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Intended to contextualize and elaborate on the Two-Year College English Association's 2016 Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College, this article examines the history, current status, and possible futures of graduate preparation for two-year-college English professionals. It traces the five-decade history of efforts among two-year-college English faculty to articulate the distinct demands and opportunities of their profession and to hold university-based graduate programs accountable for providing meaningful preparation for future two-year- college teacher-scholars. Based on our survey of this history and the current landscape of graduate education in English studies, we argue that transforming graduate programs to meet the needs of the teaching majority will require embracing the four principles articulated in TYCA's 2016 Guidelines: develop curricula relevant to two-year-college teaching; collaborate with two-year-college colleagues; prepare future two-year-college faculty to be engaged professionals; and make two-year colleges visible to all graduate students.

The Pew Hispanic Research Center reports that between 1996 and 2012, enrollment in US higher education among Latinxs between the ages of 18 and 24 increased by 240 percent. In 2012 college enrollment among Latinx high school graduates aged 18 to 24 surpassed that of Whites for the first time in history, and NCES calculations show that more than half of those Latinx students enroll in two-year schools. Hence, in 2015 Latinxs found themselves the explicit targets of community college recruitment efforts aimed to capitalize on the increased presence of students from Latinx backgrounds. Once they pass through the doors, however, Latinx students too often find institutions ill-prepared to support their retention and success. Policies intended to guarantee equity might be effective in an environment where everyone is, in effect, the same, or when people are different in institutionally sanctioned ways, as when a student is diagnosed with a disability. However, in the case of multilingual students, such policies can mean they are consigned to a kind of institutional purgatory. They are neither in nor out; they gain access to college but remain blocked from advancement by required courses or chosen programs of study.

ost writing assessment at the college level is geared toward “homegrown” or “traditional” students: the ones who start their first year of college education at the same institution from which they later graduate. Assessment at Alexander’s institution was mostly effective for those same students but was less successful for some transfer students, as shown in assessment data. Instead of trying to force those students to learn the “norm” standards, the author, as WPA, began conversations with faculty at the community colleges where these students begin their college careers to determine how to honor the many different writing knowledges that these students bring to the classroom. Looked at through a lens of queer theory, this is the path to “queering” writing assessment.

Community colleges have been engaged for the last sixty years in providing open access to public higher education to anyone with a high school diploma. Recently, disappointing success rates for developmental students have driven some colleges to reduce or restrict access to college based on standardized test scores. The operative phrase in most of these discussions is “ability to benefit.” This essay examines the complex variety of issues related to ability to benefit. Using a robust archive of data from our institution to explore this question, we argue that standardized placement scores tell only one kind of story about our most underprepared students. Course pass rates and percentages of students who reach critical milestones provide only one rather limited way to assess this complex issue. Our data tell us other stories that may be more important.

The author examines surveys indicating that, in general, community college students are significantly less inclined and less able than students at four-year colleges to earn a bachelor’s degree. He argues that it is important for teachers of English to understand the numerous conditions that limit the first group’s chances for such “success.”

English faculty in community colleges feel pressured to make their composition courses acceptable for transfer to four-year schools. In particular, many of them feel obligated to emphasize academic research and argument at the expense of literature. But community college students will benefit from first-year courses that address a wide range of discourse by integrating literary study with writing instruction.

Describes the experiences of the author as she tries to transfigure her students enrolled in freshman writing and college preparatory writing classes at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon (located in the “dry side” of the state). Addresses students' racism, homophobia, and distrust of their own skills in writing.

Discusses negative stereotyping of the public or others in the profession of two-year college educators. Defines the open-admissions student and the emphasis on the “introductory” elements as a mission of transformation. Encourages working together towards a common goal of achievement in the profession of English Studies by crossing the border between higher education and two-year college faculty.

