 227 is
largely inconclusive, many opponents argue that the proposition mandates a single
method of government-imposed English instruction and is founded upon principles
grounded in “ideology, not science” (Sifuentes). There is no way to determine for
certain, but Diego’s positive experience with his instructional assistant may have been
less favorable if he had arrived in California a year later. If his public school lost
bilingual educational resources as a result of Prop 227, Diego’s English language
acquisition may have been more labored.
Following middle school, Diego was placed into an ESL class at his public high
school comprised of all Spanish speakers, and he describes this class as very similar to
the mainstream English courses he took later in high school. He explains that his high
school consisted of advanced placement, “normal,” and ESL classes, and after taking one
ESL course during his first year of high school, he placed into the “normal” category.
His switch from ESL to “normal” English classes occurred as a result of his yearly
standardized assessment tests for reading comprehension and vocabulary.
After one semester of coursework following his high school graduation, Diego
changed his mind about starting a college career, and instead, he enlisted in the military.
He spent the entire duration of his four-year military contract overseas. During this time,
he took some general education courses at his military base through Central Texas
College, and these classes counted as requirements toward his associate’s degree. After
completing his service, Diego moved back home to California and, through open
103
admissions, enrolled at Sacramento City College in an effort to begin furthering his
higher education.
Diego’s Community College Assessment and Counseling Experiences
As one of the initial steps in his matriculation process, Diego took the
ACCUPLACER® English assessment test at SCC, completing the sentence skills,
reading comprehension, and essay writing portions of the test. Regarding this
experience, he says, “I thought I did pretty good, but it seems that I didn’t because I was
placed in English 50 and 59.”
When asked to elaborate on his experience during the essay portion of the
assessment test, Diego mentions that he did not structure his essay with introductory,
body, and concluding paragraphs because, he claims, “at that point, my writing wasn’t
good.” He says that during the test, he remembers producing something “kinda like
freewriting.” After turning in his essay exam, Diego mentions, “I was sure I did
horrible.” He attributes the “horrible” nature of his writing to “grammatical stuff,”
“paragraph structure,” and “just English skills” in general. Diego mentions that because
he had not written an English paper in six years, he was simply out of touch with what
was expected of him in college.
After taking his assessment test, Diego met with an academic counselor to create
an educational plan in order to show proof of enrollment and receive his military benefits
as a veteran. His attitude during this portion of our conversation seemed slightly annoyed
as he mentioned, “the counselor didn’t really help me…In five minutes, he wrote all the
classes that I was supposed to take in order for me to transfer.” Diego explains that the
104
counselor recommended he take a number of elective courses that did not match his
interests whatsoever, and in effect, he lost some valuable time by following the
counselor’s hasty advice. “Thanks to him,” Diego mentions, “I kinda wasted a semester
because I took classes that I didn’t really need to take.” This unfavorable counseling
experience mirrors the rushed nature of the academic advising Teresa experienced before
petitioning against her assessment placement, but perhaps because Diego was a relatively
new student in open admissions, he did not question his counselor’s advice.
Fortunately, Diego’s counseling experience and required remedial courses did not
discourage him from continuing his schooling at Sacramento City College. He attributes
this to a changed and matured personal attitude about college after returning to California
from the military. When he came back to start his schooling at SCC, he claims, “I was
more focused on what I wanted to do, and my only job and my only obligation now is
school, so I have to give [a] hundred percent…whereas before, I was just going [to
school] because I had to, not because I wanted to.” As a result of this focused attitude,
Diego claims that although his remedial English placement was not entirely desirable at
the time, he now realizes that it benefited him as an individual student. He says, “[In] the
end, it was a good thing that I was placed at that level because it really helped me to
develop the skills that I know.”
Diego’s Experience with Basic Writing
As mentioned earlier, Diego’s assessment scores indicated that his writing skills
required remediation, so he enrolled in the English courses recommended by his
assessment report. English Writing 50 (Developmental Writing) and English Writing 59
105
(Intermediate English Skills) are two courses, often taken concurrently, which give
students practice with English grammar, punctuation, and syntax through writing formal
academic paragraphs and short essays. These classes are part of Sacramento City
College’s remedial course sequence; they are three- and two-unit courses respectively,
yet neither course bears AA or transferrable credit. In other words, these classes are
designed to bring students up to speed with the conventions and production of collegiatelevel writing, but they do not count as college-level courses.
Despite the non-credit-bearing nature of these English courses, Diego considered
these classes helpful because they prepared him for the composition classes he took later
at SCC. In addition, he affirms that his teachers made his experience with basic-skills
courses favorable, saying, “All my English teachers have been pretty good. I have no
complaints.” Overall, he categorizes each of his basic writing courses as “interesting”
because they offered a different perspective of writing than he had known before. He
insists, “I was learning something different. I was actually learning how to write
properly…even [for] daily life….It gives you the skill to know how to spell a word, how
to use it, how to use commas, the use of FANBOYS, everything.” Diego says he began
applying the things he had learned in these basic writing classes to his everyday e-mail
correspondence and writing for work, and as a result, he experienced more confidence
with regard to this academic writing. Diego’s willingness to connect these new and
“interesting” writing tactics to his “daily life” reflects a general interest in and
seriousness about learning. It seems that many students perceive basic writing classes as
arbitrary forms of punishment for wrongdoings that are seldom clearly explained or
106
deconstructed, yet Diego’s ability to place portions of his writing classes into a practical,
real-world context seems to account for his acceptance of these classes as valuable.
After passing English Writing 50 and 59, Diego enrolled in English Writing 100
(College Writing), and he categorizes this class as “a lot of work.” English Writing 100
is designed to prepare students for English Writing 300—SCC’s first collegiate-level
composition class—by improving students’ critical thinking and writing skills. Diego
explains that this class challenged him with somewhere around three times the amount of
work than his previous classes. He says that English Writing 100 required, “take-home
essays, in-class essays, timed essays,” and much more writing overall than in his lowerlevel courses. He often wrote his essays in the five-paragraph format, a feature of his
writing he learned to counteract as he moved into his collegiate-level courses. As
mentioned earlier, Diego perceives this class as a positive experience since it provided
him with extensive practice in effective academic writing.
Diego’s Experience with Composition Tutoring in RISE
Once Diego arrived at English Writing 300 (College Composition), he decided to
seek out a tutor to ensure that he was doing everything necessary to keep up his English
grade. He was encouraged to do so when his teacher prefaced their semester by
discussing the higher expectations of writing at the college level. Diego explains, “[The
teacher] told us that the class was at the university level, so [the teacher] was expecting
more from us. And since [the teacher] also taught at Sac State, I told myself, well, [this
teacher’s] gonna be grading like if we [were] in Sac State, so I’d better get some help.”
Diego says that his teacher did not mention any information about helpful writing
107
resources in class, so he began independently “asking around” among other students
about where he could find a writing tutor. By the time Diego found SCC’s writing
center, he arrived to find it closed for the summer term due to budget cuts throughout the
college. Another student told him to check out the tutoring services at RISE, and this bit
of advice sent him to our writing program.
Instead of visiting the English department office or looking for information about
tutoring online, Diego decided to ask other students for information because his general
experience with visiting offices is that “nowadays, everywhere you go, they give you a
website, or a phone…number, and I don’t like that.” Diego’s statement reflects the
current nature of our educational system as any other privatized industry within a market
economy. This privatization often disconnects students from the healthy human
exchanges that necessarily feed a higher education, and it makes individuals feel as
though their concerns are not valid or worthy of direct contact and conversation. Instead
of risking the frustration of another impersonal encounter with an advisor, Diego trusted
his fellow student peer, who likely had experienced similar obstacles and challenges with
regard to seemingly disjointed student services.
Diego has visited RISE Conscious Writing Program for the past year, bringing in
writing prompts and composed essays for his college-level composition, history, and art
classes. Overall, he says he has been satisfied with the tutoring services he has received
at RISE. In addition to categorizing our program’s writing tutors as “great” and
“helpful,” Diego says he prefers to seek academic assistance from our writing program
because of the general sense of “freedom” that the physical environment offers. He
108
explains, “You can go in there, and if you’re hungry, you can have your snacks,” while in
other places on campus, there is, “no food allowed [and] you have to be quiet.” He says,
“people learn in different ways. [Some] people may not concentrate with noise, [and]
that’s why they seek places where they can be by themselves…[But] noise doesn’t really
bother me when it comes to writing.” In addition, Diego says that he values the easy
access to computers while working with a tutor since he sometimes needs to compose
electronic copies of his essays.
Aside from valuing RISE’s many helpful resources, including the tutoring offered
by RISE Conscious Writing Program, Diego says that he mostly appreciates the personal
nature of the services he receives. He explains, “The way I see it is that RISE, the people
that work there, they…actually care about helping out. From the front desk, from the
tutors, to the counselors, everybody in there is nice. For example, if you go to a different
office, the person working at the front desk…[might respond] with an attitude…[some
people] don’t seem [like] they actually want to help.” He also expresses that “the
counselors actually help you [with] how to pick the right classes with the right
teachers…they actually care about the students and not just about getting [through] the
day, earning their money.” He says he is certain of this because “they’re patient…they
can be with you for an hour or even more until you’re done…they spend more
time…They’re asking you what you like, what your schedule’s like…what classes you
wanna take…They pay attention to you.”
As Diego’s writing tutor, I have spent extensive amounts of time with him on
many occasions, working through difficult concepts until he felt comfortable leaving the
109
center and applying them without confusion or anxiety. Diego and I also spent a great
deal of time through the past four semesters building a comfortable and respectful, but
equally down-to-earth, rapport that has guided the success of many of our sessions. I
have had the privilege of observing Diego’s habits as a student while offering new
suggestions for his writing, and it seems as though he possesses many characteristics that
will prevent a “latent terminal” status from developing during his educational career
(Clark 575).
“Cooling-Out” Conclusions
Despite the fact that his bilingualism and returning-student status have the
potential to create more challenges in the future, Diego seems to be surrounded by a
number of positive determinants that could augment his academic success as an open
admissions student at Sacramento City College. First, Diego’s parents and family
members value the potential gains of a higher education, and as a result, they are
supportive of his choice to be a student. A recent report by the National Center for
Education Statistics suggests that “first generation students are at a disadvantage
throughout their time at colleges and universities. They enter without as much
preparation, they get lower grades, and they are more likely to drop out” (Jaschik).
Because of his familial support and the educational example his mother has set, Diego is
statistically more likely to persist as a community college student. Secondly, Diego’s
renewed interest in school after his service in the military seems to have created a type of
intrinsic motivation that will likely carry him through his courses despite their levels of
difficulty. His confidence as a student seems to be driven by this motivation and
110
validated by his achievement of favorable grades. Finally, this motivation has led Diego
to seek out educational assistance by means of a trustworthy academic support system; it
appears as though his solidarity with other students and dedicated professionals in RISE
has helped Diego on his path toward a college degree. Diego’s success as a student thus
far is clearly the result of a number of causal factors, but collaboration with other
individuals seems to lie at the heart of this success. His consistent interaction with
teachers, tutors, counselors, and peers seems to have kept him engaged in school and
confident about completing his academic career.
Case Study #3: Laka
I conducted my third case study with a student named Laka. Laka is a PacificIslander female student who immigrated to the United States at the age of ten. Because
political changes in her native country disrupted her primary education, Laka moved to
Australia for her fourth grade year before eventually immigrating to America to complete
her K-12 education. Her bilingual, first-generation, and AB 540 student statuses have
proved to be challenges to her academic career, but she has not allowed any of these
factors to discourage her from remaining in college or obtaining a four-year degree.
Laka’s Personal and Educational Background
Laka attended kindergarten through third grade in her native country, and
although she does not remember much about this time period, she describes her teachers
in this school system as particularly strict. She explains that, “if you don’t bring your
homework and stuff, they’ll hit your hand with a ruler.” In addition to her memories of
corporal punishment, Laka explains that the school system in her country had fewer
111
vacation breaks, providing little to no chance to make up missed work. “We never had
summer school,” she explains. “If you fail…you get held back. They don’t give you the
chance to take it over or during a break.” She remembers barely passing the third grade
due to missing approximately three weeks of school when her grandfather died. Because
she was among the first-born of his grandchildren, Laka had to assist her grandmother in
a number of ritualistic ceremonies following her grandfather’s death, and these duties
kept her away from school. She says, “it was hard…when I came back, I had to catch up,
and I didn’t get to…finish all the work that I missed, so that’s why I barely passed.”
Because her grandfather was a venerable chief on their island, Laka’s responsibilities to
her family during this time were greater than other children’s may have been in the same
situation.
Following her third grade year, Laka’s native country experienced some major
political changes, which, in turn, altered her school system and forced her family to
partially relocate in order for Laka and her siblings to continue their education. She
explains that the government “shut all the schools down, so nobody was able to go to
school.” Luckily, her uncle and aunt in Australia offered to house Laka and two of her
siblings as well as pay for their schooling to prevent a disruption in their education.
Laka’s fourth grade experience in Australia was quite different from her earlier
schooling in her home country, and she experienced even more drastic changes the
following year when her family moved to America. In Australia, her fourth grade class
was combined with a fifth grade class, and this combined class of nearly forty students
was taught by one teacher. Her language transition was minimal since school was taught
112
in English in both Australia and her native country. After her school year in Australia,
Laka says she and her siblings returned home to visit her family, and during this time, her
mother announced that they would be flying to California to visit some family members.
This visit turned into a permanent living situation and prompted many changes both at
home and in school.
Upon arriving in the Sacramento area, Laka and her family moved into a twobedroom, one-bathroom apartment, which they shared with another family of five.
Together, this group of eleven people shared this apartment for the next year before
Laka’s family moved into another apartment in the complex. When they first arrived, her
parents both worked as caregivers in the San Francisco bay area, and this was difficult at
times for Laka and her siblings. Both her mother and father would work continually
throughout the week and return home on the weekends. During many weeks, however,
her parents were unable to come home, so Laka and her siblings had to walk to school on
their own. She says, “it was…far walking to school. Like, really, really far…My
uncle…had his car, but he was working as well.” For a period of time, Laka had to walk
to school on her own, which was also difficult for her.
At both her public elementary and middle schools, Laka explains that she does not
recall any separate-tracked English classes; rather, all students, more or less, took the
same classes together. As a result of her standardized tests scores in the eighth grade,
Laka was required to take a course to improve her reading skills. In this course, she and
other students checked out books from the library and took tests, which passed them
113
along to books of greater difficulty. Although she did not enjoy reading, she does claim
that this course helped her skills.
