The End of Remedial Courses

At a time when growing numbers of first-generation, minority, and older adult students are going to college, the California State University system, the nation’s largest public university system, this year eliminated all freestanding remedial courses. Next year, the state’s entire community-college system will do the same, as reported by Katherine Mangan, in

The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article is a comprehensive look at the current state of developmental education, by a top journalist who covers higher ed. The section of the piece that relates to Texas will be included at the end of this post.

As states, including Texas, embrace co-requisite remediation, we are facing a situation in which the stand-alone remedial course in English or math may disappear. However, students who succeed with the new model tend to be those who are close to the standard required to perform at the collegiate level. Educators are worried that the students who need more intense remediation will be lost. Community colleges are increasingly using high school GPA as well as standardized tests in placing students, but it’s an imperfect system.

The demographic challenges facing colleges have raised the stakes on getting underprepared students up to speed as quickly as possible. Shrinking numbers of 18-year-olds have forced many open-access colleges to step up their recruitment of older adults, veterans, and others who have been out of school for years. The economic downturn that many are expecting could send more older adults back to college, the article reports.

Obviously more work and research are needed, focusing on strategies that apply, for instance, to these older students who haven’t received mathematics instruction since high school, often many years ago. One such individual is quoted in the article. A pertinent tangential challenge involves the fate of instructors and administrators in the field of developmental education. Why would someone specialize and focus in the area with such a bleak outlook for the future of the profession?

Here is a passage concerning Texas:

Rebecca Goosen, associate vice chancellor for college preparatory at San Jacinto College in Texas, is pleased that the days of putting students in sequences of up to three remedial courses are over.

But Goosen, a national leader in developmental education, said that despite the fervor for corequisite courses, they may not work for those who are least prepared. “I hope the train doesn’t crash down the road because we’re putting students who really struggle, especially in math, in classes they can’t handle,” she said.

This year, the State of Texas required that 25 percent of students needing developmental education be placed in corequisite classes. “We skim off the top and take the students who are almost there — and they’re successful,” Goosen said. Next year, the requirement will jump to 50 percent, and the following, 75 percent. Goosen said she fought efforts to require corequisite remediation for all developmental students.

Some students arrive perplexed by fractions and relying on calculators. “What do you want me to do with a student who doesn’t understand the number line, reads at a fourth-grade level, and can’t write a complete sentence?” she asked. Despite a robust system of corequisite support that involves two instructors for 20 students circulating, answering questions, frequently testing, and giving nightly homework, “we’ve had to take students out of co-rec because they weren’t going to survive,” Goosen said