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When I sat down to consider what I remember about the past of the National Council of Teachers of English, I came up with some admirable positions it advocated during the 1960s and 70s, and some admirable actions it took during that same period. I am, of course, using my own definition of admirable. Sometimes, it seemed to me, NCTE was influenced by and echoed the moods of the more general society, and sometimes it tried to influence those -noods. When newspapers, magazines, and television reported that literacy was at a low ebb, that the schools were doing a lousy job and something better be done about it quick, NCTE responded with resolutions opposing the worst of the so-called solutions and set up committees to demonstrate that the so-called crisis was greatly exaggerated. I remembered that NCTE has spoken out for the rights of racial minorities and made sure that they and their views were included in its own programs and committees. It has spoken out for the rights of women and-I can't say included them because we have always been a majority of NCTE's membership-but it has at least shown that it meant what it said by adopting a policy on sexism in language and by putting some muscle behind its support of ERA while that proposed amendment was still alive. It has spoken out for the rights of lesbians and gay men. It has spoken out against censoring books and against the abuses of testing. And I remembered that NCTE had acted admirably by forming three new sub-groups during those years. Through its related organization, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, NCTE formally recognized the importance of junior colleges in the educational system. Regional community college conferences were set up across the country and given financial assistance to help them along. As a result of that action large numbers of English teachers who had been existing in a kind of professional nobody's land became more professional. They met to talk about mutual problems, and more of them subscribed to and read professional journals. Eighteen years later two of those conferences are strong and vigorous, earning their own way. One, at least, is ailing and not

THIS STUDY OF FORMER COMPOSITION AND LITERATURE students who have gone out into the \(world examines the relationship of English courses to the contemporary white-collar job scene. Whereas in The English Major and the World of Work (CE, November 1979) Lois Josephs Fowler tried to illustrate what English majors need . . . to relate their literary training to the world of \work, this study looks at persons already writing on the job. It points out that in today's competitive market most employers place communication skills at the very top of their list of desirable employee traits. Primary among those skills is the ability to produce clear, concise, and grammatically correct reports, directions, memos, and letters. ITo conduct the study I returned from rural North Carolina, where I now teach, to urban Atlanta, where I taught for a number of years (at the college and junior college levels) and which is the sort of busy, modern city that attracts graduates. I

Now if there is anyone in this piece of writing who desires something dearly, it is surely the student writer, who is reaching for poetry and, for all his clumsiness, nearly succeeding. In the years since I first read this paper, the term has become for me and my friends synonymous with a certain kind of student error: the strained metaphor, odd juxtaposition, or honest misconception which inadvertently reveals a fresh perspective on the matter at hand. I will try to demonstrate that the true tasty fruit possesses its own inner logic, that it is a sure sign of a capacity for creative and structured thought, and that this potential is worth cultivating. Mina Shaughnessy begins her ground-breaking book, Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) by observing that the freshmen in her basic writing class made mistakes in grammar and syntax because no one [had seen] the intelligence of their mistakes or thought to harness that intelligence in the service of learning (p. 5). What I propose is that Shaughnessy's perception applies equally to the errors in tone and diction made by students when writing about literature. In general, tasty fruits are borne in greatest profusion by the papers of students who are bright but not adept at standard English or the standard methods of literary criticism. It was an open-enrollment student who produced the following observation on religion in America:

THE WRITING WORKSHOP of the CUNY community college where I worked is housed in a windowless, reconverted science lab walled with concrete blocks. It has been half dark since the Administration removed lights during the budget crunch. Every day we saw confused students, though there have been fewer since the death of Open Admissions. In the back of the room, horizontally filed, were the worksheets. Since originally appearing in this form, they have been collected into a hot-selling grammar, especially designed for community college students. book represents the principles and practices upon which the workshop was originally founded. Paradoxically, it also lays out the strangulating theory of knowledge upon which remedial writing instruction is often based, a theory which denies students the things they really need to know. hip grammars are seemingly unlike the traditional ones. old grammar books abound with subliminal ideological content presented as mere exercise. Sixth Edition of the Prentice-Hall standard, Handbook for Writers, asks students to locate the clause to be diagrammed above the base line in the sentences: This is a mixed economy toward which both communism and capitalism are moving, and The continent of Africa is now divided into nations, but tribal divisions are more faithfully observed. hip grammars have little of this upfront politicking. Instead, they pretend to survey the nitty gritty details of daily urban life. sentences students get to play with deal a lot with partying, interpersonal relationships, and the neighborhood. Wider topics and wider transferences from the particulars of daily life to the general characteristics of the system we live in are discouraged. And the discouragement masquerades as aid and help to the struggling remedial students. Chapter One of Grass Roots by Sandberg and Fawcett promises help in Getting Started. authors then write that step one in getting started is limiting:

WOMEN'S STUDIES IS no longer a fad. It is a reality of the academic world affecting all schools, all curricula, all students. Those schools which have women's studies programs are asking, Where do we go from here? Those schools which have no programs or courses are asking, Why not? At some level, articulated or not, faculty, students, and administrators at every school are involved in a reevaluation of curriculum as it represents and affects all of them. With the publication of Female Studies I-VII (Know, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA and Feminist Press at Old Westbury, NY) we can trace the history and expansion of Women's Studies. We can see that, at more and more schools, the interest has steadily increased. At Tompkins Cortland Community College we have recognized and begun to act on the very vital role such programming can play in meeting the special needs of students at the community college. The community college student population is diverse. Some enter directly from high school, and some have been out of school for over twenty years. We have more and more students who are attending school parttime. Many have other obligations-jobs, families, community commitments. We have excellent students and students with serious remedial problems. And, of course, we have students who know exactly what they want to study as well as those who need much vocational and personal counseling. The community college, I believe, is one of the few institutions flexible enough to meet these varied needs. And women's programming is a significant aid to this flexibility and responsiveness to the needs of the community population. When I talk about Women's Studies courses, I mean courses which are primarily concerned with awakening students to the situation of women in society and which aim at stimulating reevaluation of traditional educational and social practices. Once students become aware of the secondary status of women, it is my hope that they are no longer content to accept it but get involved in attempts to initiate change. Basic to Women's Studies is a recognition that method is as important as content. This recognition implies changing the attitudes inherent in a hierarchical teacher/student relationship. It is important to encourage a collective searching for and sharing of information rather than vying for grades or personal ap-

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A REPORT in the New York Times of Thursday, November 7, 1974 (p. 43) that college textbooks are being simplified to meet the needs of poor readers; and the answers to some of the questions on the ADE Survey of Freshman English (ADE Bulletin, No. 43, November 1974, pp. 13-19) highlight the need for a careful investigation into the mysteries of college text selection. For those who teach in composition programs the quality of a textbook is an especially burning issue: one would think that whoever stresses the value of lucidity, of clear voice, of awareness of language and audience, would also exercise care in the choice of composition texts. But the news in that quarter is bleak, at least to my mind. The ADE Survey (sponsored in part by the Carnegie Commission) presents some shocking news about what is happening with freshman English texts, especially (but not exclusively) in community colleges. I should like here to look first at some specific composition textbooks with wide college audiences. I shall then try to move toward a general definition of effective classroom materials merely by suggesting questions we are forgetting to ask ourselves, but must ask if the textbook is not to vanish like the buffalo (it may already be too late-both the Survey and a letter to the Times of Monday, November 18, 1974 [p. 32] by teachers in CCNY's English department report that many college English instructors are abandoning textbooks altogether). The ADE Survey collected replies to a three-page questionnaire from 436 institutions in 49 states. Responding to a question on text choices for freshman composition, instructors most often indicated the Hodges and Whitten Harbrace College Handbook or the McCrimmon Writing with a Purpose as the basic book in the course. More than 100 institutions use the former; about 65, the latter. Among two-year units picking Harbrace were 21.6% of community colleges, 23.1% of public junior colleges, and 25% of private junior colleges. Selecting the McCrimmon text were 15.9% of community colleges and 30.8% of public junior colleges (percentages for four-year institutions are high for the two texts as well). Although I do not have many doubts as tothe effectiveness of these books for competent writers (I've used Harbrace with advanced students), both texts are ill-suited for open a..missions men and women. Aside from the high level of