Laka’s family moved into a new house just before she began attending her public
high school, and although she liked the new neighborhood she moved into, her school
transition was nonetheless challenging. She explains, “I wanted to go to school with my
friends and people I already [knew], and when we moved [there], I had to start fresh and
make new friends…When we started, I hated it…I thought, ‘I don’t wanna be here. I
don’t wanna go to school here’…I didn’t want any friends…I kept to myself.” She made
friends with two Polynesian students, who later dropped out of school, but later made
another core group of friends who she says made her high school experience positive
overall. Her teachers were also helpful, allowing her to do makeup work when she
needed to.
Laka does not remember there being any distinctions between English classes at
her high school, except for the fact that some students took Advanced Placement courses
while others did not. Because she received an “Incomplete” for her freshman English
class, Laka took the course over during two sessions of summer school after her junior
year. Aside from this class, Laka says she did not have much trouble in her English
courses. She remembers doing a good deal of reading, including Shakespeare, and taking
standardized tests each year. She also remembers that even though she was never placed
in an ESL class, she was nonetheless required to take an ESL test each year during high
school. Laka explains that during these tests, “you look at a picture, and they ask you
what…the picture [is] doing…like, kindergarten stuff…Every year, I had to do that for
114
high school.” On her high school application, Laka listed English as the second language
she learned as a child, and as a result, she says she got tired of the slightly patronizing,
annual process of being required to demonstrate her language skills.
After graduating high school, Laka was uncertain about her options as a student
and as a worker since she never obtained her American residency. Since she was not
born in the U.S., she says she thought, “I’m just gonna sit…at home and wait for
something to happen.” She did not wait for long, however, before deciding that she
would follow in her sister’s footsteps and go to college. Since her sister worked full time
and was unable to help with her enrollment process, Laka and three of her cousins, who
also graduated high school, came to Sacramento City College one day and started their
matriculation process together.
Laka’s Community College Assessment and Counseling Experiences
Laka learned from a counselor that she needed to take her assessment test, so she
visited the assessment center and took both the ACCUPLACER® computerized math
and English tests on the same day. At the assessment center, Laka explains she was told
that the multiple choice test was not about “failing” but about how many questions a
student “got right.” She remembers being told, “You will not be graded on this test,” and
as a result of this explanation, Laka says she was not anxious about her performance on
the test. During the reading comprehension portion of the exam, Laka explains that she
“skimmed through it and guessed cause it was…multiple choice.” She says, “I wouldn’t
even read the story. I would look at the question, and then go back and look for key
words, and then pick the answer.” This rushed behavior is common among students who
115
are unfamiliar with the purpose and consequences of assessment testing, and her lack of
awareness about reader expectations carried over into her essay assessment test as well.
After being given her essay topic, Laka says she “wrote one big paragraph” in response to
the question she received. After receiving her placement, Laka worked on her own to
construct an educational plan because she was unaware that she could visit a counselor
for this assistance. She eventually updated this educational plan with the help of some
students and counselors in RISE after her first semester began.
Laka’s Experience with Basic Writing
As a result of her assessment process, Laka was placed into English Writing 50—
a course two steps below college-level writing at SCC, which bears no graduation or
transfer credit. She felt relatively content about this placement since most of her family
members ended up with the same outcome. Regarding her experiences in English
Writing 50, Laka says she did not feel particularly engaged or challenged as a student.
She remembers learning about topic sentences during the semester, but says her
classroom had no windows, and each class felt “long.” After finishing this writing course
with an “A,” Laka enrolled in English Writing 100, the next course in SCC’s basic
writing sequence.
Laka explains that she stopped going to English Writing 100 after three weeks
because she could not afford the book for the course and because she was anxious about
speaking in class. She explains that since she could not pay the bookstore, and she could
not obtain a copy the book required for the class from RISE’s book lending library, she
decided to utilize limited access of it at SCC’s main library. She says, “I would go to the
116
library, and…check it out, and then take it to class, but…I only got it one time. I think
somebody else in the class was checking it out.” This limited use of the book required
for her class prevented Laka from feeling prepared or confident about her ability to
understand the key concepts or about participating in group discussions. This lack of
assurance was intensified by her overall shyness as a student. She explains, “I hate
talking in front of people, [and the teacher] was…picking on…everyone, and I didn’t
wanna…get picked on, and I knew…I’d get picked on and then…I just stopped going
cause I didn’t have the book, and I didn’t want [the teacher] to pick on me cause I didn’t
know…what to say.” Laka’s association of class participation with “getting picked on” is
an interesting perspective that many first-generation students hold regarding their college
classes.
Some studies conducted on college students’ experiences in writing courses
indicate that factors other than writing often play a role in course performance. In a study
comparing first-generation and continuing-generation college attendees, Ann M. Penrose
found a lower level of self-confidence in self-assessments of first-generation students’
reading and writing skills. Penrose argues that “first-generation students’ selfassessments…indicate that, on average, they have less confidence in their verbal abilities
than [continuing-generation] students, even though the performance data demonstrate that
this concern is unwarranted” (457). Rebecca Cox conducted a similar study on student
success and found that anxiety played a larger role than expected in students’ responses
to her questions about persistence. She states,
117
Many of the students who did participate in the study began the semester with doubts about their
abilities to succeed in the role of college student and described strategies that would allow them to
avoid being identified by the professor as unfit for college student status…Implementing such
defenses against anticipated failure may have relieved students’ fears, but they also undermined
students’ chances of completing their coursework.
It is unclear whether or not Laka’s decision to drop English Writing 100 had to do with a
preliminary fear of failure that many first-generation students share, yet some of her other
questionnaire commentary suggests that she does harbor negative feelings about
academic writing.
When asked to provide her affective responses to some partially-composed
sentences about writing, Laka delivered reactions that point to negative sentiments about
the subject. For example, amid a number of penned scratch-outs, Laka filled in sentences
with responses like, “When I write for school, I feel like…I’m stressed out,” “When
someone reads what I have written, I feel like…it doesn’t make sense,” “When I talk to
other people about my writing, I feel like…I need help and I need to get better at this,”
and “In my writing, I wish I could…write whatever I want and however I want.” During
our interview, I asked her if she ever re-enrolled in English Writing 100 after dropping it
two semesters ago. She responded, “after that, I didn’t wanna take…any English classes
at all. All I wanted to do was…take, like…piano or more business classes.” Her
somewhat averse feelings about writing and composition courses seem to play a part in
her admitted avoidance of English classes, and to the feeling that her confidence about
writing is low since she took her last class so long ago. However, she also mentions that
118
a lack of funds during her enrollment period prevented her from signing up for the course
again.
Laka’s AB 540 Status and Community Involvement
Part of Laka’s money complications are due to her undocumented status as an AB
540 student. California Assembly Bill 540, a law enacted in 2001, “grants undocumented
immigrant students an exemption from out-of state tuition, thereby making some forms of
higher education more accessible” (Abrego 709). As a result of AB 540, undocumented
students are still considered ineligible for federal or state-funded financial aid; however,
they “no longer pay three to seven times more for tuition than their documented peers”
(Abrego 710). Because of her residency status, Laka does not qualify for academic
scholarships, loans, or grants, and she cannot apply for paid employment unless the job is
undocumented.
Consequently, Laka cannot pay for school unless she works “illegally,” and she
cannot attend school full-time if she does not work full-time. She explains that the only
job she knows she can obtain is that of a caregiver, saying, “in the Polynesian
community, everybody’s mom is known for caregiving.” Although the job provides good
pay, she says she would rather not perform this work out of fear that she might become
“addicted” to the money and “be a caregiver the rest of [her] life.” As a result, she
instead babysits her young cousins part-time for family members in order to attend
classes part-time at Sacramento City College. This arrangement has been challenging for
Laka. She says, “I feel like I’m gonna be at Sac City forever…my parents were
paying…and I hated it cause I hated asking them for money…I didn’t want them to pay a
119
lot, so…three classes was…the most…I’ve taken [in a] semester.” Her father was
recently laid off from an undocumented job due to company background checks, so her
mother is currently supporting their family monetarily, which intensifies Laka’s desire to
not place a burden on her parents’ finances. Despite these challenges, however, Laka
remains motivated to fulfill her parents’ wish for their children “to go to school, get good
grades, and [get] good [jobs].”
Part of Laka’s accomplishments as a student thus far seem to be the result of
purposeful and positive collaboration with her peers, and much of her ability to access
valuable information about academics seems to come from constant dialogue with other
students. Laka is a member of RISE as well as a student club on campus, and she has
utilized both of these organizations to receive personal support for her coursework and to
learn useful information about how to persist as a successful student. She participated in
a mentorship program through her club, in which she was able to talk about school and
home-related issues with an older, successful student from a four-year university. She
claims that “in the club, we motivate each other to do stuff…everybody’s a big help to
each other.” In fact, Laka and her club members were greatly moved by a devastating
and tragic event that affected many families in her community, and they responded to this
tragedy by organizing a huge community fundraiser event at Sacramento City College.
In less than a month, Laka and her club members managed to recruit dozens of volunteer
artists to perform on campus, gather crates of donated materials, and raise over $1,000 for
families in need. This accomplishment served as a significant validation of her ability to
120
achieve something she set out to do, and it created a positive impact and hope for her
immediate personal and academic communities.
Laka’s Experience with Composition Tutoring in RISE
After learning about her student club through RISE, Laka began visiting RISE
Conscious Writing Program semi-regularly and meeting with Jesús for assistance with
her writing assignments in English Writing 50. She claims that she had heard of other
tutoring centers on campus, but “never made an effort to go” because she had already
established a comfortable relationship with Jesús. While a student writer’s comfort level
with a tutor is certainly one of the most important factors for successful assistance with
writing, I also believe that Laka could broaden her perspective of academic assistance
overall if she experimented with other writing resource centers. A wide variety of
academic experiences and interactions can expand a student’s pool of opportunities and
encourage more individual agency in the process.
In addition, it seems as though multiple tutoring opportunities and increased
collaboration with other students might allow Laka to adopt more of a critical
consciousness about some of her aversions and anxieties concerning academic writing.
Indeed, Laka’s desire to “write whatever [she wants] and however [she wants]” could be
further examined through meaningful and focused tutorial conversation. Bawarshi and
Pelkowski explain that students are often
told what the standards for academic writing are in composition classrooms…without really being
told why the standards exist in the first place. In many cases, this act of withholding causes
students to treat writing as a code they must somehow crack—a guessing game—instead of
something that they must participate in creating. Thus, academic discourses appear as stagnant,
121
artificial, and arbitrary formulas to student writers, especially those for whom such discourses are
not very accessible, rather than dynamic discourses that respond to and reflect the rhetorical and
social contexts that create them. (92)
Laka’s avoidance of academic writing and composition classes could be partially due to a
feeling that these school-related constructs cannot be linked to meaningful activities—
like the social and political experiences which motivate her as a student. A style of
tutoring which allows Laka to begin questioning education, language, and her relation to
and manipulation of each might allow her to push further into her college career and
surpass the courses she is currently evading.
“Cooling-Out” Conclusions
Even though Laka possesses a slightly limited perspective of academic writing
and writing resource centers, and despite her challenging status as a first-generation, AB
540 student, it seems as though she has the ability to resist “cooling-out” for a couple of
reasons. First, Laka seems to have established a level of individual engagement in higher
education that is likely to keep her enrolled in school. She values her peer relationships
and admits that her friends and family keep her “motivated” to perform well in her
classes. Her participation in extracurricular and community activities on campus also
speaks to this type of student engagement. The 2006 National Survey of Student
Engagement—a study conducted among 260,000 American college students—indicates
that
student engagement [has] a ‘compensatory effect’ on grades and students’ likelihood of returning
for a second year of college, particularly among underserved minority populations and students
entering college with lower levels of achievement. Data indicated that activities such as
122
collaborating with peers on projects inside and outside the classroom helped students overcome
previous educational disadvantages. (Wasley)
This information reflects Laka’s association of her individual achievement as a student
with her interpersonal relationships. Studies like this suggest that if Laka continues to
remain actively engaged in her academic community, she will offset the otherwise
negative obstacles on her path to success.
Secondly, although undocumented status among college students can be a highly
stressful and negative experience because of the challenges it creates, some scholars
argue that California Assembly Bill 540 has also lowered the socially stigmatizing image
of these students as “illegal aliens” and has empowered them to use the law to their
advantage. Leisy Abrego argues that
By claiming their right to an exemption from out-of-state tuition, undocumented students are
mobilizing the law. However, unintentionally, the constitutive effects of AB 540 have produced
more far-reaching outcomes. Specifically, the increased confidence, coupled with a more socially
acceptable label, has allowed undocumented students to identify themselves publicly in an effort
to find others who share their status. Collectively, they have been able to organize, inform greater
numbers of undocumented students about their rights, and further mobilize to request rights not
directly granted by the law. (727)
Furthermore, Abrego asserts that the neutralized title of the law “can empower
disenfranchised groups to exploit the constitutive powers of law and help promote
changes in legal consciousness from being against the law to being with the law” (731).
Laka has shared information about her struggles and accomplishments as an AB 540
student as a participant member of numerous high school and college discussion panels in
123
an effort to encourage students like herself to attend college. She has claimed her status
as part of her overall identity, but not as a part that will prevent her success.
Case Study #4: James
The final case study I conducted for this research was with a student named
James. James is an African-American male in his late-twenties who has attended
community college off and on for approximately eight years. James’s admitted lack of
focus on school seems to have played the largest role in his punctuated academic career.
Although when examining his prior schooling, it also seems as though a complex
arrangement of other causal factors have influenced James’s current educational
situation. James is a first-generation college student and a monolingual speaker of an
English dialect variant from Standard Written or Academic English. These
characteristics—combined with the fact that he seems to have been tracked in low-level
English courses by his public schools from an early age—give me the impression that
James faces many obstacles on his path toward success in college. These challenges do
not, however, preclude him from avoiding a “latent-terminal” student status, or “coolingout” in higher education (Clark 575).
James’s Personal and Educational Background
James attended public school in the local Sacramento area from kindergarten
through twelfth grade. Throughout this experience, he was a student at six schools from
two districts —three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. After
completing second grade at his second elementary school, James was moved back to the
first grade after it became evident that he was not learning the material he needed to
124
continue forward. His experiences in his primary classes, as well as his shift to a new
school district after the fourth grade, exemplify some of the major variations that exist
within our public school system.
James remembers major differences between the two school districts he attended,
and he cites these discrepancies as problematic during his early education. James
mentions that he remembers two teachers in his first school district who challenged him
to read and develop his math skills; however, for the most part, he also remembers
receiving less encouragement to excel in his studies in his first school district.
Concerning the differences between these two districts, James states,
I noticed…[that my first school district]…was…more fun, but more fun doesn’t…necessarily
mean good…I felt like the teachers [there]…didn’t really care too much, but when I went to [my
next school district]…for just the two years I was there [in middle school], it seemed like the
teachers who I had…cared…I don’t know if it was just the new district and new teachers…but…I
felt like…they cared more [there].
