New students who show up here at Florida State College at Jacksonville have to take placement tests in mathematics, English, and reading. About 70 percent end up in one or more remedial courses. For now, at least. State lawmakers voted in May to make such courses, which some see as obstacles to progress, optional for … Continue reading
Tagged with remediation …
Program Offers a Quicker Path to College Credit for Students Mired in Remedial Courses
A developmental mathematics program unveiled on Wednesday by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching shows promise in helping students avoid the remedial quicksand that prevents many from graduating. The “Statway” program, tested last year at 21 colleges, more than tripled the rates at which remedial students earned college math credit, Carnegie officials said. … Continue reading
The Second-Chance Club: Inside a Semester of Remedial English
Nobody wants to be here. In remedial English, earning no credit, stuck. Now—after months of commas, clauses, and four-paragraph essays—students have one last chance to write their way out. Twenty students sit at computers, poised to start the final in-class essay for English 002 at Montgomery College. Just outside Washington, this suburban community college is … Continue reading
Gates, MOOCs and Remediation
Early returns show that massive open online courses (MOOCs) work best for motivated and academically prepared students. But could high-quality MOOCs benefit a broader range of learners, like those who get tripped up by remedial classes? That’s the question the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wants to answer with a newly announced round of 10 grants for … Continue reading
Struggling for Students’ Readiness
The majority of Texas students do not leave public schools prepared for college. Fewer than one in two students met the state’s “college readiness” standards in math and verbal skills on ACT, SAT and TAKS scores in 2010. Though average SAT scores in both verbal and math dropped between 2007 and 2010 — a trend … Continue reading
Better Gauges of College Readiness May Be Key to Improving Graduation Rates
College placement tests are receiving new scrutiny these days as community colleges come under increasing pressure to graduate more students. Placement tests are used to determine how well-prepared students are for the rigor of college-level courses. Students who do poorly on the tests are usually placed in developmental, or remedial, education. In fact, about 60 percent … Continue reading
Learning Matters: Rethinking Basic Skills In Community Colleges
According to Stan Jones of Complete College America, U.S. taxpayers are spending close to $3 billion per year on supporting remedial classes at the community college level. Remedial courses — designed to help students catch up, and often taken on a non-credit basis — often aren’t successful at preparing students for their primary, credit-earning coursework. … Continue reading
The Crucial Need to Hold Students to a Higher Standard
Over the last few months, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors have walked across a stage and received a diploma, an important moment that should be applauded. Unfortunately, for many of those students, that diploma represents a false promise. Recent data from the ACT, Inc. shows that only 25 percent of high school students … Continue reading
Remediation: Higher Ed’s Bridge to Nowhere
Remediation: Higher Ed’s Bridge to Nowhere. The numbers are sobering. Not even 1 in 10 community college students who start in remediation will make it to graduation day in three years. Just over a third of remedial students at 4-year schools will graduate in six years. We can and must do better. See the most comprehensive data ever … Continue reading
Remedial College Classes Need Fixing
Each year, an estimated 1.7 million U.S. college students are steered to remedial classes to catch them up and prepare them for regular coursework. But a growing body of research shows the courses are eating up time and money, often leading not to degrees but student loan hangovers. The expense of remedial courses, which typically … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 