<p>At the college where I work, a portion of kids are in developmental English, but almost *everyone *is in developmental math. As others have said, the school goes by its own placement test, not students’ past curriculum, grades, etc. I’ve met students who passed HS calculus, but when given a test for algebra, sans calculator, they fail. Often because it’s stuff they haven’t done in years. Sometimes it’s because they have always used calculators and can’t do basic arithmetic.</p>
<p>Personally I don’t think that students majoring in humanities or other non-numbers based majors need Alg. 2 or trig. for their major or in real life (I certainly haven’t used them in the past 35 years.) However, they’re required, and they keep a lot of adjuncts, many of them abysmal teachers, employed.</p>
<p>And I say that as someone who *can *do math, despite being a humanities person (and have the recent GRE score to prove it. :)) So, it’s not sour grapes.</p>