James’s transition from schools with teachers who “didn’t really care too much” to
schools where teachers “cared more” could have been due to a fortunate coincidence, yet
the economic conditions surrounding his schools within these districts suggest otherwise.
The schools in James’s first school district are located among poorer socioeconomic
surroundings than the schools in his second district. For example, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau, the 2006-2008 median family income near the schools in James’s first
district was $38,722, and 23.5% of families existed below the poverty line. In James’s
second district, the median family income was $84,628, and 6% of families lived below
the poverty line. In addition, the 2008 average price of a home in James’s first district
125
was $226,731 while it was $359,100 in his second district. Statistics like these indicate a
significant discrepancy between the socioeconomic conditions experienced among the
families living in the two districts. Furthermore, since property tax provides funding for
local area school districts, these statistics suggest that James’s first district at a monetary
disadvantage to his second district. Ultimately, numbers like these reinforce the notion
that the financial gap is linked to a larger, student achievement gap.
Concerning the classes he experienced in his first school district, James elaborates
on his memories about the majority of his teachers having lower expectations. He says
he has the impression these teachers “didn’t care as much” because they “let [him] do
what [he wanted].” This usually meant that instead of asking for his participation, his
teachers would let him “draw” pictures in class “on [his] own.” He explains, “I
remember this one class in particular where…if I wasn’t interested in a subject that [the
teacher] was teaching…[or I didn’t] understand it…I would start drawing, and I
remember…the teacher didn’t…tell me to stop drawing or [anything]. I guess I was in
my own world, drawing.” James says he is certain the teacher knew about his
independent activities, and he quietly continued them because he was not redirected. The
teacher eventually showed James’s drawings to his mother, who punished him at home
for not paying attention in class. After some time, however, James’s mother began to
notice that James did not seem to be learning much in his class. He says, “[The teacher]
wasn’t trying to push me. [The teacher] wasn’t trying to do [anything].” As a result of
his low achievement in this class, James was transitioned back to the first grade, and he
explains that this backward movement had a negative impact on the rest his education.
126
He explains, “I think that one teacher…kind of messed up the whole thing for me.”
Although there is no way to know for sure the specifics behind James’s teacher’s
behavior, it is safe to say that the process of reverting a child’s grade level a year after its
completion seems particularly uncommon, and at the least, indicative of something
problematic about the quality of education in this particular classroom.
James explains that the classes in his new school district gave him the impression
that his education was enhanced by more professional involvement. He says, “[The
teachers] would talk to your parents more often than the teachers in the past.” This
communication between teachers and family was consistent among all the schools James
attended in the second district. In addition, James felt as though his teachers cared about
his wellbeing as a student. He remembers a sixth grade teacher from the second school
district he attended who used a sports metaphor to encourage him to take his studies
seriously. He says, “[The teacher] knew I liked to [play sports]…and…was telling
me…[to] imagine myself in a race, and I’m behind everybody, and I gotta catch up,
and…basically, [the teacher] meant…my reading and everything else.” This sentiment
stuck with James over the years, and it gave him the impression that his teachers wanted
him to succeed.
When asked about the types of curricula James experienced in elementary and
middle school, he explains that he participated in RSP courses that did not particularly
challenge him past the third grade. According to the California Department of Education,
Resource Specialist Programs are designed to provide supplementary courses outside of
the mainstream classroom for children with mild to moderate learning disabilities
127
throughout the school day. Because James remembers attending these courses from an
early age, his school most likely diagnosed him with a learning disability during his
repeat attempt of the first grade and created an Individualized Education Program (IEP)
for his teachers and other educational professionals to follow. James explains that
children at his schools were sent to RSP classes if they had “reading problems” or
“behavior problems” and that he attended these classes because of his reading level.
Regarding this program, James says, “I can honestly say I needed RSP…from…the first
[to] second grade…maybe the third, but after that…it was like they were teaching the
same thing….I can remember…leaving the class to go to RSP, and [in] the class…I left,
they were learning…elementary algebra, so by the time I [got] to middle school, I [was]
unfamiliar with it cause [I’d] never seen it before.” In all respects, the RSP course
material James experienced was considered “slower” than the curricula experienced by
his mainstream counterparts.
While special education programs aim at providing individualized instruction
based on a child’s personal academic needs, some scholars believe that we should not
ignore the sociopolitical context in which special education is often advised. According
to Georgia State University professor, David W. Stinson, Black male students are placed
into remedial and special-education classes more frequently than any other identifiable
group of students (488). He explains,
Community and school efforts to improve Black students’ educational outcomes, specifically
Black male students, located in the discourse of deficiency are intervention strategies—strategies
that are designed to ‘fix’ the deficiency (Ogbu, 1978). Examples of such interventions include ‘at
risk’ curricula, pullout programs, and (dominant) culture development programs. Although these
128
strategies are intended to improve student performance, they most often essentialize the
experiences of Black male students and thus have minimal positive effect. In fact, such programs
can contribute to the continued marginalization of Black male students (Duncan, 2002). The labels
at risk learner and special needs learner have been used to justify tracking many African
American male students, placing them in disproportionate numbers into lower track and specialeducation classes (Harry & Anderson, 1999; Oakes, Ormseth, Bell, & Camp, 1990). (485)
One could certainly argue that James’s “pullout” RSP classes were certainly necessary
due to his inability to demonstrate proficiency of established academic standards.
However, Stinson’s research also suggests that James’s learning disability perhaps should
not be divorced of the social, academic context in which it existed. Whether or not James
was “ready” for the material taught in his mainstream classes, his academic ability
classification kept him placed in “lower” classes—and excluded from a more advanced
education—through the end of high school. Indeed, tracking research suggests that it is
“virtually impossible” to change a student’s placement once it has been established (Rose
Lives on the Boundary 30).
James remembers little about his high school English classes other than the nature
of their unchallenging coursework. He explains that instead of being “pulled out” of his
classes for RSP, as he was in elementary and middle school, his high school simply
placed into “lower” classes than other students. He says that the material he learned in
his high school English classes was “the same stuff [he] did in middle school
and…maybe elementary school.” In high school, he remembers learning word-related
concepts like the definitions of “vowels [and] consonants” but claims he did very little
reading and writing in these classes. When asked if he ever read Shakespeare in high
129
school, James responded with a decisive, “Hell no.” He asserts that he never read any
stories, poems, or other types of literature while in his English classes. While he took
part in “regular” classes for other subjects like “geography” and “history,” James claims
that his English and math courses were always “remedial.” This consistent placement in
unchallenging, remedial courses seems to serve as one of the main reasons for James’s
lack of focus on school.
After high school, James attended and played sports at two community colleges
periodically, but his attention to schoolwork was rarely adequate enough to keep him
enrolled in many courses. Over the next eight years, James enrolled in a number of
classes during various semesters but dropped most of them before completion and some
of them before commencement. He attributes much of his disinterest in education to his
desire to find something outside school to enrich his life. He says, “I wanted to see what
was out there in the world other than school.” After periodic, year- or semester-long
absences, James reenrolled in classes, driven by the motivation to play college sports
with his friends. He explains, “[When] I [came] to Sacramento City [College]…I wasn’t
too interested in school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was just here to play
[sports].” In addition, the courses James took while playing sports were generally lowstakes, physical education courses that supplemented his activity outside the classroom.
Because his “mind wasn’t in school,” and he eventually ended up in “a position he didn’t
want to play” on his team, he decided to leave school indefinitely to work a full-time job.
James attributes his renewed interest in and dedication to school to a number of
the life lessons he experienced while away from college. When asked what brought him
130
back to Sacramento City College to complete his first full load of courses in eight years,
James says, “Going through life…going to jail…losing jobs, getting educated by people
[on] the street…[These experiences] let me know I want a career other than a regular
job.” James weighed his options over a four-year period of time during which he worked
a low-paying job, and he eventually realized that higher pay necessitated a higher
education. Like many other students from historically underrepresented backgrounds,
James began to understand that his movement across socioeconomic lines would need to
come from schooling. It seems as though James’s educational history and his periodic
leaves of absence after high school played primary roles in his low performance during
his community college assessment process.
James’s Community College Assessment and Counseling Experiences
Like all other Sacramento City College students, James began his matriculation
process with an English assessment test, and he remembers that this process was “hard”
for him. Concerning the computerized portion of the ACCUPLACER® sentence skills
and reading comprehension assessment, James says that there was a great deal of “stuff
[he] didn’t recognize” on the test, such as confusing words and other unfamiliar content.
He understood that the purpose of this assessment test was to “place [him] in a class [he
needed] to be placed in,” but he recalls encountering no resourceful information about
how to prepare for this test. After completing the essay portion of the test, about which
he remembers very little, James was placed into English Writing 40 and 49—the lowest
levels of basic-skills composition courses at SCC.
131
After his placement, James visited SCC’s counseling department to set up an
educational plan for his semester and made a personal connection with one of RISE’s
adjunct counselors who happened to be working outside of the RISE office for the day.
James explains, “It was crazy how…I met [the counselor] because…I was there to see…a
regular counselor, but he had seen me [in the waiting area]…and…[said to me], ‘I know
you’re waiting on a counselor, but let me [finish up] with this person, and then I can see
you.’” James explains that another available counselor called his name, but he chose to
wait for the RISE counselor who had approached him individually. Although he is
unsure about why this counselor began talking to him, he explains that their conversation
was particularly personal, and he felt “respect” for the counselor as a result. James
explains, “[The counselor] was asking me…[what] my goals [were]…, like a regular
counselor asks…but then…we started talking about life.” James says that when
discussing his interests, he mentioned his curiosity about the Black Panther Party and
about the infiltration of drugs into urban Californian communities during the sixties. He
says, “I was telling [the counselor] about that, and [the counselor]…told me what book to
find to read about it and everything.” James explains that he appreciated this personal
connection and esteemed the counselor as a result. It seems as though James’s meeting
with this counselor—who showed a genuine interest in James’s life experiences and
interests—played a part in his increased engagement in his classes. Upon the counselor’s
recommendation, James enrolled in his English writing courses, visited RISE to learn
about the variety of services offered therein, and began receiving tutoring to supplement
his basic writing experience.
132
James’s Experience with Basic Writing
James explains that before his productive conversation with the adjunct counselor
from RISE, he had enrolled in English Writing 40 and 49 but had dropped the classes
before beginning any coursework. After his increased engagement in school, however,
James passed these classes each with a “C” grade. Incidentally, he accomplished this
goal during the first and only semester in which he successfully completed a full load of
courses without dropping any. James believes that his basic writing classes have
prepared him for the next level of composition he must complete in SCC’s English course
sequence. He explains, “I feel a whole lot…I feel I know a little bit more than I
did…before I…started class…I feel more confident.” James’s somewhat tentative
response seems to reflect his newfound confidence in himself as a potentially capable and
successful student. Since renewing his interest in his classes, James mentions a few bits
of advice that have assisted him in his recent accomplishments.
When asked about the overall nature of his sentence-skills and grammar-based
courses, James says, “I felt I could’ve [done] better if I would’ve started off strong.” He
says that his lack of interest in the subject was changed by some guidance he received
from his “mentor” mid-way through the semester. He says, “Basically, he was…telling
me that I gotta…get my foundation down in order…to be…strong in my classes that
I…take in the future. And…when I learned that...when he told me that…I
started…focusing on my class…[and] getting help [through tutoring].” Interestingly,
James’s abilities as a writer seem to have improved as a result of his self-reflection on his
abilities as a student. He explains that he has begun to view the concept of academic
133
achievement through the lens of sports involvement, a subject with which he is
particularly familiar and has been motivated by throughout his entire life. He asserts,
“What I’ve realized…[is that] repetition is the key to learning…That’s with anything in
life, like with sports…if you do it enough times, [you’ll] get it, and that’s even with math
or reading…it’s repetition.” James’s willingness to relate school to sports seems to have
allowed him to renew his motivation for success and increase his likelihood of
persistence.
James’s Experience with Composition Tutoring in Community College
James has learned over time that collaboration with multiple individuals on his
college campus will improve his chances of developing his academic writing. He
explains that he “[likes] to get other people’s opinions” about the work he does for class
in order to ensure his grammar exercises are error-free. Having personally worked with
James on a number of his homework assignments, I have taken note of his curiosity about
language and his interest in producing a form of it that his teachers will categorize as
appropriate academic discourse. However, in addition to his focus on sentence-level
writing concepts from his basic-skills classes, James often seems interested in starting
conversations about bigger subjects he has encountered as a college student. In the RISE
center, I have observed James having casual conversations with multiple individuals
about a wide variety of topics such as race, education, the history behind California gang
activity, and political documentary films. Although James has not yet arrived at
collegiate-level composition courses, his genuine inquisitiveness seems to suggest that he
will continue this dialogue with tutors, counselors, teachers, and other students in order to
134
talk through his ideas and produce writing that best reflects his carefully considered
opinions.
James seems to value the positive tutoring experiences he has had with RISE
Conscious Writing Program. He explains that he appreciates his tutors’ levels of
expertise and understanding of language and writing, and that getting writing assistance
from knowledgeable students is helpful since these students seem to be particularly aware
of teachers’ expectations. James also explains that having access to computers and free
writing materials during tutorials is helpful for his personal writing process. In general,
James says that RISE has helped him on his path toward a two-year degree because in
addition to effective tutoring, the program provides “the majority of everything [a student
needs]” to achieve success in one centralized location.
“Cooling-Out” Conclusions
James represents a large group of students in the U.S. who are commonly
“cooled-out” by open admissions systems, and although James has many obstacles in his
academic future because of his educational past, he also seems to demonstrate
characteristics that suggest persistence. First, James seems presently interested in
surrounding himself with positive male influences who perhaps could have aided in his
academic achievement at an earlier age. During our interview, James mentions that his
father’s leaving home when he was ten years old had a problematic impact on his
adolescence; he says, “I think you need your…father during your teenage years.”
Unfortunately, this absence of encouragement at home reduced his chances of
progressing toward academic success in his schooling. Studies show that students who
135
grow up in father-absent homes are twice as likely to drop out of or repeat a grade in
school (Nord and West). Nevertheless, James’s current personal connections with
successful male academic professionals seem to have pushed him reexamine academic
abilities that may have otherwise suffered during his early educational career. James
feels supported and motivated by these mentors, and in effect, his academic performance
is likely to improve.
Secondly, James seems to demonstrate a renewed focus on his studies and careful
reflection on his future potential as a student. Sports no longer seem to be the sole source
of James’s motivation to attend college. Rather, he has begun to use his passion for and
understanding of sports to improve his intellectual achievements. James’s life
experiences have also taught him about the practical value of a higher education. Like
many other community college students, James wants to improve his chances of
eligibility for higher wages in the job market, and this reward seems fruitful enough to
keep James engaged in the coursework that will facilitate this improved economic status.
