Placement and Assessment Committee

Fall 2006 Newsletter
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From the Chair of PAC Ed Gallo I'd like to extend my greetings to all of the Placement and Assessment Committee (PAC) members. We have many things going on in the math placement and assessment areas. We had a great themed session titled "Placement and Assessment: Doing It the Beyond Crossroads Way" at the Cincinnati 2006 Conference. There were five, 15-minute presentations on math placement and assessment. You can find information about these presentations at http://placement.amatyc.org/cincinnati2006.html. Of particular importance in this newsletter is information about the following two PAC initiatives: Call for Proposals for the PAC Themed Session for the Minneapolis 2007 Conference Request for review of, and comments on, the "Placement" AMATYC position statement. I would also encourage you to consider submitting a short article or other item on math placement or assessment for future editions of this newsletter. Just send it to Ed Gallo or to Jim Ham, our Newsletter editor. We will also post such articles to our PAC website as part of our mission "…to serve as a resource or clearinghouse for the AMATYC membership on issues related to Placement and Assessment of students, courses, and programs in mathematics at two-year colleges". Featured Article Placement Tests: The Shaky Bridge Connecting School and College Mathematics Sheldon P. Gordon Farmington State University of New York   2007 AMATYC Conference in Minneapolis - A Call for Proposals The AMATYC Placement and Assessment Committee (PAC) is sponsoring a "themed session" at the AMATYC Minneapolis Conference, November 1 - 4, 2007. The themed session is titled "Math Placement and Assessment and Beyond Crossroads." We will have 6 - 9 short presentations of 15 minutes each. The thrust of each presentation should be on something interesting that you are doing in math placement, classroom assessment, or course or program assessment. The presentation should be appealing to a cross section of the AMATYC members who are interested in math placement or assessment. Proposals that implement the Beyond Crossroads standards are encouraged and preferred. Please see Chapter 4 for Placement and Chapter 5 for Assessment. If you have not yet received your copy of Beyond Crossroads, download the document using the link below: Preference will be given to presentations that address the following: Classroom Assessment Techniques Assessment of a math course Assessment of a math program Assessment of a Teacher Prep course Placement If you are interested in being a part of this themed session, please draft a short proposal consisting of the following items: Your name The title of your presentation A short description of your presentation Please send proposals to Ed Gallo by January 15, 2007. 2006 AMATYC Conference in Cincinnati- A Summary Two PAC committee meetings were held during the 2006 AMATYC conference in Cincinnati. Ed Gallo, Chair of PAC, led the meetings. Agenda items included the following: Attendees were asked to provide or update their contact information. Currently, 175 members receive the online PAC newsletter. This includes all AMATYC Board members, Committee Chairs, and Affiliate Presidents. Ed encouraged members to submit a proposal to present at the 2007 placement and assessment themed session in Minneapolis. The PAC goals and objectives for 2005 - 2007 were reviewed. Ed encouraged members to submit items to be included on the PAC website and for the PAC newsletter.. We discussed the assessment digital products on the PAC website. Members were encouraged to share their assessment work with their AMATYC colleagues by submitting their own assessment work. Members were encouraged to volunteer to serve as reviewers of digital products proposed for Beyond Crossroads Live. (If you are interested in volunteering to be involved in the Beyond Crossroads project by creating or reviewing assessment digital products, contact David Graser.) The Assessment and Placement Subcommittees met to discuss issues in their respective areas. PAC sponsored a themed session for the fourth year in a row. The theme was "Math Placement and Assessment: Doing it the Beyond Crossroads Way." To see details of the themed session, visit the web page http://placement.amatyc.org/cincinnati2006.html. Publications MAA Notes #69: A Fresh Start for Collegiate Mathematics: Rethinking the Courses below Calculu

