Repeatability: Why Sometimes Once Is Not Enough!

The new statewide “student success” repeatability regulations were expressly intended to ration education. They state that, in most cases, once a student has received a passing grade (at least a ”C” or a ”Pass”) in a class, he/she may not take it again.

On the surface this may seem reasonable. However, rather than enhancing student success, it’s actually creating roadblocks to student success in diverse disciplines across campus, including visual and performing arts, basic skills, CTC, creative writing, foreign languages and more.

The repeatability rules were NOT legislated, but rather came from the Board of Governors and the Chancellors Office. Faculty at Cabrillo have been meeting to strategize a response. We attracted faculty support from across campus as the regulation’s wider impact became apparent. We then drafted resolutions that were passed unanimously by CCFT and by the Faculty Senate.

What is at stake?

Several colleagues spoke eloquently at the Faculty Senate meeting on February 4th, where a unanimous vote supported the initiative to repeal repeatability. Maya Bendotoff began with an overview and pointed out that since Prop 30 passed, not only have college budgets improved, but also the chancellor and some members of the Board of Governors have changed. It therefore makes sense to revisit this policy.

Beth McKinnon described the impact on Basic Skills students and mentioned that they can no longer repeat labs. There are more ramifications to this, and she intends to write about it in more depth at a later date. Then Calais Ingel mentioned that because computer software (and hardware) is constantly changing, CTE students need to be able to retake courses in order to update their skills and information for success in college and at work. However, many of them are now blocked from doing so. It isn’t practical to keep up with the changes by continually re-writing curriculum. After this, Michael Strunk spoke about VAPA students. An excerpt of his speech follows:

"Like their counterparts in other majors, students in the visual and performing arts enter the community college system with widely varying backgrounds, ages, socioeconomic levels and scholastic readiness… many more students have inconsistent and varied backgrounds in their pre-college arts education and need additional time to make up for inadequate preparation in order to be ready for transfer to universities.

With the current restrictions on repeatability, combined with the equating of so-called similar courses into families, all performing and visual arts students at the community college level are essentially being expected to complete their lower division work in two years, leaving students who are ill-prepared for transfer to find their own means of remediation at their own time and expense.

The vast majority of four-year colleges require placement auditions for a transfer student in the performing arts, or a portfolio review for a transfer student in the visual arts. Proficiency in the arts is achieved, at least partially, through repetitive practice. Students who enter community college at a lower proficiency level, and are not allowed the extra repetition for building their skills, will be at a disadvantage when auditioning or presenting portfolios for transfer. Furthermore, the equating of courses with similar educational activities into families reinforces the situation in which the minimum requirement for a lower-division student attending a four-year school becomes the maximum allowable educational experience for a community college student."

The final CCFT presentation was by Susan Stuart, who summarized the reasons why repeatability is crucial to student success, which include needs for remediation, skill building, portfolio development, and/or adapting to new technologies. She gave a specific example of Theatre Arts students who fear difficulty transferring because they’ve already exhausted their quota of production courses during their first year. Other colleagues shared dilemmas facing specific students. Some instructors said they know of students who deliberately failed classes by missing finals, thus enabling them to re-take those classes and gain mastery of the subject instead of barely passing competency. The list goes on, and clearly is NOT "student success."

We need to educate Sacramento decision makers about what is happening to real students, where the "rubber hits the road." CCFT members are leading a grassroots statewide movement to repeal the repeatability rule. We are gaining allies daily from colleges from up and down California.

If you have contacts in other CFT locals, faculty senates and/or other faculty unions, please inform them about this effort and email Maya Bendotoff their email addresses, so she can add them to our listserve.

Read the CCFT Resolution: Advocate for changes to recent community college repeatability regulations that limit student success and access. Approved by the CCFT Council on Jan. 22, 2014

by Sharon Took-Zozaya