City College’s Math and English assessments could be a thing of the past under a state law signed last year as college officials scramble to comply with changes to the law’s language.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office says the goal of these changes, under Assembly Bill 705, is to “ensure that students are not placed into remedial courses that may delay or deter their educational progress unless evidence suggests they are highly unlikely to succeed in the college-level course.”

For students who’ve passed their respective Math and English classes in high school, they will now be eligible to skip remedial classes at City College and instead move right to college-level courses.

Anita Cruse, director of assessment for the English division, said that neither the college nor the state expects full implementation of these changes until fall of 2019.

A main focus of the bill is placed on using students’ high school performance as a more accurate predictor of success than a standardized placement test, such as the ones that have been utilized for many years at City College.

The bill also stipulates however, that should a student’s high school performance data be unavailable, that student can either “self-report” their transcript information or place themselves in their preferred class.

Students who hold only a GED, international students, and students who have been out of highschool for more than 10 years are the only exclusions outlined in the bill.

“The significant changes required involve many people and a tremendous amount of work by faculty, management and staff,” Cruse said. “We are all committed to assuring that we will continue to support the complex cognitive and non-cognitive needs of our students and assess our decisions through a lens of access and equity.”

She also said new modifications to AB 705 are just surfacing and will require reexamination of the work that has been done thus far.

Under AB 705, it’s up to each college for how they will comply with new regulations, however they will also be overseen by what the bill refers to as an “AB 705 implementation team.”

“The Math department has been working the past few months very diligently to come up with a plan for assessment of new students,” said Jamie Campbell, chair of City College’s mathematics department.

He said that includes formulating a new math flowchart, as well as new classes, to ensure the department is in compliance with AB705.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “we may have to change this approach, as we have gotten word that new guidelines are coming from the Chancellor’s Office giving an interpretation of AB 705 that might make our new processes unacceptable.”

AB 705 will also significantly impact the English as a second language (ESL) students at City College. The bill outlines a policy that should students be required to take additional classes to meet new requirements, there will be options for embedded low or non-credit classes.

The idea would lessen the impact on students’ financial aid and tuition that normally accompanies enrolling in more classes. These “embedded” classes would, in a sense, piggyback on classes students are already enrolled in to supplement prerequisite skills.

Though it’s still unclear how the new changes to AB 705 will affect the work City College has done so far, the coming weeks will be crucial for faculty in determining how students will schedule their education in the next year.

“This has involved a monumental amount of work, and we are indebted to many on the campus for helping us to make this happen,” Campbell said.