community college

The Other Side of Remediation: Readiness of Colleges

Just listened to a short discussion about the growing numbers of students requiring remediation in community colleges on NPR's Tell Me More. Host Michel Martin was talking with a reporter from Florida, so the conversation focused on the situation there. The discussion made some important points, but also some significant errors and omissions.

The reporter noted that most of the incoming students to community colleges in Florida are predominantly minority and/or low income. She also reported that the colleges use student performance on their college entrance tests to determine placement in remedial programs.

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The Other Side of Remediation: Readiness of Colleges

Just listened to a short discussion about the growing numbers of students requiring remediation in community colleges on NPR's Tell Me More. Host Michel Martin was talking with a reporter from Florida, so the conversation focused on the situation there. The discussion made some important points, but also some significant errors and omissions.

The reporter noted that most of the incoming students to community colleges in Florida are predominantly minority and/or low income. She also reported that the colleges use student performance on their college entrance tests to determine placement in remedial programs.

What was not mentioned is that in most places, individual colleges decide what scores students need to be classified as remedial. Here in Mississippi, for example, a student may be placed in regular Freshman College Composition with a score of 16 on the English section of the ACT at one community college, but need an 18 to enter that same course at another. Four-year universities, even Ivy League ones, also increasingly offer remedial classes (not mentioned in the story), and they may also have different score thresholds for determining who is or is not ready.  Yet, if a student enters say--Comp I at any of those institutions and passes it, that course will transfer to the institution with the higher or lower entrance score. Hmmm. Is there really a difference in the "readiness" of the student who scores 16 and the one who scores 18? Read on.

To further complicate the college entrance/college readiness maze, the tests used to measure student ability in reading, writing, and math (especially the SAT and ACT) are known to be historically, consistently poor predictors of actual student potential, and that is especially true for minority students. At the community college where I teach, we painstakingly followed the perfomance of several thousand students and found that their initial score on the English section of the ACT had no correlation to their ability to successfully complete Freshman Composition.

Remedial programs have become extremely costly for students---in time and money. Most students who enter remedial classes at the start of their college career do not complete a degree. Ever. Remedial courses cost the same as regular college courses, but do not count towards degree credit. Many poorer students burn up their financial aid in remediation, pushing them either into student loans sooner, or out of college all together when they run out of money.

Colleges and college faculty are hardly united over what constitutes
college readiness in math or English, which presents an interesting
scenario as schools all over the U.S. scramble to implement Common Core
standards that supposedly will ensure college readiness.

Consequently, there is a rising movement to radically change both the admission process and the approach to remediation at the college level. One suggestion is to do away with remedial classes, and place all entering students in credit-bearing college courses, while providing additional supports for those students who may need it (tutoring, learning centers, web resources, etc.).

Who's Really Unprepared: Students or Colleges?

Across the country, universities and community colleges are complaining about the high numbers of incoming students who require remediation in order to attend. A seemingly endless string of reports (like this one from  Connecticut) seem to support this problem, and there is plenty of blame and fingerpointing.

Higher Education: Connecticut's College Readiness Gap Big - Courant.com.

The majority of Connecticut's high school graduates who attend the state's community colleges and four smaller universities are not prepared for college work, according to a state-led education group. At least 72 percent of those attending community colleges require remedial or developmental math or English; for the Connecticut state universities — Central, Western, Southern and Eastern — the figure is 65 percent.

 It's easy to jump to the conventional wisdom that the public schools are just lousy, or the majority of students are lazy, techno-hypnotized zombies. But what if we're not asking the right questions.

Consider this: Are all these students really that "unprepared" or has higher education found a new cash cow?

After all, most institutions of higher education, particularly state funded ones, get their money based on how many students enroll, not on how many graduate. The majority of students who enter these higher ed remediation programs languish there until their financial aid and/or their patience runs out.

My question also begs a question: How is "prepared for college" being defined and measured at our institutions of higher learning?  Do we have anything close to consensus on just how "prepared" one needs to be for college anyway? Many use section scores on the college entrance tests or standardized college placement tests to make that determination. Do those tests actually measure what students need to know or do in their freshman courses?  The community college where I teach found that scores on the college entrance test (ACT) did not reliably predict student preparation or success in their college work. We've known for years that SAT/ACT scores do not accurately predict the college potential of Black and Hispanic students. Is it really about preparation or gatekeeping?

For traditional students, if the high school courses and state-mandated tests these students took did not prepare them for college level work, will the often hastily constructed or poorly taught remediation programs be any more helpful?  For the increasing numbers of non-traditional students (displaced workers, career shifters, immigrants, returning vets, late bloomers..."), what other realistic option do they have besides college, especially community college, to restart their education, especially if they already have a high school diploma earned years ago?

 I teach community college freshman, and yes, they come with widely varying levels of knowledge and skills. But isn't that why we teach? To meet students where they are and help them develop? Are we ready to shift our collective paradigm from thinking of college education only for the very top students, or as the next step in the educational continuum for whoever needs or wants to continue formal learning?

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