THE ISSUE OF REMEDIATION                                                        

A Critical Review  EDG-671- mid term

The issue of college readiness (or preparedness) has been a hot topic in education journals currently.  Headlines state, “Colleges Misassign Many to Remedial Classes, Studies Find” (Lewin, 2012) and bloggers ask, “Why Should I Learn to Love the Co-Requisite Model for Remedial Education?” (Fulton, 2012) From remedial education to standardized testing, task forces and committees deliberate and offer solutions to “fix” the problem.  Some states have addressed the remediation dilemma and offer solutions.  According to an article published in the US News and World Report, Ohio will join two other states and stop funding remedial education at its university (4-year) level by 2014 (Jacobs, 2012).  The article states that instead, Ohio will push remedial students to its community colleges.  State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor Nancy Zimpher reports to The Post Standard that the SUNY Remediation Task Force is considering a new exam to assess readiness at the high school sophomore level (Riede, 2012).  Higher and higher numbers of first-time freshmen entering college are testing into non-credit levels of math, writing and reading.  This has a direct impact on strategic enrollment and completion goals, on students as they use their financial aid up, and on institutional budgets.

The SUNY Remediation Task Force was created to find ways to “stem the flow of students who arrive at community colleges unable to do basic work” states Zimpher (Riede, 2012).  The idea is to create a college-readiness test that will assess students in their sophomore year of high school to identifying students who need remedial work.  According to Zimpher, students across the state seeking a two-year degree arrive on campus needing to take at least one remedial course.  This translates into SUNY spending $70 million dollars and students using 20% of their financial aid, which turns into roughly $40 million dollars in student loans.  The ideal is for students to enter college at a level that allows them to take credit bearing, program related courses.  I commend the task force in their efforts toward students meeting this goal.  If students are identified earlier as needing remediation, the skills can be honed in their junior and senior year of high school.  In theory, more students would enter college able to take the classes that count toward their degree.  According to Reide (2012), SUNY officials presented their testimony to the Senate Finance Committee who directed SUNY and City University of New York (CUNY) to study the issue of remediation and provide a report by November 2012.  Senator John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, met with Zimpher and State Education Commissioner John King in June to discuss the issue.  King is in support of remediation while in high school (Riede, 2012). 

According to a report from Complete College America (CCA) on remediation, only 4 in 10 community college students complete their remedial courses, less than 1out of the 10 graduate in three years, and only 1/3 complete a bachelor’s degree in six (Complete College America, 2012).  Given this statistic, students working on their remediation while still in high school can only improve their college success rate thereby reducing their own financial debt, as well as the financial investment of their respective colleges.  This further supports a plan like SUNY’s.

Ohio offers a stricter solution to the remediation dilemma by its plan to discontinue the funding for remedial coursework at the 4-year level.  SUNY has not taken that step – yet.  According to Jacobs (2012), “Those who start at community college (in Ohio) may never make it to the university.”  The hardest hit population in this scenario would be low-income minority students and graduates of low-performing high schools.  Jacobs (2012) quotes Hunter R. Boylan of Appalachian State University who is concerned that by “pushing” remedial students to community college it could cause a 21^st century “caste system where upper income students go to universities and lower income students go to community colleges” (Boylan, 2012).  Boylan (2012) reassures that universities are not necessarily “better” than community colleges at teaching basic skills, but they do have more funding.  This funding can be applied to academic support and other services that underprepared students need in order to be successful.  Finally, Boylen (2012) asserts, the weaker students may benefit from being surrounded by stronger peers. 

Many colleges have already moved toward students beginning at the community college level for remediation.  Other colleges are restricting admission to incoming freshmen with at least seventh-grade proficiency in reading, writing and math (Jacobs, 2012). 