In the next and final chapter, I will utilize these case studies alongside pertinent
research related to the subject of “cooling-out” in higher education to draw conclusions
about how academic professionals may more effectively serve students from historically
underrepresented backgrounds. The goal in delineating the perspectives of these students
is to highlight pertinent information about “cooling-out” to determine the best ways to
help potential “latent terminal” students succeed by way of appropriately-constructed
writing resource centers.
136
Chapter 5
CONCLUSIONS
Burton Clark’s notion of “cooling-out” in higher education is a highly complex
issue that is made up of many constituent causal factors; consequently, proposing
solutions to this omnipresent problem is not a simple task. If educators wish to
counteract the problem of “cooling-out” to provide a more democratic and egalitarian
form of public higher education for students in the US, we must work to formulate
solutions that address the individual, problematic pieces of this structural puzzle. In other
words, our solutions to the problem of “cooling-out” in higher education must be
dispersed throughout many different areas of our educational system—i.e. through K-12
educational reform, localized college assessment measures, revised institutional practices
during college matriculation, etc.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the possible solutions proposed in this research study
must be narrowed in scope to provide useful commentary about potential decisions to
address the overall problem of “cooling-out.” This final chapter will synthesize my case
study findings with existing research in the fields of composition and writing center
theory to offer feasible, localized solutions for English departments and writing resource
centers in order to better ensure the success of potential “latent terminal” students in
“cooling-out” systems. Particularly, this chapter will discuss the general need for
increased communication inside and outside the academy, the importance of responsible,
local assessment measures, solutions for effective basic writing pedagogies, and
suggestions for modified writing resources at the college level. The purpose of
137
discussing these issues is to provide a comprehensive collection of local resistance
measures to the overall problem of “cooling-out” that may be applied in various
locations. Another purpose of this chapter is to aid writing resource centers in decisionmaking processes that may help potential “latent terminal” students oppose “coolingout.”
Increased Collaboration in Education—Public, Institutional, & Departmental
After conducting my case studies and relating each student’s educational
experiences to existing research, it seems clear that the subject of ineffective
communication is one of the most salient issues involved with the ever-present
achievement gap among American students who arrive at open admissions schools
underprepared for collegiate level writing. During our interviews, I was surprised to find
that although the majority of my case study students were able to identify general patterns
of educational segregation in their schools, most of them seemed relatively unaware of
the specific features, effects, or presence of educational tracking in their schools. In
addition, with the exception of James, most students seemed to be uninformed of their
own track levels at their schools. While this finding seems logical since, generally,
tracking is not a practice that school administrators or teachers advocate for openly, it
does raise questions about how much local communication or collaboration exists among
parents, teachers, and administrators about tracking’s influence on student achievement.
Like “cooling-out,” it appears as though tracking also “must be kept reasonably away
from public scrutiny and not clearly perceived or understood by prospective clientele” if
it this system is to function properly (Clark 575). There are certainly many open points
138
of public contention about the subject of educational tracking throughout the US;
however, my case studies reinforce the notion that for the most part, controversy about
the unethical nature of tracking is found in dialogue among educators—not students and
parents.
This finding seems reasonable when considering the nature of public
communication about the subject of tracking or rather, the nature of acceptance of
preconceived educational norms in our country. Jeannie Oakes argues that “tracking is
one of those relatively unquestioned practices that belongs to the ‘natural’ order of
schools” (Keeping Track 191-92). Oakes’s point—alongside student responses about
their educational histories in my case studies—suggests that the greater American public
rarely questions why these norms exist. Like Oakes’s research indicates, my case studies
point to the fact that
What is determined to be best for students is often grounded not only in what appears to be the
students’ current levels of achievement—where they are now—but also in some assumptions
about their educability—where they are capable of going. These decisions are undoubtedly based
not only on teachers’ and school administrators’ biases…but also on biases built into the
supposedly fair sorting devices themselves—objective testing, previous grades, observation of
social behavior in the classroom, and so on. Judgments about what students will have a chance to
learn follow judgments about what students can learn. The crucial criteria underlying the
judgments go unexplored. (Keeping Track 192)
In the case of each student I interviewed, it seems as though “objective testing” of
language competencies and “previous grades” played roles in their subsequent learning
experiences. And while this sorting can seem “natural,” it is also the root of
139
administrative practice that eventually leads to the vastly different kinds of knowledge to
which students are exposed over time.
Like “cooling-out,” tracking is seldom pinpointed as an undemocratic issue in
education—or as the root of the achievement gap, or as the reason why students often
drop out of community college—because it is a practice that is far-reaching and
fundamentally established in our country. As with other types of social reform, however,
this issue can be addressed if the greater public becomes more informed about its effects,
and if this same public begins communicating locally, asking questions about why
practices like tracking exist in our schools. In short, our present dialogue about tracking
must move from scholarly journals and educational conferences into the homes of parents
and other Americans.
In addition, my case studies indicate that some students seem to run a greater risk
of not attending college or dropping out of open admissions because schools
themselves—particularly high schools and colleges—fail to communicate with each
other. For example, each of my study’s first-generation college students arrived at open
admissions with little understanding about how college works. In Laka’s case, this lack
of exposure to college culture resulted in a reliance on other first-generation friends for
support, and in James’s case, it seems to have led to a general lack of engagement in a
higher education. In addition, Teresa learned about student resource programs for
parents—like CalWORKS and RISE—only after she returned to college since completing
her vocational program. If we want students to have equal access to a higher education—
yet structurally, our public schools are not preparing students for this equal opportunity or
140
adequately informing them about their options—then other programmatic measures can
help better connect students to the resources they need to succeed later on. In particular,
implementing various types of college achievement programs within high schools can
provide a means to this end.
Some local academic programs in the greater Sacramento area are currently
working toward the goal of informing underrepresented student groups about and
preparing them for the expectations and culture of a college career. At Sacramento City
College, the Jr. RISE program situates CSUS graduate student interns from the
departments of English, Counseling, and Social Work in six local area, feeder high
schools to teach after-school classes to students who might otherwise be underprepared
for college. These classes provide students with exposure to practical information about
college through classroom preparation in study skills, field trips to college campuses, and
purposeful communication with current college students about their experiences in the
academy. At California State University, Sacramento, the federally funded College
Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) recruits approximately eighty incoming freshmen
per year from migrant farm worker communities. CAMP provides these services since
only half of the youths who regularly perform farm work ever graduate from high school
and rarely attend college (Association of Farmworker Opportunities Program). The
University of California at Davis also employs the Early Academic Outreach Program
(EAOP), a UC-wide organization that assists students from local middle and high
schools. This program sends UC representatives to each school site to provide students
with academic preparation as well as exposure to admission, enrollment, and financial aid
141
requirements. The successes of each of these programs demonstrate a general public
desire to create more effective bridges for students from high school to college. They do
so by working toward addressing the achievement gap that exists because of educational
tracking, district funding imbalances, and biased or otherwise problematic assessment
mechanisms.
Since writing competency also plays an important role in overall student success,
and because composition requirements can lead many students toward the “cooling-out”
process, increased communication between high schools and colleges can also help better
prepare students for their future writing. Although college campuses currently reach
many high school students through after-school programs and other resources, teachers at
both educational levels could better support these students if they communicated
regularly and directly with one another. My case study findings reflect the general idea
that many students tend to receive writing instruction in high school but little indication
from their teachers about the specific expectations and requirements involved with
college composition. This may be part of the reason behind the fact that only twenty-one
percent of students assessed into college-level composition courses at SCC during the
Spring 2009 semester. This trend might be changed if English departments at both SCC
and its local feeder high schools began a purposeful and consistent dialogue about how to
bridge the existing achievement gap for students.
Increased communication in this regard could bring about productive changes to
curricula and assessment preparation at the high school level, and it could also produce
potentially far-reaching learning and teaching opportunities. One such opportunity at the
142
high school level is the implementation of writing centers where students might practice
and receive tutorial support on their class assignments and peer assistance with the often
daunting task of completing their senior projects. Senior projects are required for
graduation, and they involve a great deal of planning, research, and expository academic
writing that can overwhelm the students who must complete them. High school writing
centers could bridge the achievement gap by introducing students to common forms of
expository writing and collegiate practices like intensive collaboration, revision, and
recursive composing and editing processes. They could be spaces where students are
prepared for and encouraged to practice the type of writing they will need to employ in
college. Although many high school writing centers exist in the US today, few can be
found in California’s public high schools, and none exist in the Sacramento area.
Another crucial form of communication that must continue is that of purposeful
collaboration among teachers within English departments about specific matters of
concern at individual colleges. Focused and meaningful communication among teachers
can further help demystify the college writing process for students entering open
admissions institutions and create cohesive departments that may be more apt to address
the most commonly identifiable struggles of underrepresented college writers at these
institutions. In fact, studies show that teachers consider increased collaboration a
beneficial way to enhance teaching methods, content knowledge, and access to
pedagogical resources (Moore 43). Professional collaboration is a solution that many
academics tend to discuss as important for student success, but it is a practice that
sometimes falls short of its principles. bell hooks explains,
143
It is fashionable these days, when ‘difference’ is a hot topic in progressive circles, to talk
about…‘border crossing,’ but we often have no concrete examples of individuals who actually
occupy different locations within structures, sharing ideas with one another, mapping out terrains
of commonality, connection, and shared concern with teaching practices. To engage dialogue is
one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross
boundaries (129-30)
If teachers make a genuine effort to learn from each other and stay informed about the
kinds of teaching and learning that exists outside their own classrooms, we may increase
our chances of keeping students like Teresa, Diego, Laka, and James engaged in their
academic careers.
Instructors can also broaden their perceptions of college writing if they
collaborate with teachers from other disciplines by way of programs like Writing Across
the Curriculum (WAC). WAC programs can provide teachers with broadened
perceptions about the types of writing assignments students receive and complete in
different disciplinary courses. Many scholars agree that “For faculty members, [WAC]
programs address such problems as disciplinary isolation and teacher burnout, while
improving comradery, curricular coherence and institution-wide morale” (Williams).
Composition teachers who collaborate with other departments and campus resource
programs are likely not only to better understand the individual needs of their students,
but they may gain a more developed knowledge of what kinds of work to assign and why.
In addition, since many community college teachers assign writing in their various
courses, it would also greatly benefit the institution and students alike if teachers
144
maintained a consistent dialogue about how their college’s assessment tests effectively or
ineffectively situate students in their courses.
Rethinking Assessment
As mentioned in Chapter 4, all of my case study participants placed below the
collegiate writing level upon taking their English assessment test at Sacramento City
College. Because most other community college students share this fate, it becomes
important for English teachers and college administrators to reexamine the effectiveness
of testing measures like ACCUPLACER® in light of the subject of “cooling-out.”
Indeed, SCC provides students and teachers with a wealth of useful online information
about the purpose and process of assessment at the institution, and the public nature of
this information suggests that the university values students’ rights to access. All of the
students who participated in my research study expressed a general awareness of the
purpose of assessment; however, none of them had actually accessed any specific
information about SCC’s English assessment test—like sample questions or study
guides—prior to taking their exams. This finding suggests a common issue in California
community college assessment—that although information about assessment is often
accessible in the public sphere, this information may be relatively unsupportive if
students have little understanding about how to access this information.
Although the majority of students with whom I interact—including all of my case
study subjects—have not accessed any information about assessment prior to taking their
tests, SCC’s assessment center does provide a number of links on its website to study
guides designed to help students understand what to expect during their testing situation.
145
Study guides exist for all subject areas except the English essay, and students may read
through these guides for sample questions and answers pertaining to the subject at hand.
The website also provides answers to frequently asked questions about assessment and
information about SCC’s policies regarding the tests. One of the most common questions
I hear among students—“Can I retake the assessment test?”—is addressed in the
website’s “General Information Study Guide,” but the online answer to this question
seems slightly confusing. SCC’s “Repeat Policy” states, “Because the main reason for
taking the ACCUPLACER Tests is to obtain initial placement recommendations, the tests
may be taken one time only. If you are dissatisfied with your results, you may speak with
your SCC Counselor and obtain a referral for retesting.” If a student obtains a counselor
referral, he or she may retake the assessment test; however, a portion of SCC’s answer to
this crucial question indicates that “the tests may be taken one time only.” This is a
policy that I find most often confuses students, and instead of seeking out a counselor
referral to retake their test, most students proceed to enroll in the recommended course on
their assessment printout. My own case studies reflect this idea; with the exception of
Teresa—who decided to ask a counselor about her placement—the remainder of students
I interviewed did not question their assessment results.
In terms of ACCUPLACER®’s online computer adaptivity during the testing
process, it is also important to consider that one answer provided by a student on his or
her computerized exam determines the following questions offered by the
ACCUPLACER® test. According to SCC’s assessment center website, “Each test is
adaptive. This means that the computer automatically determines which questions are
146
presented to you based on your responses to prior questions. This technique selects just
the right questions to ask without being too easy or too difficult.” Incidentally, however,
one also begins to wonder if during this type of testing, one wrong answer may lead
students toward subsequent questions of lower course designations. If so, a student’s
state of mind, attention level, and overall understanding of assessment become
increasingly crucial to his or her testing situation.
Although testing mechanisms like ACCUPLACER® bear many advantageous
qualities—like providing instantaneous scores for students during their matriculation
process and remote testing options for schools—they also have many questionable
properties. It is important to note that tests like ACCUPLACER® are an outdated mode
of English writing assessment that use multiple-choice questions to conflate testing
“validity” with “reliability.” According to assessment expert Edward White, the problem
with multiple-choice tests is that their “scoring by computers is absolutely consistent, but
[their] results may relate more highly to parental income and the dialect spoken in the
home than to student writing ability” (“Apologia” 40). Tests like ACCUPLACER® have
been deemed unproductive for decades by academics specializing in assessment research
and composition pedagogy (Bamberg, Huot, Osenburg, Shor, White, Yancey, etc).
Aside from the unsettling nature of the predictive placement validity of outdated
assessment tests themselves, equally troublesome is information about where these tests
are created. ACCUPLACER® is owned, produced, and sold by College Board, a “nonprofit” membership association that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly
revenues. College Board also owns the rights to numerous other widespread testing
147
mechanisms, including the Standardized Assessment Test (SAT®), the Advanced
Placement Program (AP®), and the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP®).
College Board’s website informs higher education administrators that ACCUPLACER®
“can reduce your assessment costs,” “[Help] save your technical support dollars,” and
“[Allow] you to facilitate institutional research through customized reports” (College
Board). These statements seem to reflect the privatized nature of business conducted by
public institutions of higher education.