THERE'S NO WAY Forest Park Community College in St. Louis can see itself as typical. Junior colleges are not homogeneous; they vary as widely as the fouryear colleges on which many of the early ones were modeled. Some junior colleges offer only the first two years of a traditional liberal arts program; some give only vocational courses; some are finishing schools for young ladies, only slightly modernized. Some provide dormitories; some are so doggedly nonresidential that they refuse to provide lists of available accommodations in the area. Some operate in the daytime from eight to four; some are open only from four to midnight; some begin at seven and go straight through till ten or later; there's a rumor that one or two operate straight around the clock. A few of them are privately supported, either by churches or private endowments; a few get all their money from local taxes; a few get it all from the state; most depend on revenue from a combination of sources. Some charge more than a thousand dollars a term in tuition, and some are absolutely free, at least to local residents. A very few date from the nineteenth century; quite a few are so new the students arrive well before the bricklayers. A fashionable comment, several years ago, was that a new junior college opened its doors every week, and though that comment sounds quaint today, it's probably safe to say that the majority are less than twenty years old. Some enforce careful entrance requirements, some provide placements tests and tracking systems, some are completely open admission: anybody over eighteen, or anybody with a high school diploma or its equivalent, can take any course for which registration is open. Some are almost all white, some are almost all black, and some are almost integrated. It isn't even safe to say that all of them are two-year schools; an associate degree, awarded

WHEN I FIRST HEARD Bette Midler sing, the most prestigious place she had ever appeared was the Continental Baths on W. 74th Street. Friends only barely tolerated my rave reviews and insistent suggestions that she would become a major star. So when, during the same week last December, the Divine Miss M appeared both in sold-out performances at the Palace and on the cover of Newsweek, I merely smiled. Those community college leaders who for many years have crusaded for reform in graduate education based on the realities of life in two-year colleges must feel a similar sense of satisfaction when they read the recently published report of the Panel on Alternate Approaches to Graduate Education, Scholarship for Society.' Although the criticisms of graduate education have often been uneven, oversimplified, perhaps more hostile than constructive, teachers in community colleges have had opportunity to know sooner than most the inadequacies of their graduate training and can argue from an indisputable position of authority-their collective personal experience. It must be gratifying now to hear their arguments echoed in the words of a major document written by a blue-ribbon commission of scholars, graduate deans, and other university administrators under the auspices of the Council of Graduate Schools and the Graduate Record Examinations Board.2

little about. We learn to teach composition by experience, it is true, but it is unpredictable and to a large extent accidental if we ever become proficient in our trade. Perhaps such a situation was acceptable before World War II, before the colleges expanded and their populations changed from a relatively small number of preparatory students to an ever-increasing number of most high school graduates. Such, certainly, is the case in the City University of New York, which began implementing open enrollment in the 1970 academic year. And such, probably, is the case in the many state and community college systems throughout the country. As the number and kind of students have changed, so have the problems of freshan composition. Let it be clear that we do not wish to

prompt David Rockefeller to close his bank account. He is necessarily a commuter, which means he still has to find his way among the tangle of emotional ties that bind him to his parents, brothers, and sisters (not to mention his employer). The chances are he has had some brush with the law, either on the record or off. Most probably rooted to an urban area, he has experienced metropolitan blight and the threatening clouds of pollution. He is generally older than his senior college counterparts and consequently somewhat more worldly, if even in only a local sense. In many cases, Uncle Sam has already pointed a finger at him and clapped him in a world of khaki and standard operating procedures. To purveyors of academia, he is a maverick, having already sewn his oats in high school where the myth of his incorrigibility has long since taken on classic proportions. He is, in the au courant terminology, disadvantaged. As a result of the community college student's gradual and tacit rejection, this educational bad apple comes out of high school almost accepting the stigma of failure that has been constantly attached to him throughout his learning career. The irony is that he has virtually no trouble whatever finding his way among the complicated forces in the real world. He gets a job. He buys a car on time. He applies for a loan. He successfully (at least temporarily) cons his parents into a little more rent-free time at home. This so-called dropout, in fact, knows the ropes. He may be an educational outcast, but ask any knowledgeable member of his community and he will tell you he most certainly is not a social outcast, providing it is one of his peers who is making the judgment. Yet when our institutional ne'er-do-