States are testing unproven ways to eliminate remedial ed — on their students
Florida study argues for restoring placement tests but lowering pass scores
Community colleges and nonselective universities that enroll everyone are at a crossroads. Helping less-prepared students make the jump to college-level work is a big part of their mission. In recent history, roughly half of first-year college students have been sent to remedial classes in math, English or both, according a 2016 Center for American Progress report. At the same time, remedial classes have been a giant bottleneck for students in getting their college degrees. For some, remedial requirements are an expensive waste of time that they don’t need. For others, they become a trap: Unable to progress to college-credit courses, many get discouraged and drop out, often with debt.
Policymakers have been trying to fix the system. Florida made remedial classes optional in 2014, letting students decide for themselves whether to take them. California took the bold step of ending required remedial classes in its community college system in 2018, allowing most students who had passed their high school classes to start with college-credit classes. North Carolina, Virginia and Minnesota have moved forward with big changes too. (A November 2019 report from the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR) surveys many of the changes in remedial classes around the nation.)
Meanwhile, researchers are scrambling to keep up with the fast pace of policy change. “A lot of these ideas were thrown out there by the research world, and we need to go in and evaluate what has happened,” said Federick Ngo, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who is a national expert in community college students and remedial education. “It’s a ‘who knows what’s going to happen’ kind of time.”
There are things we do know. In the places that are sending more students directly to college courses, bypassing remedial education, pass rates have fallen a bit, by a few percentage points, but not a lot. Roughly speaking, 60 percent of California college students are still CONTINUE READING: Should all remedial classes in college be eliminated?
