In 2006, Almanzar’s supervisor informed her that, unless she received her degree soon, her hours would be cut. She returned to Hostos to take ACT workshops and finally passed the ACT in 2007, but then failed the CPE. In 2008 she completed her final two classes, and in 2009 transferred to Lehman to pursue her B.A. But in the meantime, the nursing home hired a CUNY graduate, and Almanzar’s hours were reduced from 30 to 25 hours per week. Almanzar found another job, but, due to budget cuts, lost that position and returned to Amsterdam to work as a nurse’s aide, a position that she says pays $600 per month less than her old job.
Last fall, barred from receiving financial aid from Lehman because of her CPE results—students who fail the test multiple times are shifted to non-matriculated status—Almanzar dedicated herself to preparing to take the test once again. Most mornings, she pulled out a copy of the advance reading, an excerpt from literary critic Stanley Fish’s 2008 book, Save the World on Your Own Time, as soon as she boarded the Bx22 bus, highlighting sentences, making notes in the margins, and looking up words in her pocket American Heritage dictionary. On October 21, Almanzar entered a crowded testing room at Lehman, as did thousands of students across CUNY campuses, and took the CPE for the seventh time.
Though Almanzar didn’t know it then, the CPE’s fate was already all but sealed. In an October 7 memo to the CUNY community, provost Alexandra Logue promised to “put a committee together to identify a different test to assess student learning at CUNY,” promising that it would look for a test that “allows measurement of the value added by a CUNY education”—in other words, a test that would measure what and how much students learn while at CUNY.
Faculty members who served on the CUNY Proficiency Examination Task Force say the school system is likely to adopt the College Learning Assessment, a test created by the Council for Aid to Education, a think tank chaired by CUNY’s board chair, Benno Schmidt. The CLA is designed to test a small sample of students—perhaps 200 first-year students and 200 seniors—and use the results to draw conclusions about student learning at the college as a whole.
The CPE and the CLA “were designed for very different purposes,” says Peter Ewell, vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems and an expert on college testing. Whereas the CPE was instituted as a way of “guaranteeing a student has gotten above a minimum level,” he says, the CLA, because it takes such a small sample, can’t serve this function. It’s used instead as a way to measure the quality of a university’s programs and how they shape students’ learning.
Ewell notes that CUNY’s decision to rescind the CPE—popular as it may be with faculty and students—carries some risk. “The price that is paid for not having something like this is that you don’t have as much public credibility that the guaranteed amount of learning is taking place,” he says. Still, he says the decision to eliminate the test doesn’t surprise him: “It’s rare that these things really last a long time.”
With the CPE no longer a hurdle, Almanzar is set to finally receive her associate’s degree from Hostos in June. If she takes courses during the summer and winter terms, as she plans to, she’ll be able to graduate from Lehman with a B.S. in recreation education in just a year and a half. By the time a new test is instituted, Almanzar will be finished with CUNY.
Though she feels that the CPE should never have been a graduation requirement, she acknowledges that her years of trying to pass the exam helped her learn how to read and analyze articles. Without a hint of resentment, she says: “I think I can make it. I can do it finally.”
I am wondering why there is such a fuss about COLLEGE students being required that they CAN READ AND WRITE?!? I am a long way from a conservative, but this explains a LOT about why companies outsource jobs.
This is why, when I get a dozen resumes for college-student internships, about nine get thrown away for blatant evidence of illiteracy.
For somebody is not difficult to learn English because they came to USA when they were very young or they have the opportunity to have someone to help you in many way of life. For me was difficult but not impossible. I came to this country alone without family and many difficulty to find a good job. But I never think that I can not make true my dreams. I think if you want to make the difference you can made this happen if you stop thinking negative and encourage yourself to do the best in your life.
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