Descriptions like these also beg the question of who primarily benefits from tests
like ACCUPLACER®. Despite College Board’s “not-for-profit” association status, a
CNN news report states that “Its president makes roughly $900,000 in salary, benefits,
and perks,” and “12 of its executives make more than $300,000 in salary and benefits”
(Costello). College Board’s largest “not-for-profit” competitor—ACT, Inc.—is quite
similar. According to the DesMoines Register, ACT’s board of directors earns “about
$520,000 annually—an amount that experts say surpasses the compensation of about 98
percent of nonprofit boards across the country” (Rood). The unfortunate fact is that the
individuals associated with large-scale English assessment tests are big business
executives—not teachers and researchers who hold professional expertise in the area of
composition studies and assessment. And although a more localized form of assessment
is likely a better option, Sacramento City College is surely not alone in their use of
College Board assessment exams.
In fact, over half of all 112 California’s community colleges purchase College
Board’s reading comprehension and sentence skills ACCUPLACER® tests as well as
148
other ACCUPLACER® exams like WritePlacer®, a test that provides students with a
computerized evaluation of their written essay via an “automated writing scoring tool”
(College Board). The remaining California community colleges offer similar multiplechoice tests. About half of these remaining schools assess students’ writing abilities using
COMPASS®, a similar, computer-adaptive exam sold by the aforementioned ACT,
Inc.—College Board’s largest competitor. The other half of these remaining schools
utilize the CTEP (College Test for English Placement), which is published and sold by
Pacific College Testing in Santa Barbara, CA. Only a small handful of community
colleges in California utilize writing assessment measures that involve no multiple-choice
questions. Two colleges—Cuesta in San Luis Obispo and Mt. San Antonio in Walnut—
offer forty-five minute, faculty-scored, timed writing exams as their only form of writing
assessment, and Moorpark College in Moorpark, CA utilizes a method of directed selfplacement. Cuesta and Moorpark Colleges are somewhat smaller than Sacramento City
College, supporting approximately 11,000 and 16,500 students respectively; however,
Mt. San Antonio College’s student population is over 38,000, suggesting that larger
schools can have success with non-computerized, multiple-choice assessment methods.
At any rate, Sacramento City College shares the same testing measures as most other
public community colleges in the state, and it could be said that this great majority exists
because college administrators must manage not only large populations of incoming
students, but highly constricted spending budgets for these students.
College administrators certainly maintain the huge responsibility of determining
the best possible method for assessing a large number of students—25,000 in SCC’s
149
case—for the least amount of wasted money. Indeed, the appeal behind using College
Board’s ACCUPLACER® assessment test is that it can save the university money. We
should never lose sight of the fact, however, that the purpose of assessment is to
accurately provide students with course advisories that reflect their individual capabilities
and better interests as writers (Huot, Matalene, Royer and Gilles, White, Yancey, etc.).
As such, the test in question would also be most likely to provide this information if its
format were in sync with current English composition theory and best practice
assessment methods. Essentially, these tests would likely best serve students if they
focused more on the testing of analytical writing, which is valued in collegiate-level
composition courses and less on the sentence-based elements that occupy a lower order
of concern on the college’s course grading rubrics. Assessment expert Edward White
argues,
many people conclude that essay testing as a whole is more expensive than multiple-choice
testing. However, when we consider the cost of test development, a major hidden cost in all
testing, expenses tend to even out. Development of multiple-choice tests, if properly done, is
enormously expensive and time-consuming. Although essay test development requires
considerable committee work, pretesting, and revision, it is far cheaper and quicker.
(“Holisticism” 402)
Of course, White’s statement may have been published before College Board began
marketing nationally-accessible, online assessment tests, but it is nonetheless grounded in
the desire to encourage professionals to collaborate and to help English departments
“resist the forces of pseudo-objectivism…and analytical reductionism” (White
“Holisticism” 406).
150
In fact, during a time when College Board has reduced its ACCUPLACER® test
prices in order to provide “opportunities to help California institutions reduce costs,”
English professionals and college administrators should work even harder to resist the
association’s growing presence (“Foundation”). Oftentimes, large-scale tests are seen as
a rapid solution to mounting educational and economic problems in California, yet this
viewpoint need not overshadow our larger concern of choosing the highest quality form
of English assessment for students. White argues,
When an institution seeks to drop an essay test and replace it with a multiple-choice test, the usual
argument stresses cost savings. It is up to the faculty to point out that a cheaper test might well
have an exorbitant cost if all it produces is a list of scores, and relatively invalid scores at that. A
careful assessment profoundly linked to teaching and learning can be shown to be a best buy.
(“Apologia” 44)
In essence, since assessment determines the future learning and potential achievement of
community college students, administrators ought to pay close attention to assessment’s
link to retention and persistence rather than expediency and convenience.
Again, in order to achieve this, an assessment system must also not equate
“fairness” with “reliability.” Brian Huot argues that fair assessment must come from
local test-construction, saying,
[Assessment] Procedures that involve teachers in development and discussion and reflect clearly
defined and negotiated local standards should provide for fair and responsible judgments of
student writing. Translating reliability into fairness is not only inaccurate, it is dangerous because
it equates statistical consistency with value about the nature of the judgments being made. (557)
151
Although ACCUPLACER® is certainly convenient as an assessment mechanism, it is far
from locally-constructed. As a result, its benefits—“Immediate, accurate student
placement information” and “Secure, reliable, bias-free assessments”—are called into
question (College Board). Indeed, assessment scholars might challenge the notion of the
true “accuracy” behind a test that provides “immediate” scores and the “bias-free” nature
of any test at all.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that large-scale writing assessment tests, and the
“non-profit” associations that own them, have long-established strongholds throughout
the state of California, and during these difficult economic times, it is unlikely that our
entire educational system will experience a complete overhaul soon. As educators and
administrators continue to resist the influence of commercialized assessment, however, it
is also important to recognize that most students—for any number of reasons—will be
remediated upon reaching open admissions. As mentioned in Chapter 3, seventy-nine
percent of SCC students during the Spring 2009 semester either tested below the college
writing level or were considered “undetermined” placements due to “ESL issues and
[were] referred to take the ESL assessment” test (SCC Assessment Center). With this in
mind, we must consider Burton Clark’s assertion that “low scores on achievement tests
lead poorly qualified students into remedial classes. Assignment to remedial work casts
doubt and slows the student’s movement into bona fide transfer courses” (572). This
“doubt” can occur among students in basic writing courses, and it certainly can act as a
precursor to eventual student attrition.
152
Promoting Positive and Productive Basic Writing Pedagogies
Unfortunately, despite the efforts of countless dedicated community college
composition teachers throughout the state of California and the greater United States,
basic writing courses are still perceived by many students and faculty members as part
and parcel of an undesirable “subcollege” in the academy (Clark 572). Scholars like Ira
Shor argue this is the case because “Basic writing as a field was born in crisis” during the
opening of CUNY’s doors in 1970, and that “[Basic writing] has grown in crisis amid
declining conditions for mass education” ever since (“Our Apartheid” 91). Although this
may be the case for a number of reasons, educational professionals must keep in mind
that many potential “latent terminal” students enroll in basic writing classes every year,
and their perception of these courses can play an important a role in their perception of
themselves as participant members of their college. If we can reduce the stigmatizing
effect of basic writing in community colleges by applying the values of positivity,
understanding, and true preparation to our overall remedial programs, students may have
a better chance of resisting or avoiding the sense of “doubt” that can lead to “coolingout” in open admissions (Clark 572).
As is evident from my case study interviews, Sacramento City College clearly
employs a number of dedicated basic writing instructors who, for the most part, exercise
pedagogies that are seen as valuable and engaging by students. Teresa describes her
second English Writing 100 course as “excellent” due to her teacher’s clear expectations
and manageable assignments. Diego categorizes each of his basic writing courses as
“interesting” because they offered practical help with his academic and work-related
153
writing, and James explains that he feels “more confident” about his writing after
completing his first basic writing course. These statements are highly encouraging and
are perhaps part of the reason that these typical case, potential “latent terminal” students
continue to persist in open admissions. The implication behind these students’ statements
is that basic writing is not problematic in and of itself with regard to the subject of
“cooling-out” in higher education. Rather, remediation only seems to become part of the
“cooling-out” process if and when basic writing pedagogies give students the impression
that they are somehow members of a “subcollege” (Clark 572).
Basic writing instructors who value informed approaches to teaching composition
understand that basic writers—though labeled “remedial” by the academy—are not
cognitively deficient human beings. Many open admissions students end up in basic
writing classes not because they are unintelligent, but because they struggle against the
unending challenge of second language acquisition, or because they may not fair well in
assessment situations that involve timed essays or cryptic, multiple-choice questions.
However, if basic writing classes are truly to become sites of college preparation rather
than institutional gate-keeping, then teachers must engage basic writers in authentic,
college-level reading and writing projects.
Similarly, we must work to better understand the capabilities of basic writers who
are often placed in remedial writing classes. David Bartholomae asserts that our
pedagogical misunderstandings about basic writers often come from a misapplication of
the “language and methods of developmental psychology” (114). He argues that because
of this, “Basic writers…are seen as childlike or as uncultured natives. There is an
154
imperial frame to this understanding of the situation of those who are not like us. We
define them in terms of their separateness. We do not see ourselves in what they do”
(Writing on the Margins 114). Thus, a pedagogical focus on abstract ways of defining
basic writers according to “what they don’t do (rather than by what they do)” can actually
“get in the way of teaching” and further alienate students from teachers, and teachers
from students (Bartholomae Writing on the Margins 112).
In working to better define basic writers as “college students,” and in assigning
what Mike Rose terms “undemeaning” tasks to basic writers in the classroom, it also
becomes important for open admissions instructors to consider the expansive range of
educational histories among the students in their classrooms. Along with this
understanding, instructors must develop trust in their students’ capabilities as thinkers
and writers and provide them with engaging opportunities and rich exposure to valuable,
“college-level” information. Considering the negative repercussions of K-12 tracking,
the increased privatization of education, and the hypersensitivity to written “error” that
English instructors often develop over time, it does not seem surprising that many basicskills students—like Laka, for instance—frequently build up an aversion to academic
writing. Unfortunately, many students are made painfully aware of what they do
“wrong” more often than what they do “well” in their composition courses, and because
of this imbalance, writing often becomes a deficit that limits personal and academic
progress rather than a skill that can advance one’s studies. To reverse this trend, teachers
must be able to accept the notion that if given the appropriate amount of time,
encouragement, and meaningful opportunity, students can grow as writers. Indeed, it is
155
the basic writing teacher’s job not to teach “watered-down” language skills to “deficient”
writers who need to improve themselves in order to be more like “real” college students,
but to convince the historically underrepresented students who often occupy remedial
classes that they are capable of thinking and writing like scholars.
In addition, my case studies also seem to validate the perspective that teachers and
other educational professionals should entertain the idea of working toward a personal
understanding of or connection with their students as often as possible. The one instance
of negative basic writing experience that emerges from my student interviews is that of
Teresa’s self-removal from a course in which she felt fear and “doubt.” These negative
emotions seem to have resulted from her perception of the instructor’s lack of trust in
students’ writing capabilities, and perhaps in the teacher’s negative attitude in the
classroom. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Teresa states, “[On] the first day, [the teacher]
said…‘I can guarantee you that most of you will not pass this class.’ So that gets
[discouraging]...I was afraid, and I said, ‘Oh my God, what if I don’t make it?’…and
sometimes I felt like quitting, but then I said, ‘No, no, I’m not gonna quit. I’m just gonna
change…to another teacher.’”
Teresa’s lack of confidence in this class could be a result of the teacher’s
dispassionate and predetermined declaration of students’ capabilities as writers and
thinkers, and scholars often argue that concepts as simple as positivity and personal
connection can prevent this lack of confidence. An extensive study conducted by Bonnie
Gorneau at the University of North Dakota indicates that many students consider a
personal connection with their teacher important for their learning experience. Gorneau’s
156
study spanned eight semesters beginning in 2002 and examined the perspectives of over
two hundred undergraduate education students from a teacher education program about
their perceptions of effective teaching. The findings of this study indicate that many
students value instructor qualities such as personal receptivity, caring and kind attitudes,
and clear communication about personal human emotions like “enthusiasm, affection,
patience, sadness, [and] disapproval” (Gorneau). Findings like these suggest that
teachers who demonstrate professional transparency and positive attitudes may have a
better chance of engaging students, and consequently, of preventing students from
dropping out of their classes.
As mentioned earlier, many students also assess into basic writing courses
because they are speakers of other languages, and in a professional sense, these students
should be respected and valued as important members of the academy for the
backgrounds and experiences they bring into it. Purdue ESL writing professor Tony
Silva argues that in order to grant students this respect, instructors must gain a clear
understanding of the “very heterogeneous population” of multilingual students who
attend college (155). For example, my case studies indicate that although Teresa, Diego,
and Laka all immigrated to the United States during their pre-adolescence, they each
carry with them distinctive educational histories and language-learning backgrounds.
Laka learned English in her native country and spoke it regularly in school as a child,
whereas Diego and Teresa both faced the dissimilar task of acquiring English quickly
after immigrating to the US and being immersed in a new culture. Because of these
experiences, Laka likely brought with her an established sense of English literacy from
157
her primary schooling while Teresa and Diego exhibit stronger characteristics of “ear
learner” students. In other words, they “acquired English principally through their ears:
They listened, took in oral language (from teachers…friends, peers), and subconsciously
began to form vocabulary, grammar, and syntax rules, learning English principally
through oral trial and error” (Reid 77). Learning the English language in this way during
childhood sets these students in stark contrast with the language acquisition patterns of
international students, newly-arrived adult immigrants, generation 1.5 students, and (of
course) native speakers of English.
Unfortunately, however, despite all their distinctive language acquisition
backgrounds, ELL students like Laka, Teresa, and Diego are often lumped into the same
basic writing classes, and although this is often the case due to mainstream English
assessment, open admissions instructors should know the difference between ELL
students’ distinctive behaviors and needs as writers. Silva argues,
it is crucial for teachers to be knowledgeable about and have experience in working with ESL
writers. (An open mind, a tolerance of difference, and an interest in other cultures is necessary but
by no means sufficient here.) It is likewise essential to consider that curricula, materials, and
practices that are successful with [native English speaking] writers may not necessarily be
successful with their ESL peers, that the unreflective adoption of mainstream composition
materials may seriously disadvantage ESL writers by assuming knowledge that they do not
possess…or expecting a familiarity or proficiency with rhetorical notions (reader-based writing,
directness), linguistic notions (syntactic and lexical variety), conventional notions (citation and
quotation), and strategic notions (drafting and revising) that they may not share with their NES
teachers and peers. (155)
158
In short, basic writing teachers should not merely possess a generalized appreciation for
diversity and multiculturalism, but an established knowledge base of TESOL research
and best practice pedagogy to apply in their classrooms. Although teachers cannot be
expected to easily or accurately deconstruct the learning needs of each and every student
in a classroom, they can be better prepared to understand these students if they develop
an awareness of multilingual teaching issues. In a state where nearly half of all residents
speak a language other than English, writing teachers should receive—even be required
to receive—training that reflects the true student demographic of California.
