Colleges around the country are experimenting with alternative strategies to placement testing for their entering students. They have been driven to do so for a variety of reasons: because there is clear evidence that placement tests are poorly predictive of college success; because traditional placement mechanisms have over-placed Black, Hispanic, low-income and first-generation students into developmental education, thereby increasing the cost of their college educations while reducing the likelihood they will earn a college degree; and because the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemi
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Colleges around the country are experimenting with alternative strategies to placement testing for their entering students. They have been driven to do so for a variety of reasons: because there is clear evidence that placement tests are poorly predictive of college success; because traditional placement mechanisms have over-placed Black, Hispanic, low-income and first-generation students into developmental education, thereby increasing the cost of their college educations while reducing the likelihood they will earn a college degree; and because the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic has made traditional placement mechanisms impractical or impossible. One increasingly popular approach is self-placement, in which students take an active role in the placement process. Institutions and states use a variety of terms to refer to self-placement, including Directed Self Placement, Direct Placement, Guided Self-Placement and Informed Placement, among others.
This brief shares the approaches taken by colleges around the country, with an eye toward understanding how self-placement can support ongoing, focused efforts to increase equity, such that students' backgrounds do not predetermine their outcomes. Our hope is that colleges will use these strategies in their own work, designing future self-placement systems with equity at the center. By this, we mean engaging in a process that, from the outset, seeks to identify the student groups that may be marginalized by current or future systems, identify barriers within those systems, and create self-placement approaches that deliberately remove those barriers. Designing with equity at the center aims to create more equitable educational practices, processes and behaviors, such that students from all backgrounds feel included and supported on campus, and have effective learning opportunities that honor their strengths and cultural backgrounds.
Excerpts from publication.
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