Call for Assessment Digital Products Beyond Crossroads was released in November, 2006. The current draft of Beyond Crossroads can be viewed at http://www.amatyc.org/Crossroads/CROSSROADS/index.htm. To assist in the implementation of the ideas of Beyond Crossroads, several digital products will be created over the next several years. Prototypes and samples of assessment digital products have been created. To view samples, please visit http://placement.amatyc.org/assessmentcycle/elemalgebrajh052006.html or http://placement.amatyc.org/assessmentcycle/btcmcadp062206.html. We would like to encourage all AMATYC members to submit a sample assessment digital product using the Beyond Crossroads assessment cycle. Please submit your assessment work at http://placement.amatyc.org/digprodform.html.   Review of the AMATYC Position Statement, "Initial Placement of Two-Year College Students into the Mathematics Curriculum" The Placement and Assessment Committee (PAC) is reviewing the "Placement" position statement. You can find the Placement position statement (adopted in November 2002) here: Initial Placement of Two-year College Students into the Mathematics Curriculum. You can help in this review by providing your comments or suggestions for possible revisions to this position statement. Based on this review, we plan to provide a recommendation to the AMATYC Spring 2007 Board Meeting. Our recommendation will be one of the following: no change, minor revision, or retirement. Please take a look at this position statement. Is it still relevant today? What needs to be revised? What needs to be added? Please send your comments to Ed Gallo with a copy to Bev Parnell, Chair, Placement Subcommittee. Become a Regional Representative of PAC You may have heard that AMATYC is changing its committee structure. Beginning after the 2007 AMATYC meeting in Minneapolis next November, each committee will have an appointed representative from each of AMATYC's 8 regions. If you are interested in becoming your region's PAC representative, please contact your regional vice president and express your interest. Here's the contact information: Mid-Atlantic Region (DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA, WV), Ruth Collins West Region (Northern CA, Southern CA, HI, NV), Jan Ford Northwest Region (AK, OR, WA), Christie Gilliland Northeast Region (CT, New England, NY, Ontario), Maryann Justinger Southeast Region (AL, FL, GA, LA-MS, NC, SC, TN), Rob Kimball Southwest Region (AZ, NM, OK, TX), Mary Robinson Midwest Region (IL, IN, KY, MI, OH, WI), Jim Roznowski Central Region (AR, CO, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, UT, WY), Pete Wildman Of course, you need not be selected as regional representative to participate in the committees. As always, everyone is welcome to join the committees, receive their newsletters, and attend their meetings. Call for Innovative Placement Practices Many of us bemoan the fact that our placement practices misplace many students. The common use of placement tests works often, but not always. Colleges around the country are experimenting with innovative placement practices to replace or supplement the use of standardized placement tests. At the recent AMATYC conference in Cincinnati, Peggy Hager, shared her research on the placement practices at one community college. Her research led to several placement recommendations at her college. To view her PowerPoint slides, visit the link below: Avoiding the False Negative: Placing Students Into Mathematics Courses According to Their Abilities - Margaret J. Hager Do you have a placement process that works? Or works most of the time? If so, we want to hear about it. Please send us the details about your innovative placement process. We'll describe your placement practices in future editions of this newsletter. Conferences AMATYC - November 1-4, 2007 - Minneapolis, MN AACU's General Education and Assessment Conference, Miami, Florida, March 1-3, 2007 The League for Innovation in the Community College Innovations Conference, New Orleans, LA, March 4-7, 2007 American Association of Community Colleges Convention, Tampa, FL, April 14-17, 2007 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics: Atlanta, Georgia, March 21-24, 2007 Mathematical Association of America: MAA-AMS Joint Mathematics Meeting, New Orleans, LA, January 5-8, 2007   Websites Check out the following web sites for information on issues related to placement and assessment. Online Placement Test Review at Clermont College for students to use before taking COMPASS ACT's Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) Act's COMPASS placement test College Board's College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) Creating Developmental Math Worksheets with EdHelper.com Assessment Resource Tools for Improving Statistical Thinking (ARTIST) Join Us To join the AMATYC Placement and Assessment Committee and to receive future PAC newsletters, complete the PAC membership form. It's free! PAC Officers: PAC Committee Chair: Ed Gallo PAC Committee Vice Chair: Connie Buller Secretary: Jim Ham Classroom Assessment Subcommittee Chair: Kathleen Ebert Classroom Assessment Subcommittee Assistant Chair: Paul Hessart Course & Program Assessment Subcommittee Chair: Lila Roberts Course & Program Assessment Subcommittee Assistant Chair: Darlene Hatcher Placement Subcommittee Chair: Bev Parnell Placement Subcommittee Assistant Chair: Bill Coe

Disclaimer: Committee web sites may reflect committee work in progress, and may therefore contain opinions and statements which do not reflect the adopted policies and positions of AMATYC.