Finally, in addition to language issues, teachers should have a general awareness
of the wide variety of external challenges that community college students face when
they enter open admissions schools and be willing to take heed of these issues when
planning their classes. For example, Laka explains that a lack of money for books
contributed to her dropping of her basic writing course. Many students like Teresa have
busy schedules due to children and no internet or computer access at home to participate
in online discussion boards or to type their essays. Countless others must rely on public
transportation to visit their campus for research assignments and tutoring hours outside of
class. Various student resource centers—the library, computer labs, tutoring centers,
etc.—often have tightened operating hours due to budget cuts. With these various issues
in mind, teachers need not alter everything they do to accommodate students who face
certain challenges, but they can keep these issues in mind when selecting texts for a
course, developing written assignments, and establishing class requirements. If a student
can compose an assignment during his or her commute from home to school or school to
159
work—or if a student is able to afford a class text because the teacher has compiled a
reader instead of assigning a pricy anthology—that student may be more likely to remain
in his or her class through the semester and see the course to its completion. Flexible
teachers may help impede the “cooling-out” effect and prevent many students from
giving up before they meet their academic goals.
One of the most effective ways to resist “cooling-out” in open admissions
colleges, however, is to create effective and welcoming spaces on campus where students
can receive whatever extra assistance they need to perform successfully in their courses.
Historically, writing centers have done a phenomenal job of helping students succeed in
their writing classes, and in order to further promote the success of these centers in open
admissions schools, we must be willing to constantly evaluate contemporary research and
student input about how to build, modify, or transform these centers based on localized
college concerns.
Writing Resource Centers—Resisting “Cooling-Out” through Interdisciplinary Tutoring
As mentioned in Chapter 2, “cooling-out” in higher education is a process that
involves many issues related to student success; therefore, a community college student’s
writing ability plays only one part in his or her eventual achievement or failure in an open
admissions school. One of the major virtues of college writing centers is that they often
provide a holistic focus on students as individual writers. This notion, which still plays a
part in best practice writing center theory and tutoring, is founded upon Stephen North’s
contention that writing centers aim at creating better writers, not better writing (38).
Nevertheless, my case studies indicate that community college students face a number of
160
struggles outside their writing classes, and if these challenges were to be addressed
alongside a student’s writing needs, writing resource centers could perhaps have a better
chance of preventing “latent termination” among open admissions students. The
implications behind my case study findings point to some possible suggestions for
effective tutoring in writing resource centers and some promising modifications to
consider for students who often face a higher risk of attrition.
First, the students involved in my typical case study sample express a preference
for friendly, patient, and knowledgeable writing tutors who do not place judgment upon
the personal opinions or grammatical written errors present in their academic writing.
For example, Teresa explains that she appreciates a tutor who is “supportive” and openminded and who does not expect her to read, write, or think at a preconceived level
before she arrives for a tutoring session. Diego values “patient” writing tutors and other
student advocates who are “nice” and “actually care about helping out,” and Laka
considers an effective tutor someone with whom she can feel comfortable talking about
writing—an activity she does not particularly enjoy. Each student claims to have
encountered these types of tutors through RISE Conscious Writing Program. As part of
our program, we kept in mind the idea that when student writing is the subject of
conversation, sentences are not the only matter at stake. Beliefs, emotions, memories,
and insecurities can all play a part in a discussion about writing, and as a result, we
encouraged our tutors to be cognizant of this fact. The outcome of this heightened
sensitivity to students’ personal thoughts and feelings seems to have produced
opportunities for increased student comfort, self-confidence, and trust in a Third Space,
161
academic setting. These are factors that play important roles in resisting student attrition
(Cox, Marchand, Penrose).
Granted, many writing centers do provide this type of relaxed and supportive
academic setting, and the theoretical principles that generally help centers accomplish
this can be seen as highly valuable for students in “cooling-out” systems. When creating
and sustaining RISE Conscious Writing Program, we utilized principles and practices
shared with us by RISE graduate interns from the disciplines of counseling and social
work. As a result of our collaboration with professionals from these disciplines, we
learned how to infuse our tutoring program with a sense of nurturing and increased
personalization with regard to professional/ student interaction. We employed various
counseling and social work practices, including active listening, accepting and empathetic
regard for individual students, open-ended questioning, increased sensitivity to cultural
and ethnic diversity, and an overall promotion of self-empowerment among students. We
utilized these methods so as to discourage a “rescuer” approach among tutors, ensuring
that students reflect upon their own strengths in order to accomplish their goals as
writers. We encouraged tutors to share their experiences as students, but we also stressed
that these experiences should not necessarily determine the course of a writer’s personal
growth. These principles and practices seem to have contributed to the program’s
capacity to provide “patient,” “supportive,” “friendly,” “nonjudgmental,” tutors who
“actually care about helping” the students who visit them.
In addition, we also worked to employ a feminist approach to writing center work
that involves a deconstruction of traditional university hierarchies as well as a movement
162
away from linear and fixed methods of viewing academic concepts like teaching and
learning. A feminist writing center approach focuses on the redistribution of power
among students and other individuals in university settings, and it uses conversations
about writing to clarify the importance of this mission. Indeed, many of the challenges
students face in open admissions—individual competition, power-wielding
professionalism, hierarchical academic frameworks, and administrative reproach of
dissent—reflect longstanding, patriarchal traditions within universities. Because they
function as “politically peripheral” spaces, however, writing centers can encourage
students to actively and consciously critique the system in which they exist.
Meg Woolbright discusses this capacity of writing centers, asserting that feminist
classrooms and writing centers become “not an arena of confrontation and debate focused
on winners who ‘know’ more than losers, but a place for conversation among equals”
(68). In many respects, Woolbright argues that feminist educational professionals do not
and need not “choose feminism or the patriarchy, so much as we do at all times situate
our feminism within a deeply-seated patriarchal academy. When our feminist values of
community and equality find some space within the power of the patriarchy, the result is
not an Aristotelian either/or but a complex web of conflict” (68). Writing centers should
not be spaces where academic professionals encourage students to banish or discard
established academic traditions, but places where students learn to question, challenge,
and ultimately reform these traditions. Indeed, many of the problems associated with
“cooling-out” in open admissions are themselves the result of unquestioned or unchanged
academic traditions.
163
My case study findings also indicate that students may be more likely to persist
and succeed academically if they create interpersonal, collaborative communities within
writing resource centers—communities that promote solidarity, respect, and even
friendships among students. For instance, Teresa faces many struggles as a single
mother, and she values the RISE program because she feels comfortable bringing her
children into a semi-informal environment in which staff members and other students
“are supportive” and “understand [her] situation” since her children are young and often
“cannot be quiet.” Likewise, Laka enjoys being in the presence of her student club
members, who also frequent RISE, because everyone “[motivates] each other to do
stuff…everybody’s a big help to each other.” And James admits to having become more
interested and engaged in his education since meeting a core group of positive male role
models in the academic setting of RISE.
Studies show that this kind of student engagement can lead to persistence. The
annual National Survey of Student Engagement indicates that “participating in a learning
community” can help students’ likelihood of persistence in college (Kuh). This survey—
which is conducted at the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at
Bloomington—examines a vast range of student experiences from more than 600
institutions across the United States. Professor George D. Kuh, the director of this
survey, asserts that “the momentum of [an academic] group carries [students] forward,
buoying them during difficult times. [Students] also derive personal satisfaction by being
a part of something larger than themselves.” Kuh asserts that community-oriented
environments can act as a “source of support and encouragement for persevering when
164
times get tough.” In this way, a center like RISE—where tutoring is only one aspect of
the larger, more personal, “learning community”—can help encourage students to remain
in school and bear the pressures of an otherwise meritocratic environment. The result of
this sort of student and faculty collaboration is an overall resistance of “cooling-out” in
the long run.
Another finding among my case studies is that students seem to feel more valued
as participant members of the academy—and more likely to remain in school—when they
perceive that their concerns and interests are valid or important to professional members
of their college. For the majority of students I interviewed, this perception seems to have
resulted from certain instances of personal attention or extra time provided by teachers,
tutors, and counselors at Sacramento City College. For example, Teresa mentions that
her effective basic writing teacher “[took]…time [to] answer students’ questions,” and
this “[encouraged]…students and motivated them to stay in the class.” Likewise, Teresa
explains that her interaction with a RISE counselor made her feel “very comfortable”
because [this counselor took]…time [to help students].” Similarly, Diego mentions that
the valuable nature of RISE’s academic advisors is that they are willing to “be with you
for an hour or even more until you’re done…they spend more time…[They ask] you what
you like, what your schedule’s like…what classes you wanna take…They pay attention
to you.” James mentions a similar scenario with his RISE counselor, during which the
counselor asked him about his goals, “like a regular counselor asks…but then…[he and
the counselor] started talking about life.” These memories expressed by the students I
interviewed seem to suggest that direct contact with and genuine interest in students’
165
aspirations can allow academic professionals to more effectively help potential “latent
terminal” students succeed.
One of the ways academic professionals can show this interest is by allowing
students the time they need to ask their questions, express their concerns, talk about their
fears, and develop their skills. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, a great deal of basic
writing and TESOL research indicates that students who assess into remedial or ESL
courses are not cognitively deficient—they just need more time. Mina Shaugnessy’s
extensive research on language and the teaching of basic writing leads her to argue that
given sufficient time and adequate instruction, most people…can learn any subject or master any
task whatever its complexity. They may differ greatly, however, in the ways they learn and in the
rate at which they learn. Aptitude…is simply the amount of time required by the learner to attain
mastery of a learning task, not a limit on the types of tasks a person can successfully undertake.
(“Basic Writing” 149)
Similarly, for students who constantly negotiate between two or more languages,
acquisition is often a slow and gradual process. San Francisco State MA-TESOL
professor H. Douglas Brown argues that “it appears that contextualized, appropriate,
meaningful communication in the second language seems to be the best possible practice
the second language learner could engage in” (77). Unfortunately, the classroom is a
place where time is limited. Despite the fact that ample practice and purposeful language
application can improve student writing, the reality of semester time constraints make
this sort of practice difficult in community colleges.
Again, this granting of time is one of the greatest advantages of writing centers
and other resources for students who need extra practice with composition and language
166
use. Teachers and counselors often have limited time to provide individual students with
the distinct assistance they need to succeed as a result of their own demanding class- or
caseloads. However, writing tutors offer a precious resource that cannot be found in
many other places on campus—time. During my case study interviews, Teresa and
Diego both mention that they appreciate the one-on-one tutorial support they receive in
RISE because there are few time constraints placed on sessions. As mentioned in
Chapter 3, Jesús and I have worked to construct RISE Conscious Writing Program
according to the same principles which have led to RISE’s success. We have stressed
among our tutors the values of patience, friendliness, and genuine concern for students’
interests and needs. During periods of less activity in the center, we have not set time
constraints on our tutorials; tutoring sessions simply become too long when the student
and/or tutor decide they are. As a writing tutor, I have spent extra time with both Teresa
and Diego, talking about their reading and writing assignments when other students did
not need assistance, or when our schedule at RISE permitted such activity.
In addition to considerations involving tutoring theory and practice, my case
studies suggest that writing resource centers may have success in retaining potential
“latent terminal” students if they reflect upon or consider modifying their physical
spaces. The students I interviewed generally expressed that they appreciated the semiinformal nature of RISE Conscious Writing program’s tutoring center space. As
described in Chapter 3, our center’s physical layout reflects the highly student-centered
nature of our program. As such, the center of the room provides one extensive table that
is always available for student study, conversation, snacking, tutoring, etc. Our center
167
provides a microwave and coffeepot for student use and a small couch covered with a
blanket made by a RISE member’s mother. These spaces are often filled with students
sitting, chatting, eating, and otherwise interacting with each other. Single-parent students
like Teresa can often be found seated next to their children, who are free to scribble in
coloring books or interact with staff members. Other students frequently stare at the
walls between conversations or study sessions and ask questions about photographs
displaying student trips, service projects, and universities to which former students have
transferred. Posters of iconic leaders of color have encouraged others to learn more about
the histories involved with social and political resistance.
Other students often move independently about the room and utilize various
resources according to their own purpose for visiting the center. Diego explains that this
physical environment provides a general sense of “freedom” for the students who utilize
it. He explains, “You can go in there, and if you’re hungry, you can have your snacks,”
while in other places on campus, there is, “no food allowed [and] you have to be quiet.”
Diego and Teresa both mention that they appreciate the relatively unrestrictive noise level
of activity in the center. Teresa mentions, “[In RISE], you can talk loud. That’s
comfortable…[for me] cause sometimes…my tone [of] voice is not too low…I don’t
want [people] to say, ‘Hey, be quiet…keep it low!’” Furthermore, James comments on
the helpful nature of RISE’s multipurpose environment, explaining that the program
provides “the majority of everything [a student needs]” to achieve success in one
location. All of the students mention that access to computers is important to them since
many students do not have computers or printers at home and teachers require type-
168
written homework and essays. These details suggest that other writing resource centers
could benefit from providing a semi-informal and multipurpose environment and possibly
help historically underrepresented students feel comfortable and welcome.
Many writing centers create this sort of environment in order to provide an
academic space on campus where students can locate themselves within a Third Space,
somewhere between their homes and their classrooms. Muriel Harris describes the
“multiservice” writing center at Purdue University as a space that is
Open, with no partitions anywhere, to encourage a sense of community and interaction…The
room is also a mix of comfortable, old donated couches, tables, plants, posters, coffeepots, a
recycling bin for soda cans and paper, and even a popcorn machine, all of which signal (we hope)
that this mess is also a friendly, nonthreatening, nonclassroom environment where conversation
and questions can fly from one table to another. We want students to recognize immediately that
this is a place where writers help each other and from which red pencils have been banished. (5-6)
The formal nature of academic writing can be offset by the informal nature of a writing
resource center’s physical space, and carefully-chosen surroundings certainly can have
many benefits for the nontraditional community college students who visit them.
Student-centered spaces like these can allow students to feel as though their
college is not an entirely foreign environment. Particularly, highlighting the importance
of student presence, interests, or achievements—by displaying student writing or images
on a center’s walls—can provide students with a sense of ownership of their resource
center and their overall academic campus. Positioning students at the center of the room
also symbolically places them at the heart of activity. In general, writing resource centers
should consider adjusting to students’ needs and interests—and presenting this
169
adjustment through spacial arrangement—as a simple way to demonstrate a prioritization
of students. The sense of identity that students can develop in an informal academic
space can encourage them to increase their presence at school and to see themselves as a
legitimate member of their academic community.
