Six states—Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia—are looking at how to overhaul developmental education in reading, writing and math at the community college level. Along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, these colleges are realizing that remediation needs to begin and end in high school so that college can emphasize college level learning. Currently, many public high schools students around the U.S. don’t read much while they are in high school. The toll this takes on their reading, writing and thinking skills is huge. While some gains are being made nationally in math, there are still 2.5 million students remediated for math at the college level.
LifeBound’s programs are designed to promote academic, emotional and social intelligence through reading, writing and thinking skills. Many of our books promote reasoning and math learning. If colleges hold the k-12 districts accountable for these outcomes, we will change this community college influx of underprepared students.
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USA Today
Six states that are trying to revamp remedial education are focusing as much on what happens outside of the classroom — in state policies — as inside. Among the targets for change include state funding formulas and individual course rules.
The Developmental Education Initiative, a three-year project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation for Education, recently unveiled the state policy framework and strategies that its six participating state partners plan to implement so that they can dramatically increase the number of students who complete college preparatory work and move on to complete college-level work. The six states –Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virginia– were selected for this project because of their prior commitment to community college reform; institutions from these states were first-round participants in Achieving the Dream, a multi-year and -state initiative to improve the success of two-year college students. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-04-14-remedial-college_N.htm
