In her July 7th post, How College Remediation Rates are Distorted – And Why, Carol Burris omits the most pertinent information surrounding college remediation.
Whether the remedial education rate is 33%, 40% or even 50%, as the Community College Research Center (CCRC) reports, is less important than the fact that any student who is placed into remedial education has a very low probability of earning a postsecondary credential. According to the CCRC, only about 25% of students who are placed into remedial education earn a degree in 8 years. Students who are placed into 3 semesters of remedial mathematics have only about a 10% chance of ever passing a college-level math course, much less earning a degree. We should all be able to agree that prerequisite remedial education does not work and that public policy should be directed to ending it.
Despite what Ms. Burris contends, Complete College America believes that the best way to support students who are currently placed into remedial education is to place them directly into college-level courses and provide additional academic support as a corequisite.
We know that remedial education rates are set using highly imperfect placement instruments that are not predictive of student success in college. We also know that colleges that have dramatically increased the number of students who enroll in college-level courses and provided academic support to students while enrolled in those classes have success rates that are four or five times higher than for students placed into prerequisite remedial education.
There’s a very simple solution to Ms. Burris’ problem. Encourage the U.S. Department of Education to revise the data submitted by higher education institutions to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Database System (IPEDS) to include remedial education rates. If indeed we are going to address the problem of remedial education in higher education, institutions should be expected – as a condition of their eligibility to have access to federal financial aid dollars – to submit annual data on remedial education rates and the success of remedial education students in gateway, college-level courses.
In the meantime, we should stop arguing about the remedial education rates and work together to advocate strategies that eliminate the need for remediation altogether.
