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High C ha l l e n g e , Hig h Support Classrooms for Underprepared Stu dents

T OWA R D A V I S I O N O F AC C E L E R AT E D
CURRICULUM & PEDAGOGYB Y K A T I E H E R N | Director, California Acceleration Project | English instructor, Chabot Collegew i t h M Y R A S N E L L | Math lead, California Acceleration Project | Professor of Mathematics, Los Medanos CollegeDevelopmental education is under an uncomfortablemicroscope these days. President Obama has called fordramatic increases in completion of post-secondary credentials, and legislators and policy makers have zeroed in on
remediation reform as essential to meeting this goal. Fournational organizations have called for an overhaul of English
and math remediation, including placing most students
directly into credit-bearing college courses, tailoring mathremediation to students’ chosen pathways, eliminating
multi-level remedial sequences, and offering co-requisite
support and accelerated models for less prepared students.
The movement to reform remediation is spurred by three important trends inthe national research on community colleges: 1) studies showing that that huge
numbers of students disappear before making meaningful progress in college, andthat the more layers of remedial coursework students must take, the lower theircompletion of college-level English and math; 2) studies questioning the accuracyof the standardized tests that sort students into different levels of remediation,and 3) studies showing significantly better outcomes among students enrolled inaccelerated models of remediation.
While the research has clarified key problems in developmental education, andpointed toward promising directions for change, an important question is often
missing from the conversation: What does instruction look like in an accelerated
class? And how is it different from more traditional approaches to remediation?
LearningWorks commissioned the monograph “Toward a Vision of Accelerated
Curriculum and Pedagogy” to address these important questions. Katie Hern andMyra Snell, leaders of the California Acceleration Project, draw upon their own
classroom experience, and their work with community college faculty across thestate, to articulate a set of core principles and practices for teaching acceleratedEnglish and math – in particular, how teachers can support students with widely
varying backgrounds and skill levels to be successful in an accelerated environment.
Hern and Snell offer five core design principles for high-challenge, high-support
accelerated classes:• Backward design from college-level courses
This design principle addresses the misalignment between traditional remediation and college-level coursework. In English, backward design holds that adevelopmental course should look and feel like a good college English course,with more support and guidance. In math, it asks which math students need2

for their chosen pathway, then aligns remediation to
those specific college-level requirements – more extensive
algebra for students heading toward calculus, accelerated
pre-requisite or co-requisite support for students taking
statistics or liberal arts math.
• Relevant, thinking-oriented curriculum
An alternative to remediation focused predominantly on
correctness in written form or mathematical procedure,
this kind of curriculum asks students to engage with issues that matter, wrestle with open-ended problems, anduse resources from the class to reach and defend theirown conclusions.
• Just-in-time remediation
An alternative to separating out and teaching discrete
sub-skills in advance, this approach provides only the support students specifically need to grapple with challenging college-level tasks; includes individualized grammar
guidance on students’ own writing and as-needed reviewof the arithmetic or algebra required to answer intellectually engaging questions with data.

fear, increase their willingness to engage with challenging tasks, and make them less likely to sabotage their own
success in a class.
With extended illustrations of each principle, “Toward a Vision of Accelerated Curriculum and Pedagogy” serves as an
essential resource for the larger effort to reform remediation,
particularly for faculty needing support to move away fromtraditional, decelerated models of instruction.

The California Acceleration Project is funded
by California Community Colleges Chancellor’s
Office, through a professional development grant
to 3CSN, the California Community Colleges’
Success Network. Additional financial support
has been provided through the Walter S. Johnson
Foundation, LearningWorks, and the “ScalingInnovation” project of the Community College
Research Center, funded by the William andFlora Hewlett Foundation.

• Low-stakes, collaborative practiceIn-class activities are designed to give students practicewith the most high-priority skills and content needed forlater, graded assessments.
• Intentional support for students’ affective needs
Pedagogical practices are employed to reduce students’3

LearningWorks was founded by the Career Ladders Project for California
Community Colleges, the Research and Planning Group for California
Community Colleges, and the California Community Colleges SuccessNetwork to facilitate, disseminate and fund practitioner-informed recommendations for changes at the community college system and classroom
levels, infusing these strategies with statewide and national insights.
LearningWorks seeks to strengthen the relationships that offer the greatest
potential for accelerating action, including those between policy makers and practitioners, among overlapping initiatives, and across the 112
colleges. LearningWorks is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation and the Walter S. Johnson Foundation.
ADDRESS 678 13th Street, Suite 103 | Oakland, CA 94612
WEB www.LearningWorksCA.org

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