2. Assessment & Course Placement
Important Update:
The Assessment Office will be closed beginning on Monday, March 16 in order to prepare to provide services via phone and/or video-conferencing in response to COVID-19. Please return to our website closer to March 30 when it is expected that college services and online instruction will resume.
Important Information regarding Assembly Bill (AB) 705 and Guided Self-Placement:
Under the Assembly Bill (AB) 705, assessment testing will no longer be required for students to be placed into English, ESL, and Math courses. All students are eligible to enroll in transfer-level English and Math with varying levels of support courses recommended based on guided self-placement, which includes factors such as high school GPA, educational goal, and other information. There is also a new ESL guided self-placement process for an ESL course placement recommendation. The process involves completing a guided self-placement survey and submitting a writing sample, which will be reviewed by English/ESL faculty for course recommendation.
Learn more about AB 705 and course placement
Students are encouraged to logon to their MyCollege.laccd.edu Student Portal and look for their course placement (English, Math, or ESL) in the Assessment placement section. New and returning students will provide their MMAP (multiple measures assessment placement) high school performance data when they complete their application to LACC through the CCCApply application and should then refer to their student portal later to see their course placement for English and Math. For continuing students, under the under their To-Do Checklist, students should complete the LACCD English and Math Guided Self-Placement. Once completed, students can then check for their course placement in English and Math in their student portal.
Learn more about Assembly Bill 705 and the reasons behind the new placement process
Drop in Hours for ESL Guided Self-placement Process (process will be administered online (not in person!)-Students can begin to request this service the week of March 30th).
Contact Us:
(323) 953-4000 ext. 2264 (no phones will be answered at this time until further notice, please refer to the website or send email below for questions.
assessment@lacitycollege.edu
Office Hours:
Spring 2020 semester Assessment Office Hours: No in person services will be provided until further notice. For questions related to ESL guided self placement email to assessment@lacitycollege.edu or go to the link for AB 705 course placement recommendations for English and Math course placement:
http://www.lacitycollege.edu/Academics/Counseling/Online-Advising
Mission Statement
The mission of Assessment is to assist students, whether non-exempt or exempt, or new, returning, or continuing, for course placement into English, Math, or ESL courses.
Know Your Rights: The AB 705 Initiative and What it Means for Students
Traditionally what happens for students is the first time they set foot on the college campus in the community college system, they are asked to complete an assessment test. And what we determined as a result of the extensive research is that those assessment tests have historically been under placing students to the detriment of many students' opportunity to access transfer level course work. So, students may have completed Algebra I and Algebra II in high school, and yet be forced to complete arithmetic in community college. It takes only a fraction of a second for students to see what this means. The moment you say you don't have to take this placement test or you don't have to take these remedial classes that don't count towards your degree, they say, "Sign me up!"
When I was 17, I took the placement tests straight out of high school. That's the thing they told me I needed to do so they didn't use any transcripts of anything like that. That's supposed to be one of the other options you can do. They just asked me to do the placement tests and obviously I didn't do very well because they put me in a remedial class one level below. When I took it, I dropped the class because I didn't like it. When we're looking at the numbers of students that were taking remedial and never finishing a single level transfer course, we realized that there was a big problem. When we see that the average student spends 5.2 years in community college, it's a problem for the student. It costs them a lot of resources. They still have to pay for their living expenses. Some of them have to raise families; so it's very expensive for them.
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So what AB705 invites students to do is access that transfer level course work in both Mathematics and English. The college makes a pledge to help students complete that transfer level sequence within the first year. And that gets students well on their way towards their transfer and career goals much sooner.
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Our fondest hope for the community colleges with AB705 is that this is going to be a structural change, not just a change in practices, but a structural change that's going to reduce the numbers of barriers that students experience a lot of times during their onboarding process. We trust that the students are capable of passing transfer level classes. This will help students much more quickly get into the careers that they desire. This is really trying to increase students' success and that's good for all of us.
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