Unfortunately, due to the unprecedented budget cuts and increased student
enrollment that community colleges are currently facing, writing centers are working to
find ways to continue to pay tutors and, thus, provide students with the scheduled
appointments they need to supplement their coursework. Nevertheless, RISE Conscious
Writing Program is proof of the notion that the act of serving students need not end when
department or resource spending money runs out. When funding becomes scarce,
colleges can indeed replenish their depleted student services, but the troubleshooting and
problem-solving measures that will lead to this improvement require diligent
collaboration and the energy and efforts of many professionals combined.
The ideas that led to the creation and expansion of our own program resulted from
a discontinuity in funding for SCC RISE tutors. Instead of allowing this break—and
subsequent demand for tutoring—to affect the students in the program who needed
assistance with their writing, we decided to create a connection to CSUS—a local
university with an abundance of teachers-in-training who, thus, make up an untapped
supply of language expertise. The collaborative work that led to a replenishing of the
program was surely not simple, but it was possible, and many RISE students have passed
or completed their writing course requirements as a result of the small quantities of
volunteer work that each of our many CSUS tutors have contributed. In constructing our
170
student program, we were certainly fortunate to have a great deal of administrative
support at SCC and CSUS as well as a highly successful program in which to house our
tutorials. And depending on the specific resources available at individual campuses, I am
quite certain that other campuses could host similar writing programs.
If a community college student resource or writing center has the option of
partnering with a nearby four-year university, one way to start a program similar to ours
is through a structured, academic internship or through independent study options.
Oftentimes, university students need the practical experience of working in a community
college environment, but budgetary problems may limit this type of opportunity. At
CSUS, half of the existing community college internships for graduate students were cut
out of the year’s schedule due to budgetary changes; therefore, a good number of
university students lost opportunities to work in their intended field of employment. If
community college English departments, student resource programs, or writing centers
began a dialogue with the same entities at different schools, they might be able to supply
their student clientele with energetic and able tutors from another local school. In turn,
this supply of tutors could earn academic credit alongside valuable work experience,
professional networking opportunities, and mentorship training. In a perfect system,
students would certainly be compensated monetarily for their endeavors; however, in
these difficult times, students on both ends oftentimes appreciate any opportunity to
develop their skills as students and professionals-in-training over no change granted by
institutions at all.
171
Furthermore, and more importantly, connecting students to students creates the
“learning community” environment George D. Kuh’s national survey indicates is
important for student persistence at both community colleges and four-year universities.
In this scenario, community college students can see firsthand where their own continued
schooling will lead them, and four-year university students may validate their own
individual identities as students and future educators. In our own program, RISE students
often ask Sac State tutors about their experiences in college, concerning transfer, classes,
teachers, research, etc. Likewise, tutors have expressed that they enjoy serving as
mentors to the community college students and take pleasure in participating in a network
of people that is larger than themselves. The result of a newly-formed community of this
sort can often be an increased sense of hope, positivity, and solidarity among students and
faculty during a time when complacency or desperation run the risk of becoming
commonplace.
A Renewed Look at “Cooling-Out” in Open Admissions Colleges
As this research study demonstrates, our educational system currently faces a
number of challenges that threaten the legitimacy of our democratic notions about open
admissions. As much as language instruction has the power to reinvent or transform our
system, it also has the potential to limit—and even defeat—the sincere aspirations of
basic writing students in open admissions community colleges. For decades, the
“cooling-out” function of higher education has acted as a counterintuitive force to the
original democratic intentions of open admissions systems and their ideological
professions of equal opportunity. Many scholars have fought diligently over time for
172
ethical reformation and fair practice in our schools, and we must remember these
courageous efforts as we work against the injustices that currently plague many
California community colleges.
When considering what needs to be done to counter the negative forces of
“cooling-out” in higher education, we must remember that as individuals, we can create
positive changes for our current open admissions colleges just as easily as we constructed
their negative constituents. For equal opportunity in open admissions to transform from
ideological principle into tangible reality in our schools, we must be willing to confront
the countless injustices that are clearly evident in our system. This transformation,
however, cannot and will not be simple. Growth is inevitably a consequence of
complexity, and complexity is rarely comfortable for those of us who experience it. We
must have the courage to face this discomfort and abide in a continual state of reflection
and struggle for parity, acceptance, and integrity in all aspects of our interactions with
historically underrepresented community college students. Indeed, true education is
oftentimes the result of the most difficult choices and painstaking professional work.
As described in previous chapters, Paulo Freire’s conception of education is
radical, and in many respects, I believe that in order to improve our open admissions
educational systems, academics must entertain the possibility of radical change. In order
to create positive changes for our community colleges, education in general must be seen
as a subject that places human beings at the heart of its purpose. It must involve a strong
adherence to a form of ethics that places people before money and a willingness to
examine the human emotions involved with learning. It must involve hope among open
173
admissions educators and students that capitalist momentum alone will not dictate the
future of knowledge acquisition and growth. The education that students receive in
community colleges should be treated as more than a mere transmittance of information
and academic degrees. If we truly believe that all individuals admitted to open
admissions schools are worthy of a quality education, we must do away with systematic
failure mechanisms and promote language instruction as a means of true social mobility.
Only this will make a community college education truly accessible and equal for all
students.
174
APPENDIX A
Sample Sacramento City College Assessment Study Guide
Sentence Skills
In an ACCUPLACER® placement test, there are 20 Sentence Skills questions of two
types.
• The first type is sentence correction questions that require an understanding of
sentence structure. These questions ask you to choose the most appropriate
word or phrase for the underlined portion of the sentence.
• The second type is construction shift questions. These questions ask that a
sentence be rewritten according to the criteria shown while maintaining
essentially the same
meaning as the original sentence.
Within these two primary categories, the questions are also classified according to the
skills being tested. Some questions deal with the logic of the sentence, others with
whether or not the answer is a complete sentence, and still others with the relationship
between coordination and subordination.
Sentence Skills Sample Questions
Directions for questions 1–5
175
Select the best version of the underlined part of the sentence. The first choice is the same
as the original sentence. If you think the original sentence is best, choose the first answer.
1. Stamp collecting being a hobby that is sometimes used in the schools to teach economics and
social studies.
A. being a hobby that is
B. is a hobby because it is
C. which is a hobby
D. is a hobby
2. Knocked sideways, the statue looked as if it would fall.
A. Knocked sideways, the statue looked
B. The statue was knocked sideways, looked
C. The statue looked knocked sideways
D. The statue, looking knocked sideways,
3. To walk, biking, and driving are Pat’s favorite ways of getting around.
A. To walk, biking, and driving
B. Walking, biking, and driving
C. To walk, biking, and to drive
D. To walk, to bike, and also driving
176
4. When you cross the street in the middle of the block, this is an example of jaywalking.
A. When you cross the street in the middle of the block, this
B. You cross the street in the middle of the block, this
C. Crossing the street in the middle of the block
D. The fact that you cross the street in the middle of the block
5. Walking by the corner the other day, a child, I noticed, was watching for the light to change.
A. a child, I noticed, was watching
B. I noticed a child watching
C. a child was watching, I noticed,
D. there was, I noticed, a child watching
Directions for questions 6–10
Rewrite the sentence in your head following the directions given below. Keep in mind
that your new sentence should be well written and should have essentially the same
meaning as the original sentence.
6. It is easy to carry solid objects without spilling them, but the same cannot be said of liquids.
Rewrite, beginning with
Unlike liquids,
177
The next words will be
A. it is easy to
B. we can easily
C. solid objects can easily be
D. solid objects are easy to be
7. Although the sandpiper is easily frightened by noise and light, it will bravely resist any force
that threatens its nest.
Rewrite, beginning with
The sandpiper is easily frightened by noise and light,
The next words will be
A. but it will bravely resist
B. nevertheless bravely resisting
C. and it will bravely resist
D. even if bravely resisting
8. If he had enough strength, Todd would move the boulder.
Rewrite, beginning with
Todd cannot move the boulder
178
The next words will be
A. when lacking
B. because he
C. although there
D. without enough
9. The band began to play, and then the real party started.
Rewrite, beginning with
The real party started
The next words will be
A. after the band began
B. and the band began
C. although the band began
D. the band beginning
10. Chris heard no unusual noises when he listened in the park.
Rewrite, beginning with
Listening in the park,
The next words will be
A. no unusual noises could be heard
179
B. then Chris heard no unusual noises
C. and hearing no unusual noises
D. Chris heard no unusual noises
Reading Comprehension
In an ACCUPLACER placement test, there are 20 questions of two primary types in
Reading Comprehension.
• The first type of question consists of a reading passage followed by a question
based on the text. Both short and long passages are provided. The reading
passages can also be classified according to the kind of information processing
required, including explicit statements related to the main idea, explicit statements
related to a secondary idea, application, and inference.
• The second type of question, sentence relationships, presents two sentences
followed by a question about the relationship between these two sentences. The
question may ask, for example, if the statement in the second sentence supports
that in the first, if it contradicts it, or if it repeats the same information.
Reading Comprehension Sample Questions
Read the statement or passage and then choose the best answer to the question. Answer
the question based on what is stated or implied in the statement or passage.
1. In the words of Thomas DeQuincey, “It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay
180
burdens upon it.” If, like most people, you have trouble recalling the names of those you have
just met, try this: The next time you are introduced, plan to remember the names. Say to
yourself, “I’ll listen carefully; I’ll repeat each person’s name to be sure I’ve got it, and I will
remember.” You’ll discover how effective this technique is and probably recall those names
for the rest of your life.
The main idea of the paragraph maintains that the memory
A. always operates at peak efficiency.
B. breaks down under great strain.
C. improves if it is used often.
D. becomes unreliable if it tires.
2. Unemployment was the overriding fact of life when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of
the United States on March 4, 1933. An anomaly of the time was that the government did not
systematically collect statistics of joblessness; actually it did not start doing so until 1940. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics later estimated that 12,830,000 persons were out of work in 1933,
about one-fourth of a civilian labor force of more than 51 million.
Roosevelt signed the Federal Emergency Relief Act on May 12, 1933. The president selected
Harry L. Hopkins, who headed the New York relief program, to run FERA. A gifted
administrator, Hopkins quickly put the program into high gear. He gathered a small staff in
Washington and brought the state relief organizations into the FERA system. While the
agency tried to provide all the necessities, food came first. City dwellers usually got an
allowance for fuel, and rent for one month was provided in case of eviction.
181
This passage is primarily about
A. unemployment in the 1930s.
B. the effect of unemployment on United States families.
C. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.
D. President Roosevelt’s FERA program.
3. It is said that a smile is universally understood. And nothing triggers a smile more universally
than a taste of sugar. Nearly everyone loves sugar. Infant studies indicate that humans are born
with an innate love of sweets. Based on statistics, a lot of people in Great Britain must be
smiling because on average, every man, woman, and child in that country consumes 95
pounds of sugar each year.
From this passage it seems safe to conclude that the English
A. do not know that too much sugar is unhealthy.
B. eat desserts at every meal.
C. are fonder of sweets than most people.
D. have more cavities than any other people.
4. With varying success, many women around the world today struggle for equal rights.
Historically, women have achieved greater equality with men during periods of social
adversity. The following factors initiated the greatest number of improvements for women:
violent revolution, world war, and the rigors of pioneering in an undeveloped land. In all three
182
cases, the essential element that improved the status of women was a shortage of men, which
required women to perform many of society’s vital tasks.
We can conclude from the information in this passage that
A. women today are highly successful in winning equal rights.
B. only pioneer women have been considered equal to men.
C. historically, women have only achieved equality through force.
D. historically, the principle of equality alone has not been enough to secure women equal
rights.
5. In 1848, Charles Burton of New York City made the first baby carriage, but people strongly
objected to the vehicles because they said the carriage operators hit too many pedestrians. Still
convinced that he had a good idea, Burton opened a factory in England. He obtained orders
for the baby carriages from Queen Isabella II of Spain, Queen Victoria of England, and the
Pasha of Egypt. The United States had to wait another 10 years before it got a carriage factory,
and only 75 carriages were sold in the first year.
Even after the success of baby carriages in England,
A. Charles Burton was a poor man.
B. Americans were still reluctant to buy baby carriages.
C. Americans purchased thousands of baby carriages.
D. the United States bought more carriages than any other country.
183
6. All water molecules form six-sided structures as they freeze and become snow crystals. The
shape of the crystal is determined by temperature, vapor, and wind conditions in the upper
atmosphere. Snow crystals are always symmetrical because these conditions affect all six
sides simultaneously.
The purpose of the passage is to present
A. a personal observation.
B. a solution to a problem.
C. actual information.
D. opposing scientific theories.
Directions for questions 7–10
For the questions that follow, two underlined sentences are followed by a question or
statement. Read the sentences, then choose the best answer to the question or the best
completion of the statement.
7. The Midwest is experiencing its worst drought in 15 years.
Corn and soybean prices are expected to be very high this year.
What does the second sentence do?
A. It restates the idea found in the first.
B. It states an effect.
184
C. It gives an example.
D. It analyzes the statement made in the first.
8. Social studies classes focus on the complexity of our social environment.
The subject combines the study of history and the social sciences and promotes skills in
citizenship.
What does the second sentence do?
A. It expands on the first sentence.
B. It makes a contrast.
C. It proposes a solution.
D. It states an effect.
9. Knowledge of another language fosters greater awareness of cultural diversity among the
peoples of the world.
Individuals who have foreign language skills can appreciate more readily other peoples’ values
and ways of life.
How are the two sentences related?
A. They contradict each other.
B. They present problems and solutions.
C. They establish a contrast.
185
D. They repeat the same idea.
10. Serving on a jury is an important obligation of citizenship.
Many companies allow their employees paid leaves of absence to serve on juries.
What does the second sentence do?
A. It reinforces what is stated in the first.
B. It explains what is stated in the first.
C. It expands on the first.
D. It draws a conclusion about what is stated in the first
.
186
APPENDIX B
Sample Student Questionnaire
Student Subject # ________________
Educational Background
1. Did you complete high school?
2. If so, where did you attend high school?
3. How many college semesters have you completed?
4. Have you attended college anywhere other than Sacramento City College?
5. What level of English Writing have you completed in college?
6. Did you attend a California public school K-12?
7. If so, what school did you attend? If not, or if you attended more than one school,
please explain.
187
8. Have you taken an assessment test for a college other than Sacramento City?
9. If so, at what college did you test, and what was this test like? (i.e. multiple choice,
essay, etc.)
10. If you have only taken a college assessment test at Sacramento City College, please
list the portions of the assessment test you completed (i.e. multiple choice, essay, or
both).
