The California Community College Chancellor’s Office has declared Student Support Programs (SSP) that address student success and closing the achievement gap as part of the base funding for California community colleges in order to make “permanent, institutionalized change” (see the memo from Deputy Chancellor Erik Skinner at http://www.cca4me.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=239&TID=2&FN=pdf). SSP includes advising, assessment, and early interventions, as outlined on the SSP website at http://extranet.cccco.edu/Divisions/StudentServices/Matriculation.aspx.

Early intervention is focused on the Early Assessment Program, a high school expository reading and writing course. This course culminates in a timed writing test, and the community college assessments supported by SSP are primarily timed writing placement tests that track students into non-credit bearing courses labeled “remedial” or “basic skills.” The goal of SSP is to increase access and support for underserved student populations, but the timed testing and tracking component of SSP into non-credit bearing remedial courses is not aligned with national best practices for assessment and placement as outlined in the NCTE position statement against tracking at https://www2.ncte.org/statement/trackedforfailure/ and the NCTE position statement on assessment at https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/writingassessment.