Measuring the effectiveness of developmental writing courses

Community College Review, Fall, 2004 by Anne Hay Southard, Jennifer K. Clay

However, although 74% of developmental students who enrolled in Composition I succeeded, the correlation between success in the two courses is weak. The researchers believe that a shift in grades between the two courses accounts for this low correlation between developmental students' success in College Prep English II and Composition I. A frequency table reveals that successful developmental students typically see their grade in Composition I drop by at least a letter below the grade they received in College Prep English II. This drop in grades may be explained by the significant gap that exists between the content of the two courses: While College Prep English II students are assessed on sentence skills and paragraphs, Composition I students are assessed on essays, at least one of these being a long research paper. Thus, writing style, research skills, and competency in documentation are the assessment criteria in Composition I--a substantial leap from the sentence skills and paragraph evaluation criteria of College Prep English II. In addition, Composition I is more demanding simply in terms of workload; students must write a minimum of 6,000 words.

The study also produced an ambiguous and potentially disturbing finding: the lack of a significant correlation between state-mandated placement test scores and grades in all writing-intensive courses. We had expected that students whose FCPT scores were closer to the cut-off score of 82 would do better in College Prep English II than those scoring far below the cut-off score because their deficits in writing skills were not as large as that of low-scoring students. However, the low correlation between the test scores and grades indicates that the size of the deficit, as measured by the FCPT, does not affect students' grades. Not only did College Prep English II and Composition I grades fail to show a correlation with the FCPT, but grades in all writing-intensive courses failed to show a correlation with the test as well. Three interpretations of this finding are possible (Schmitz & delMas, 1991). First, and most optimistically, this low correlation may mean that the placement test is accurate, and instruction targets students' areas of weakness. Schmitz and delMas (1991) note that the correlation between placement scores and test grades may be very low when placement is precise: If instruction meets developmental students' needs, then their low placement scores may be followed by high grades in the course in which the test placed them.

Unfortunately, this explanation is not convincing in the case of the FCPT because of the test's apparent lack of alignment with College Prep English II. Based on information provided by The College Board (the test developer), the researchers conclude that the FCPT lacks content validity as a placement instrument for the course. The FCPT tests students' skills in coordination and subordination, logic, and misplaced modifiers, none of these concepts are covered in the developmental English course. The only FCPT skills that are taught in College Prep English II are correcting verb tenses and fragments. If the test is not aligned with the course in which it places students, one would expect little or no correlation between the FCPT and students' grades (Schmitz & delMas, 1991).