11. After taking the assessment test at Sacramento City College, what class(es) have you
completed?
Academic Goals
1. What are your short term goals as a student?
2. What are your long term goals as a student?
3. Why have you chosen to pursue a college education?
4. What initially made you want to attend college?
Language Background
188
1. Do you speak a language other than English? If so, what language?
2. Can you read and/or write in this language?
3. Is English your primary language at home?
4. Do you feel as though you are fluent in “Standard” English?
Writing Background *
1. Learning writing is like…
2. When I write for school, I feel like…
3. The thing that bothers me most about writing is…
4. When someone reads what I have written, I feel like…
5. The thing I like the most about writing is…
189
6. The thing I dislike most about writing is…
7. The time when I feel least comfortable about my writing is…
8. When I talk to other people about my writing, I feel like…
9. If I could, the thing I would change about English would be…
10. In my writing, I wish I could…
* Adapted from Wajnryb, Ruth. “Affective English.” TESL Reporter 21.1 (1988): 7-8.
190
APPENDIX C
Sample Interview Questions
Student Subject # ____________
1. Please explain your experience with elementary and middle school education (K-8).
Where did you attend school? Was this experience positive, negative, or both?
2. During your elementary and middle school education, can your remember being
placed in classes that were accelerated or remedial? Did everyone take the same English
classes? If not, which classes did you take?
3. Please explain your experience with high school education. Where did you attend
high school? Was this experience positive, negative, or both?
4. During high school, can you remember being placed in classes that were accelerated
or remedial? What English do you remember taking?
5. Explain your experience with college assessment. What do you remember about
taking the assessment test (during, before, and after)?
6. What class(es) did your assessment scores recommend you take? Did you take these
classes?
191
7. If you have experience in a basic writing class, can you describe it? Was it easy,
difficult, engaging, boring? Did you grow more or less confident about your writing, or
did your perspective remain the same? To what do you attribute these feelings?
8. Have you sought assistance with your writing outside the classroom? If so, what kind
of writing help have you received? Was it required by the teacher or college? What was
your experience with this/these resources?
192
WORKS CITED
Abrego, Leisy. “Legitimacy, Social Identity, and the Mobilization of Law: The Effects
of Assembly Bill 540 on Undocumented Students in California.” Law and Social
Inquiry. 33 (2008): 709-34.
“Afop.org.” Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs. 4 Aug. 2010
<http://www.afoprograms.org/>. Web.
Bamberg, Betty. “Multiple-Choice and Holistic Essay Scores: What Are They
Measuring?” College Composition and Communication. 33 (1982): 404-06.
Bartholomae, David. Writing on the Margins: Essays on Composition and Teaching.
Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2005. Print.
Bawarshi, Anis and Stephanie Pelkowski. “Postcolonialism and the Idea of a Writing
Center.” Murphy and Sherwood 80-95. Print.
Bhabha, Homi K. “Preface.” Communicating in the Third Space. Eds. Karin Ikas and
Gerhard Wagner. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” Murphy and
Sherwood 168-73. Print.
Brown, H. Douglas. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. 5th ed. White
Plains, NY: Pearson, 2007. Print.
Bush, Douglas. “Education for All is Education for None.” The Problems of American
Education. Ed. Burton R. Clark. New York: New Viewpoints, 1975. 23-30.
Print.
193
Bushong, Steven. “Researchers Propose 6 Ways to Keep Community-College Students
beyond the First Few Weeks.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web.
18 Mar. 2009.
Clark, Burton R. “The ‘Cooling-Out’ Function in Higher Education.” The American
Journal of Sociology. 65 (1960): 569-76. Print.
“Collegeboard.com.” College Board. 16 July 2010 <http://www.collegeboard.com/>.
Web.
Cooper, Marilyn M. “Really Useful Knowledge: A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing
Centers.” Murphy and Sherwood 53-67. Print.
Costello, Carol. “Educating America: The Big Business of the SAT.” CNN American
Morning. n. pag. Web. 29 Dec. 2009.
Cox, Rebecca D. “Promoting Success by Addressing Students’ Fear of Failure.”
Community College Review. 37 (2009): n. pag. Web.
Decker, Anne Folger, Ruth Jody, and Felicia Brings. A Handbook on Open Admissions:
Success, Failure, Potential. Boulder, Westview: 1976. Print.
Del Principe, Ann. “Paradigm Clashes Among Basic Writing Teachers: Sources of
Conflict and a Call for Change.” Journal of Basic Writing. 23.1 (2004): 64-81.
Print.
Diego. Personal Interview. 8 July 2010.
Dougherty, Kevin J. and Gregory S. Kienzl. “It’s Not Enough to Get through the Open
Door: Inequalities by Social Background in Transfer from Community College to
Four-Year Colleges.” Teachers College Record 108 (2006): 452-87. Print.
194
Dowd, Alicia C. “From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the Democratic
Mission of the Community College.” Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science. 586.3 (2003): 92-119. Print.
Duncan, Garrett Albert. “Beyond Love: A Critical Race Ethnography of the Schooling of
Adolescent Black Males.” Equity & Excellence in Education 35 (2002): 133-143.
Esposito, Dominick. “Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Ability Grouping: Principal
Findings and Implications for Designing More Effective Educational
Environments.” Review of Educational Research. 43 (1973): 163-79. Print.
Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgecock. Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process,
and Practice. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Ferris, Dana R. and Barrie Roberts. “Error Feedback in L2 Writing Classes: How
Explicit Does It Need to Be?” Matsuda 380-402. Print.
Fishman, Judith. “Do You Agree or Disagree: The Epistemology of the CUNY Writing
Assessment Test.” WPA: Writing Program Administration. 8.1-2 (1984): 1725. Print.
Fogg, Piper. “As Students Seek Help, Counselors Look for Ways to Lighten the Load.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 18 Apr. 2010.
“Foundation and College Board Announce ACCUPLACER Discount Pricing.”
Foundation for California Community Colleges News. n. pag. Web. 30 Jun.
2010.
Fox, Tom. Defending Access: A Critique of Standards in Higher Education.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook P, 1999. Print.
195
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Print.
---. Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum,
1992. Print.
---. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970. Print.
Froman, Robin D. “Ability Grouping: Why Do We Persist and Should We.” Annual
Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. 65th, Los Angeles,
California. 13-17 Apr. 1981. Paper. Print.
Fuller, Andrea. “Improving College Completion in the South, One Student at a Time.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 14 Apr. 2010.
Gonzales, Jennifer. “Report Highlights Characteristics of Colleges with High TransferSuccess Rates.” Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.
Goodlad, J.I. “Classroom Organization.” Encyclopedia of Educational Research. 3rd ed.
Ed. Chester Harris. New York: Macmillan, 1960. 221-25. Print.
Gourneau, Bonni. “Five Attitudes of Effective Teachers: Implications for Teacher
Training.” Essays in Education Online Journal. 13 (2005): n. pag. Web. 13
Aug. 2010.
Harris, Muriel. “A Multiservice Writing Lab in a Multiversity: The Purdue University
Writing Lab.” Kinkead and Harris 1-27. Print.
Harry, Beth and Mary G. Anderson. “The Social Construction of High-Incidence
Disabilities: The Effect on African American Males.” African American Males in
School and Society: Practices and Policies for Effective Education. Eds. Vernon
196
C. Polite and James Earl Davis. New York: Teachers College P, 1999. 34-50.
Print.
Heller, Louis G. The Death of the American University: With Special Reference to the
Collapse of City College of New York. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House,
1973. Print.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York:
Routledge, 1994. Print.
Huot, Brian. “Toward a New Theory of Writing Assessment.” College Composition and
Communication. 47 (1996): 549-66. Print.
James. Personal Interview. 16 July 2010.
Jaschik, Scott. “First Generation Challenges.” Inside Higher Ed. n. pag. Web. 10 Aug.
2005.
Kinkead, Joyce A. and Jeanette G. Harris. Writing Centers in Context: Twelve Case
Studies. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. Print.
Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York:
Crown, 1991. Print.
---. The Sham of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New
York: Three Rivers P, 2005. Print.
Kuh, George D. “How to Help Students Achieve.” The Chronicle of Higher Education.
15 June 2007. n. pag. Web. 17 Aug. 2010.
Laka. Personal Interview. 15 July 2010.
197
Leki, Ilona. “A Challenge to Second Language Writing Professionals: Is Writing
Overrated?” Exploring the Dynamics of Second Language Writing. Ed. Barbara
Kroll. York: Cambridge UP, 2003. 315-331. Print.
Marchand, Ashley. “6 Strategies Can Help Entering Community-College Students
Succeed.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 29 Mar. 2010.
Maria. Personal Interview. 16 July 2010.
Matalene, Carolyn. “The Shadow of Testing.” WPA: Writing Program Administration.
7.1-2 (1983): 39-45. Print.
Matsuda, Paul Kei. “Second-Language Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Situated
Historical Perspective.” Matsuda, et al 14-30. Print.
---, et al, eds. Second-Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical
Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2006. Print.
Miller, W.S. and H.J. Otto. “Analysis of Experimental Studies in Homogeneous
Grouping.” Journal of Educational Research. 21 (1930): 95-102. Print.
Moore, Thomas O. “Teacher Perceptions of the Benefits of Teacher Collaboration and
an Analysis of Indicators of Potential Teacher Attrition.” MS thesis. Brigham
Young U, 2009. Print.
Murphy, Christina and Steve Sherwood, eds. The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing
Tutors. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2003. Print.
Myers, Sharon A. “Reassessing The ‘Proofreading Trap’: ESL Tutoring and Writing
Instruction.” Murphy and Sherwood 219-36. Print.
198
Nord, Christine Winquist, and Jerry West. “Fathers’ and Mothers’ Involvement in Their
Children’s Schools by Family Type and Resident Status.” Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001.
Print.
Oakes, Jeannie. Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1985. Print.
---, Tor Ormseth, Robert M. Bell, and Patricia Camp. Multiplying Inequalities: The
Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn
Mathematics and Science. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1990. Print.
Ogbu, John. “Black-White Differences in School Performance: A Critique of Current
Explanations.” Minority Education and Caste: The American System in CrossCultural Perspective. New York: Academic Press, 1978. 43-65. Print.
Okawa, Gail Y. “Redefining Authority: Multicultural Students and Tutors at the
Educational Opportunity Program Writing Center at the University of
Washington.” Kinkead and Harris 166-91. Print.
Osenburg, F. C. “Objective Testing: The New Phrenology.” College Composition and
Communication. 12 (1961): 106-11. Print
Parrish, Thomas B., et. al. Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the
Education of English Learners K-12: Findings from a Five Year Evaluation.
American Institutes for Research and WestEd, 2006. Print.
199
Penrose, Ann M. “Academic Literacy Perceptions and Performance: Comparing FirstGeneration and Continuing-Generation College Students.” Research in the
Teaching of English. 36 (2002): 437-61. Print.
Pogash, Carol. “At City College, a Battle over Remedial Classes for English and Math.”
New York Times. n. pag. Web. 24 June 2010.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 91 (1991): 33-40. Print.
Reid, Joy. “‘Eye’ Learners and ‘Ear’ Learners: Identifying the Language Needs of
International Students and U.S. Resident Writers.” Matsuda 76-88. Print.
Roberge, Mark Morgan. “California’s Generation 1.5 Immigrants: What Experiences,
Characteristics, and Needs Do They Bring to Our English Classes?” The
CATESOL Journal. 14 (2002): 107-29. Print.
Rood, Lee. “Nonprofit ACT board’s pay near top in U.S.” DesMoines Register. n. pag.
Web. 11 Nov. 2007.
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin, 1989. Print.
---. “Remedial Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal.” College English 45.2
(1983): 109-128. Print.
---. “The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University.” College
English 47.4 (1985): 341-59. Print.
Rosen, David, Seth Brunner, and Steve Fowler. Open Admissions: The Promise and the
Lie of Open Access to American Higher Education. Lincoln, NB: Nebraska
Curriculum Development Center, 1973. Print.
200
Royer, Daniel J. and Roger Gilles. “Basic Writing and Directed Self-Placement.” Basic
Writing e-Journal. 2.2 (2000): n. pag. Web. 7 Jul. 2000.
Sacramento City College. Sacramento City College October 2009: Report of the
Institutional Self-Study for Reaffirmation of Accreditation. Sacramento, CA: Los
Rios Community College District, 2009. Print.
Sander, Libby. “At Community Colleges, a Call to Meet New Students at the Front
Door.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 28 Mar. 2008.
SCC Assessment Center. “RE: Research Question.” Message to the author. 10 Aug.
2010. E-mail.
Shaughnessy, Mina P. “Basic Writing.” Teaching Composition: 10 Bibliographical
Essays. Ed. Gary Tate. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian UP, 1976. 137-67.
Print.
---. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York:
Oxford UP, 1977. Print.
Shor, Ira. Culture Wars: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration. Chicago:
U of Chicago P, 1986. Print.
---. “Our Apartheid: Writing Instruction and Inequality.” Journal of Basic Writing 16.1
(1997): 91-104. Print.
Sifuentes, Edward. “Education: Proposition 227: 10 Years Later: English-Only
Education Continues to Spark Debate.” North County Times. n. pag. Web. 8
Nov. 2008.
Silva, Tony. “On the Ethical Treatment of ESL Writers.” Matsuda 154-58. Print.
201
Soliday, Mary. “Ideologies of Access and the Politics of Agency.” Mainstreaming Basic
Writers: Politics and Pedagogies of Access. Ed. Gerri McNenny. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. 55-72. Print.
Stinson, David W. “African American Male Adolescents, Schooling (and Mathematics):
Deficiency, Rejection, and Achievement.” Review of Educational Research 76
(2006): 477-506. Print.
“U.S. Census Bureau.” U.S. Census Bureau. 27 July 2010
<http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en>. Web.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics.
Survey on Child Health. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1993. Print.
Valdés, Guadalupe. “Bilingual Minorities and Language Issues in Writing: Toward
Professionwide Responses to a New Challenge.” Matsuda 31-70. Print.
Wasley, Paula. “Underrepresented Students Benefit Most from ‘Engagement.’” The
Chronicle of Higher Education. n. pag. Web. 17 Nov. 2006.
White, Edward M. “Apologia for the Timed Impromptu Essay Test.” College
Composition and Communication. 46 (1995): 30-45. Print.
---. “Holisticism.” College Composition and Communication 35 (1984): 400-09. Print.
Williams, Dana Nicole. “Writing Across the Curriculum Programs at Community
Colleges.” ERIC Digest. n. pag. Web. Aug. 1989.
Woolbright, Meg. “The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism within the Patriarchy.” Murphy
and Sherwood 67-79. Print.
202
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing Writing
Assessment.” College Composition and Communication 50 (1999): 483-503.
Print.