So, what’s the “buzz” about a “Co-Requisite Model” for remedial education?  In a blog posted by Mary Fulton on gettingpastgo.org, one model to solve the credit vs. non-credit dilemma is by requiring developmental education as a co-requisite of credit bearing classes (Fulton, 2012).  In this model, students would satisfy their remedial needs by having required academic support services alongside, and sometimes within, their credit-bearing math or English.  In other words, no “pre-requisite” brick wall.  One example of how that would work is by having in-class tutoring.  According to Fulton (2012) this approach has worked at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in their accelerated learning program.

Do students false-test into remedial classes?  One article written in The New York Times by Tamar Lewin finds that students are miss-assigned to remedial classes when they should be in credit-bearing coursework (Lewin, 2012).  He questions placement testing at the community college level.  Lewin (2012) reports that a study from Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College finds “tens of thousands of entering students” are placed in remedial classes due to their scores on placement testing.  The study argues that the results would be more favorable if college’s relied on GPA instead (Lewin, 2012).  According to Lewin (2012), leading placement tests – College board’s Accuplacer and ACT’s Compass – have lead to mistakes in both directions; students testing inappropriately into remedial classes and students testing inappropriately into credit bearing classes.  Although Lewin (2012) does not support stopping testing altogether, he does urge colleges to use high school GPA’s as “good or better than” tests as college readiness indicators.  What are colleges doing about this?  Some colleges send poor math testers to a website to “brush up on” their skills and then allow them to take the test again.  In other colleges, English faculty are re-examining their remedial programs (Lewin, 2012). 

In conclusion it seems unethical and bad business practice to admit students who are not likely to succeed. Statistics show that students who enter college at a remedial level are less likely to graduate in a timely sequence – if at all.  Statistics show that these students incur thousands of dollars in student loan debt for courses that do not “count” toward their degree (IF they earn one).  Statistics show that colleges lose more than they gain by accepting these students fiscally and in completion and retention goals. 

Strategic Enrollment, holistically, includes student recruitment, student engagement, student retention, student persistence, and student completion.  Since the goal is for a student to enter college-ready, persist in their course work, and complete his/her degree in a timely fashion then it would be in the best interest of the student, and ultimately the college, to partner with the K-12’s and other funding sources to offer opportunities (at no cost to the student) for students to complete their remediation prior to their first semester.  I don’t agree with the 4-years discontinuing funding for remedial colleges as Ohio and others are doing.  I believe that such actions will saturate the community colleges with underprepared students – they already have a good percentage of them.  I agree with Boylan that weaker students benefit from the stronger students as peer mentors and that the stronger students will migrate to the 4-years. With fewer opportunities for academically stimulating and challenging relationships (stronger/weaker), there would be a negative correlation for academic performance levels (weaker/weaker). 

One example locally of a program that has been battling the remediation dilemma is the Summer Success Academy at Onondaga Community College, sponsored by Say Yes to Education.  The SUNY Chancellor refers to this program, now in its second year, as one program that has had some success (Riede, 2012).  A cohort of students take remedial courses over the summer accompanied by intensive tutoring and workshops on the topics of college preparedness, financial literacy, and personal growth and counseling.  This approach is similar to the co-requisite model of CCBC.  The intent is that students will be credit-ready in the fall with no financial burden attached to their summer efforts.  I believe programs like these that could turn the remedial dilemma around toward a more positive outcome.

REFERENCES

Boylan, P. H. (2012, January 13). Director of the National Center for Developmental Education. (J. Jacobs, Interviewer)

Complete College America. (2012). Remediation: Higher Education's Bridge to Nowhere. Washington: Complete College America.

Fulton, M. (2012, July 2). Why I Should Learn to Love the Co-Requisite Model for Remedial Education. Retrieved from Getting Past Go: http://gettingpastgo.org

Jacobs, J. (2012, January 13). States Push Remedial Educaation to Community Colleges. Retrieved from US News : http://www.usnews.com/education

Lewin, T. (2012, February 28). Colleges Misassign Man to Remedial Classes, Studies Find. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com

Riede, P. (2012, June 25). The Post Standard. Retrieved from syracuse.com: http://blog.syracuse.com