In the report, Seizing the Moment,[1] the American Association of Community Colleges makes a number of recommendations for closing the “preparation gap” among students from different backgrounds entering higher education. Two of those recommendations are to establish “common placement standards among all community colleges in a state and [p]rovide first-year students who are not yet college ready with co-requisite and other evidence-based remediation opportunities.”

Connecticut has had such a system in place since the CT Legislature passed into law PA-1240[2] in 2012. The law reads “… if a public institution of higher education determines, by use of multiple commonly accepted measures of skill level, that a student is below the skill level required for success in college level work, the public institution of higher education shall offer such student the opportunity to participate in an intensive college readiness program before the start of the next semester.” As a result of this law, community colleges (and the four-year state universities) offer three levels of support for these students: “college level instruction at the 100 level; College-level instruction with embedded developmental support; and a single semester of developmental education or an intensive readiness experience for students below the 12th grade level[3].” PA-1240 stipulates that students be assessed using multiple measures, and the CT Board of Regents has recently clarified what that means: Accuplacer (must be used by all community colleges), a nationally standardized exam, local assessment (e.g., an essay), GPA, “non-cognitive questionnaires” or Smarter Balanced[4]^,[5]. At Eastern CT State University, one the four public state universities, placement in a first year writing course is determined by SAT scores or directed self-placement (it should be noted that this stretches the notion of multiple, because one set of students is placed by SAT score and another by writing an essay, but both measures are never used to assess the same student[6].) The other CSUs share similar practices.

N.B.: It should be noted that the report is co-produced by the American Association for Community Colleges, the Association of Community College Trustees, and Higher Ed for Higher Standards. It should further be noted that Higher Ed for Higher Standards is a “project of the Collaborative for Student Success” (CFSS)[7]. That’s of note because the CFSS’s sole purpose seems to be to create support for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). That in turn is important because the report advocates that community colleges “Revise institutional placement practices to honor college-ready achievement on these new measures, and provide schools and students consistent signals by establishing common placement standards among all community colleges in a state.” Those achievements are measured using Smarter Balanced or (not-so-much) the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments. Smarter Balanced received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Gates foundation was also a driving force behind the CCSS[8].