State cracks down on how many remedial courses college students can take
Interesting AJC Sunday story by AJC higher ed reporter Laura Diamond on the state’s crackdown on remedial classes in its public colleges.
(I can’t link as the story was a subscriber-only. You can read it by logging on to the paper’s iPad app. If you are a subscriber, you can read the article on our e-edition here.)
The story notes that the technical and university systems devote about $55 million of their budgets each year to remedial education. More than 70,000 public college students took remedial classes last year.
Few succeed, according to the story.
About 1 in 4 students who take a remedial class earn a four-year degree within six years. The rate drops to 15 percent for the under-prepared students who need remediation in reading, writing and math.
Diamond reports that 29 percent of the students requiring remediation are under the age of 21; 26 percent are age 36 or older.
Here is an excerpt of her Sunday piece:
“The numbers are dismal, no matter how you look at it, ” said Joe Dan Banker, executive director of academic affairs for the technical system. “The goal is to get to the point where we don’t have as many people needing this help. The problem we have at this moment is just how many students need it.”
Students need remedial classes when the lessons they learned to earn a high school diploma don’t match the skills they need to succeed in college. Some never grasped basic material in high school. Others need a refresher because they’ve been out of school for years.
Remedial courses lengthen the time students spend in school, because they must pass them before they can take college-level classes that count toward a degree. Students must pay for remedial classes, so it drives up their college costs.
The university system’s new rules give students two tries to pass English and reading and three tries at math before they must sit out for a year. Previously, they had up to four tries for English and five for math and had to sit out for up to three years.
Thousands are expected to be affected by the new rules. For example, if students test into all three areas of remedial education — English, math and reading — they are barred from attending college. Had this policy been in effect last year, 2,577 freshmen would have been denied.
“This is an honest policy for students, ” said Lynne Weisenbach, a vice chancellor for the system. “Not admitting those individuals who we know from data have a very low chance of graduation reflects a commitment to honestly advising, serving and preparing students.”
These new attempts by colleges address only one part of the remedial conundrum. Another key element requires public schools to graduate students better-prepared for college.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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123 comments Add your comment
bootney farnsworth
August 8th, 2012
2:36 pm
you really want to see a reduction in tuition?
end HOPE. today.
HOPE opened the door to runaway tuition increases.
Mountain Man
August 8th, 2012
3:17 pm
“Research has shown that the SAT is not as good a predictor of college success as high school GPA.”
Was that research done in Georgia and was it done after the advent of HOPE scholarship, with its resulting grade inflation? Perhaps you can answer why so many initial HOPE scholars lose HOPE and even drop out of college? HOPE was supposed to be for the “best and the brightest”, but with rampant grade inflation in high school, a 3.0 GPA doesn’t mean what it used to mean.
footing the bill
August 8th, 2012
3:19 pm
My argument is that the students should have been allowed to
enroll in college courses, and get supplemental tutoring ,or
building of skills through an adviser on the student’s own time.
If the students didn’t pass, then they would face the same
problem that students with higher SAT scores face when they
received poor grades from partying too much-academic
probation, or enroll at a junior college to enhance their skills.
The role of the professor is to teach whoever enrolls in the course,
and it is the role of the student to obtain understanding and
mastery of the concepts. It is not the role of the professor
to pick and choose the students to be educated.
Mountain Man
August 8th, 2012
3:24 pm
“As a high school instructor, it always burned me up that we would accept these illiterate students just to keep the numbers up. If you can’t do reading, writing, or math, you should still be in middle school, not high school. I think middle schools should be responsible for having the students high school-ready.
Your turn middle school teachers.”
And the middle school teacher says:
It burns me up how these elementary school students come to us unprepared for middle school.
Social promotion (I’m sorry, promotion until “continuous progress” is made) at its best!
footing the bill
August 8th, 2012
3:47 pm
@ Mountain Man
Why didn’t you view the challenge as an opportunity to
help the students appreciate the subject matter that you
care about? The fact that the students had low skills did
not mean that they were incapable of reasoning and
learning.
Mountain Man
August 8th, 2012
4:20 pm
@ footing the bill 3:47 pm
What?????
Mountain Man
August 8th, 2012
4:23 pm
My other question is: at an insitution like the University of Georgia, there are many more qualified applicants than there are spots available – why does UGA accept students that require remediation while turning away qualified applicants? Is it some sort of quota?
