Math Sorting: Unintended Consequences of Developmental Education Reforms in Community Colleges

Abstract Beginning in 2019, California community colleges were required to use multiple measures to determine students’ placement into initial math courses. Community colleges also created structured BSTEM and liberal arts (SLAM) math pathways beginning in 2017. This contemporaneous implementation could reproduce racialized stratification in math course-taking. This study analyzes changes in math course-taking between Fall 2017 and Summer 2021 using multinomial logistic regression. We find that after the reforms, fewer students across racial/ethnic groups took developmental math and more students attempted SLAM and BSTEM math in the first year of enrollment. Students of color were more likely to take SLAM math and slightly less likely to take BSTEM math, even among academically prepared students. We find some evidence of racial tracking in the steeper increase in SLAM course-taking among Latina/o/x students compared to other racial/ethnic groups. We discuss implications for future policy and practice given these results.