The Intersection of AB705 on Race and Individuals With Developmental Disabilities: Striving for Student Equity Through Eliminating Developmental Education

Abstract

As the author sat in a meeting exploring what we plan on doing as a department to handle the changes AB705 was going to bring to our course offerings, one of his peers stated, “We are finally going to give African-American students a chance that they didn’t have.” Being the only African-American faculty member who participates in the English department professional development activities, the author asked a question, “What were we doing before?” The meeting became awkwardly silent. Like most community colleges around African-American men are more likely to attend community colleges. On October 13, 2017, the Governor of California passed AB705 that was set to be implemented on January 1, 2018, but all California community colleges must be compliant by Fall 2019. The intent of AB705 was to statistically improve community college completion and/or transfer rates to a four-year institution through eliminating developmental English (and Math) courses since the testing placement into Math and English was arbitrary. Organizations and proponents of the bill emphasize AB705 creates a level of equity amongst minority students and white students that some would even call its implementation eliminates the college achievement gap. The passage, and now inevitable implementation, revealed three things: 1. There was an assumption that reading and writing was of one discipline; 2. There was a profession of developmental education built on the backs of a majority of black and brown students—educational inequity amongst white and black students; and 3. The very existence of developmental education is rooted in implied bias. California Community College Faculty is still 70% White, while the students who are in these developmental classes are over 70% Black and Latino male. This paper is an evaluation of California’s AB705 Law that will be utilized as an open-discussion of the following: (a) the educational conditions that led to the implementation of AB705; (b) the description of AB705; (c) how colleges have interpreted and implemented AB705; (d) consider the intersection of race and students with disabilities; and (e) the recommendations for implementing AB705. Thus, the overall premise for the paper would be for community colleges need to re-create college-transfer-level English with a growth mindset.