Again, I am exempting football players because that is a totally separate system.
bootney farnsworth
August 8th, 2012
5:58 pm
@ MM
its my understanding the SAT minimum is so high at UGA the average incoming freshman under 1250 need not bother to apply.
unless they are a minority, handicapped, or hit some other diversity goal the system has set for that year.
bootney farnsworth
August 8th, 2012
6:45 pm
one of the dirty little secrets of recruiting /admissions is your grades matter about 1/2 of what your demographic happens to be in a given year. if a school needs more Asians, we’ll make room. if a school needs more open gays, we’ll make room. if a school needs more point guards, we’ll throw some one out if we need to.
grades, SAT scores – secondary consideration to demographic of the term.
in Tricoli’s early days GPC would bring in anyone with a plus who could qualify for aid. faculty and staff knew most of these kids would not finish out the year, much less graduate. but in a corrupt system with no room for dissent …
redweather
August 8th, 2012
7:05 pm
@ mountain man, “Was that research done in Georgia and was it done after the advent of HOPE scholarship, with its resulting grade inflation?”
I can’t remember where the students were, but they were not in Georgia. There have been a number of extensive studies, one sampling something like 80,000 students.
kip
August 8th, 2012
7:23 pm
@bootney-sometimes you make excellent points, and I have respect for your intellect. But goodness gracious, did you really write that “HOPE opened the door to runaway tuition increases?” Talk about living in a vacuum. I’ve got news for you Bootney – Georgia is just one state out of 50 states, and runaway tuition increases are not unique to Georgia. Massive fail on the point you are trying to make, unless you can show that HOPE is to blame for massive tuition increases in Texas, California, etc.
Solutions
August 8th, 2012
8:03 pm
kip, I have to agree with bootney, Hope was a big part of the tuition increases, along with federal student loans. Gee, what do those two things have in common, think, think, think? Oh, I know, piles and piles of government money flooding into higher education! Everything the government touches turns to that stinky stuff! Just wait to see the sudden and dramatic acceleration in health care costs under the Health Care Reform Act (AKA ObamaCare).
kip
August 8th, 2012
8:08 pm
Well that’s a different point you’re making. Now you’re on to something: government loans are a common denominator across states. HOPE? Not so much.
Beverly Fraud
August 8th, 2012
9:14 pm
@Mary Elizabeth, I read Cyndie’s story. But here’s a key point. It’s not “Cyndie’s teacher’s story” it’s CYNDIE’S story. As Dr. Trotter says, the motivation to learn is intrinsic. Bully for Cyndie’s teacher for the strategy, and for trying different strategies WITHIN REASON.
Where this strategy gets perverted, in my opinion, is when spineless administrators won’t support discipline because they insist that if “you just individualize your approach for each student, discipline problems will cease to exist.”
Let’s call that what it is. A LIE. And fix it. Shift the balance where the STUDENT is held accountable for learning AND behavior, not hold the teacher accountable for pushing an INFINITE number of buttons, when Johnny doesn’t want to do his part.
It’s not like Johnny’s going to be able to tell a judge (a place he is disproportionately likely to end up at if he chooses not to learn) “It’s not my fault your honor, the arresting officer didn’t ‘manage’ me in a way that made me want to follow the law” after all.
drjd@gpc
August 8th, 2012
9:18 pm
@bootney – I wish more GPCers would speak up. Thank you. GPC’s explanation of layoffs is that they are to minimize the effect on students. However, the layoffs in tutoring, computer labs, and libraries show this to be a lie. Student success is tied to these services, and the drastic cuts to these departments will not go unnoticed in retention and graduation results. These departments depend greatly on part-time staff also, which has been cut by well over half. The 3 full-time Newton campus tutoring staff were ALL fired. Please explain. More tutoring part-timers are being laid off. We’re keeping vice-presidents of anything you can name and all sorts of mid-level managers hired under Tricoli. How is firing student success and retention employees “minimizing” the effect on students? GPC will feel the effects of these poor decisions for many years.
No one can possibly believe that the Regents or Tricoli were so completely mislead or kept in the dark. The Regents decide how to dole out the $$$ to 35 institutions, and yet they say there are too many institutions for them to keep up with the yearly financial situation of each. Sure. I believe that. If they are no more responsible than that, then the financial decisions should be taken away from them good ol boys.
Beverly Fraud
August 8th, 2012
9:25 pm
if a school needs more Asians, we’ll make room. if a school needs more open gays, we’ll make room. if a school needs more point guards, we’ll throw some one out if we need to.
@bootney, you let that secret out and pretty soon public schools are not only going to be held accountable for “test scores” but for the number of gay, Asian, point guards they produce each year.
Wonder if the great state of Louisiana will approve a charter schools whose mission is to produce gay, Asian point guards?
Mary Elizabeth
August 8th, 2012
11:33 pm
Beverly Fraud, 9:14 pm
You seem to have your own educational agenda that you wish to express, regardless of the context.
