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Opposing Views and Criticisms
The critique of the mathematics placement process may be described in terms of two broad camps - those who are fundamentally opposed to the use of tests for assigning people to particular courses or programs and those who accept the placement process but suggest it needs to be refined to include the effects of other factors beside math test scores alone. Perhaps we could call these groups Rejectors and Revisors respectively.
Rejectors' Views
In the field of assessment, placement testing is seen as a subset of selection testing. According to Glaser and Silver (1994), " Selection testing attempts to measure human abilities prior to a course of instruction so that individuals can be appropriately placed, diagnosed, certified, included or excluded." (p395) The last word in that quote signals the main point in some of the opposition to placement testing. Placement tests may function to exclude people from post-secondary education rather than aid access because they may be seen as just one more hurdle. Assigning people to ability groups is seen to be a kind of academic tracking, and may actually serve to reproduce or entrench inequities rather than help eliminate them (Kingan and Alfred, 1994). For example, Glaser and Silver, summarizing Oakes (1985), note: " In studies of the academic tracking of students for mathematics instruction, data regarding instructional practices suggest that students assigned to the lower tracks of many high schools tend to receive less actual mathematics instruction, less homework, and more drill-and-practice of low-level factual knowledge and computational skill than students assigned to middle and higher tracks (p398)."
Another aspect of the exclusion or barrier view is the notion that remedial courses deter enrollment due to the extra time and money needed to complete a program (Morante, 1989), or that placement in remedial classes stigmatizes students with respect to their peers and may lead them to become demoralized and drop out (Kingan and Alfred, 1994)². This kind of grouping may also have serious implications when visible minorities are "over-represented " in remedial classes.
Some opposition to placement testing and remediation derives from a financial argument combined with a touch of what might be called higher education snobbery. In this view, underprepared students and remedial courses just do not belong in college or university as their presence tends to lower standards. The time and money needed for testing and remediation is better spent on the students who are prepared and the resources they need (Almeida,1986). Aligned with this view is the notion that underpreparedness is the result of poor content or instruction in high school math courses, so the problem should be fixed there (Platt, 1987).
A significant amount of the criticism directed at mathematics placement testing is focused on the research which suggests that many other factors, particularly noncognitive or psychosocial factors, are important in determining a student's success in mathematics (Bridgeman and Wendler, 1991; House, 1995; Penny and White, 1998; Ting and Robinson, 1998). These factors may include: self-confidence, commitment, attendance, gender, ethnic background, age or maturity, financial circumstances, self-rating of math ability, parent's education level, motivation, teacher's attitudes, mode of instruction, and teacher's gender (Ting and Robinson, 1998). Critics propose that some of these factors should be assessed in specially designed questionnaires or interviews and used in conjunction with math test scores to make better placement decisions.
Another area of the criticism focuses on the math placement test itself. The tests may need improvements in terms of content and predictive validity, discrimination, reliability and the choice of cut scores (Morante, 1989; Truman, 1992) . Within the same frame also lies the debate over using general achievement tests (such as SAT) versus content-specific basic skills placement tests. After an extensive review of assessment and placement, Jerry Weber (1986) concludes:
Content-specific placement tests in combination with other student data will yield effective assessment forming a basis for placement decisions. Performance on general achievement tests (ACT or SAT) or a subsection of one achievement test should not determine basic skills course placement (p28).
Similarly, Wattenbarger and McLeod (1989) note that studies conducted on Florida colleges show that "...standardized entrance examinations do not provide information of sufficient accuracy to justify placement into the mathematics curriculum based solely on the math portion of the tests (SAT and ACT were used in one study.) ( p18)." Most community colleges and a high proportion of universities do use institutionally created content-specific tests, though about half the universities are likely to rely on SAT or ACT scores (Lederman, et al., 1985; McDonald, 1988).
Finally, the remedial courses offered to upgrade students' math skills are subject to criticism from a number of perspectives. Courses vary widely in content, duration, and mode of delivery³. This may simply reflect different needs in different contexts and an effort to be flexible on behalf of students' needs. More significant is the observation that many do not use any special instructional strategies directed at the characteristics of underprepared students (Laughbaum, 1992). The faculty who teach the remedial program may be temporary, less qualified, and not well integrated into the post-secondary mathematics departments to the detriment of their students (Penny and White, 1998).
Required placement testing and remediation was not always considered desirable. According to Robert McCabe, former president of Miami-Dade Community College, at one time "community colleges embraced a completely open policy. They believed that students know best what they could and could not do and that no barriers should restrict them....This openness, however, came with a price....By the early 1970s, it became apparent that this unrestricted approach was a failure"[18]