SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A change in state law is upending the way community colleges teach calculus.
The goal is to make the pathway to a STEM career more equitable and accessible to people historically under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. However, some math professors and students worry the law could end up hurting the very people it’s designed to help.
Here in California, 116 community colleges serve some two million students.
Many students pursuing a STEM degree are required to take calculus.
Some students who did well in high school math are able to jump right into Calculus 1 without issues. Other students have had to start in lower-level classes and try working their way up to Calculus 1, taking transfer-level college algebra, trigonometry or precalculus - or even lower-level, remedial classes, which do not transfer to four-year universities.
Several years ago, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office argued – and research showed – students could get stuck taking lower-level classes they might not actually need, thus delaying their completion of the calculus requirement and – as a result – delaying their degree. Some students dropped out of STEM – or even community college – altogether, the length of the math sequence taking too much time and money.
“The length of the pathway to get to calculus for STEM majors is leading to an enormous amount of attrition in STEM,” said John Hetts, Executive Vice Chancellor for the Office of Innovation, Data, Evidence and Analytics within the Chancellor's Office.
He points to a 2016 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, which showed only about 27% of students who took a remedial math course eventually completed a college-level math course with a grade of C or better. Just 16% of students in remedial classes earned a certificate or associate degree within six years, and only 24% successfully transferred to a four-year college. Plus, research showed that Latino, Black and low-income students were overrepresented in these remedial courses.
“We have a lot of students who are interested in STEM who can't get to that starting point and there's an opportunity for us to rethink that in a powerful way that opens up that opportunity to many more students,” Hetts said.
His office and state lawmakers did something about this in the form of two bills.
The first, AB 705, which went into effect in 2018 requires community colleges “to consider a student's high school coursework and GPA as primary determining factors for placement,” to “maximize the probability that a student will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a one year timeframe.”
It's a matter of “giving students fair credit for the work that they've already done, for the skills that they have,” Hetts said.
He said studies showed it helped at some colleges, but implementation varied.
“One of the things that happened in response to AB 705 is a number of our institutions lengthened their sequence of courses at transfer level - so college-level courses, but prior to calculus - and what the evidence shows pretty clearly about that is that when you lengthen that sequence, it dramatically decreases the likelihood that students get to the end of that sequence,” Hetts said. “And for a STEM major, right, calculus is not the end of the work; it's the beginning of the work.”
So in 2022, lawmakers passed AB 1705. It essentially bars community colleges from putting STEM students into remedial math courses and encourages students to be placed directly into Calculus 1. The changes go into effect July 2025, starting with the fall semester.
“The whole design of this is to think carefully about, ‘What is the most appropriate way to help students on a STEM pathway successfully complete calculus?’” Hetts said. “And what the evidence strongly suggests is that the best way for students who are STEM majors is to get them started in calculus, with the appropriate support.”
That’s part of the Chancellor’s Office’s AB1705 implementation guidance for community colleges, issued back in February (though there has since been an update – more on that below). It requires colleges to create a support course that STEM students who were less academically successful in high school can take alongside Calculus 1.
Colleges also have the option to design an innovative course that struggling students can take the semester before calculus.
However, students with a high school GPA greater than 2.6 and who passed high school trigonometry, precalculus or calculus with a C or better would not be eligible for that preparatory semester; they’d be deemed successful enough to dive right into calculus.
"We just think this law went too far,” said Moorpark College math professor Rena Weiss. “Here we are already experiencing students struggling in preparatory courses…and now there seems to be no path for them.”
She and other math professors worry the new rules will force many STEM students who aren’t yet academically prepared to begin with calculus, thus setting them up for failure.
"It's like removing piano 1 before taking piano 2,” Weiss said. “Or 'Just go straight into Advanced Accounting without the benefit of Introduction to Accounting.' There is so much content that students need to know, plus the math maturity that comes from doing problems of that level before advancing upon them in Calculus 1."
Students like Alicia Szutowicz-Fitzpatrick at American River College also have concerns.
“This is the most well-intentioned law, but the way it’s articulated, it scares me,” Szutowicz-Fitzpatrick told ABC10. “No support class is going to be able to help a student that doesn't have the backing of algebra and trig. A support class will help a ‘C’ student get an ‘A,’ but a student that doesn't have the fundamentals, I don't see how they can succeed unless they just take that one class and then spend all their extra time trying to learn the basic fundamentals, which-- it's almost impossible to do that on your own.”
She worries limiting the options for prior-to-calculus courses and funneling most STEM students right into Calculus 1 will result in people leaving the STEM track altogether.
“I'm fearful that we're going to lose students that have dreams, because this is - in my opinion - what community college is there for: is for people to pursue their dreams,” Szutowicz-Fitzpatrick said. “You're supposed to be allowed to fail here and then find your success…I want students to feel supported. If they need more help, they should get that help.”
In the course of ABC10’s reporting, the Chancellor's Office announced just this week it's changing its guidance, making more students eligible for transfer-level, prior-to-calculus courses.
Students who only successfully completed Integrated Math 3 or Intermediate Algebra or the equivalent will be allowed to take one semester of a lower, transfer-level class – typically precalculus. They may also opt to go right into calculus if they feel ready.
Students who did not meet any of those standards will be allowed to take two semesters of a transfer-level, prior-to-calculus sequence. (Community colleges are still not allowed to enroll STEM students into remedial math courses.)
But the most academically successful group of students – those who completed Integrated Math 4, trigonometry, precalculus or the equivalent in high school - will still be placed directly into calculus under the revised guidance.
ABC10 asked the Chancellor’s Office: Why the change? And why now?
“For colleges to be able to adequately plan for Fall 2025, any update to guidance needed to happen before colleges return in January,” spokesperson Melissa Villarin said in a statement to ABC10.
“The Chancellor’s Office, over recent months, has engaged in dialogue with faculty, administrators, counselors and students about whether students who had not completed a class higher than high school level geometry or its equivalent would be fully prepared to enroll directly in Calculus I,” Villarin wrote. “The updated guidance, issued in partnership with the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges and the California Community Colleges Chief Instructional Officers, provides additional options for less prepared students before taking Calculus I… The updated guidance reiterates that direct placement into Calculus is the expected default for most STEM major students. Colleges will continue to offer concurrent supports such as corequisites and tutoring, and state resources in the form of $64 million in block grants are available for this purpose.”
Professor Weiss said she is cautiously optimistic but still has concerns.
“We are very, very excited that the state listened to us, so that's great,” Weiss told ABC10 in reaction to the updated guidance. "Some students do well in Calculus 1 without a lot of preparation. Others really need the preparation. And so we believe in these courses, we believe that they need to be there and we're cautiously optimistic that the state will let us continue to teach those courses in the future."
The Chancellor’s Office will evaluate student progress over the course of two years and adjust, if needed, in 2027.
AB705 and AB1705 only apply to California community colleges - not the UC or CSU systems.
STEM students aren’t the only ones affected. Generally, high school graduates must begin community college in courses that fulfill requirements of their intended degree – and this includes English courses.
As for high school students, experts recommend any kid with an interest in a STEM career take as much high school math as possible before heading to college.
This story was first brought to light by EdSource, California’s largest nonprofit news organization focused on education.
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