Cyndie’s story does not mention discipline, for there was no need to mention discipline. The point of her story – and even Cyndie as a perceptive teenager realized this – was that if teachers will address the correct instructional levels of their students, in whatever grade the students are assigned, they can change their students lives for the better, and often dramatically so forever, as happened in Cyndie’s case.
long time educator
August 9th, 2012
2:16 am
Hope was designed to help the best performing ga students stay in state to go to college. Remediation should not be any part of that program. High school is free and students should apply themselves while there. If not., the natural consequence is you will not be able to get the hope scholarship and you will have to
catch up at your own expense. There should be no remediation at a university, maybe at a technical school.
redweather
August 9th, 2012
8:48 am
Georgia Perimeter College is an open-enrollment insitution, so anyone with a pulse used to be admitted. Now that the Legislature has decided to tie funding to graduation rates, however, the school has had to change its policy regarding the admission of students who place into more than one learning support subject. So demographics did not and do not play a roll in admissions at GPC.
At other colleges demographics are obviously a consideration. Whether it is true to say that “grades, SAT scores – secondary consideration to demographic of the term” is an exaggeration to say the least. Some would probably characterize it as bullsh-t.
Claudia Stucke
August 9th, 2012
9:37 am
@Eleanor Eisenberg
Thanks, Eleanor, for the clarification. Obviously I saw “benchmark” and ran with it before acknowledging the distinction between our local tests and those required for advancement in other countries (and in other areas of U.S.). A few years ago, I heard Dr. Beheruz N. Sethna, president of the University of West Georgia, speak to a local group of parents, educators, and students. Borrowing liberally from Thomas Friedman, expressed concern about our students’ preparation to compete on a global scale–academically as well as professionally. Dr. Sethna, born and educated in India, described the striking contrast between his academic experience and that of his (our) students’. For example, whereas he had one and one chance only to pass his college entrance exam, our students are given multiple opportunities to improve their scores–even encouraged to “practice” by taking the SAT or ACT before actually taking it “for real.” Perhaps this may be one reason why students sometimes (often) don’t take evaluations and assessments very seriously. I have been asked by more than one student, quite seriously, “If we fail a class in college, we get our money back, right?” Right.
Just A Teacher
August 9th, 2012
3:46 pm
I don’t believe that high schools should be held responsible for not having every graduate ready for college any more than I think colleges should be held responsible for not having every graduate ready to pursue a graduate degree. Some people are not studious or intelligent enough to handle college courses. There is no shame in that. My father never finished the 8th grade yet learned a valuable skill (truck driving) and was able to support a family of 5 children.
I am a high school teacher, and it is my job to teach every student as much as I possibly can while he / she is in my class, but I can’t prepare someone who shows up in my classroom reading on a third grade level for a college literature course in a semester.
I have tutored remedial students in a Georgia university, and many of them should never have been admitted to college in the first place. College is not for everyone, and we will always need truck drivers, sanitation engineers, plumbers, and many other types of workers who do not need a college education in order to perform their jobs well. The problem is that many people devalue physical labor as menial or somehow beneath their offspring. I have worked climbing telephone poles, digging ditches, driving a forklift, and even cleaning out stalls on a dairy farm before I became a teacher, and all of these were important jobs that my employers wanted done well. None of them required a college degree.
The bottom line is this: if a person shows no aptitude for academics, he or she should not pursue a college degree. No amount of remediation will ever turn a dull mind into a sharp one, and no lack of instruction will ever stop a bright and truly motivated person from mastering his / her lessons.
long time educator
August 9th, 2012
4:37 pm
@Just a Teacher, Amen and hallelujah! We need a strong vocational program in high school that continues into tech school. It needs to focus on careers that are actually needed out in the world now. Some kids drop out not because they are lazy, but because they have no interest in higher education, but are very interested in learning to make a living. We are failing them by expecting one size to fit all. And if they all went to college and got a 4 year degree, there would not be enough jobs for all of them..
Archie
August 9th, 2012
5:04 pm
When I graduated high school in the early 1970’s, things were somewhat simpler. In those days, if you had a strong back, could follow instructions, read a carpenter’s rule and do basic arithmetic, you could get a decent-paying job and expect to stay in it until you retired or your back gave out, whichever came first. Those jobs are pretty much gone now, thanks to automation and/or outsourcing. There is now some demand for qualified machinists but technical entry-level skills are a lot higher for them now because most machine tools are computerized. Workers have to be a lot more flexible now because the days when a guy spent 20-30 years at (for example) GM spot welding the same joint, are pretty much over. I would say apprenticeships need to be brought back and they could work in conjunction with the technical schools.