This article was originally posted on The Huffington Post on May 8, 2013.

Last February, The National Center for Education reported that 50 percent of the 3 million students who begin college annually require some level of remediation. This trend costs students, parents, institutions, and taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year, while remedial students fail to earn a single college credit.

The high volume and costs of remediation have policymakers and education leaders scrambling to stop this financial hemorrhage. While reform in remedial education is inevitable, the unintended consequences of swooping changes can be harmful to students, institutions, and the economy at a time when the U.S. is struggling to fill the 21st century workforce with high-skilled workers.

Who are remediated students?

A report released today by the National Center on Education and the Economy states that many community college career programs demand little or no use of math, and high school students are taking math courses they will likely never use. In reading and writing, the group noted incoming college freshmen had simplistic and academically unchallenging skills. Finally, NCEE discovered that very little writing is required of community college freshmen, and when it is, there are low expectations for making a cogent argument and employing basic rules for writing, punctuation, and grammar. The report calls for the bar to be raised if students are to succeed in college, career, and life. Some of these same patterns exist for freshmen admitted to open admission four-year colleges.

Policymakers believe the solution to plugging up the remedial financial drain is to stop offering remedial classes in college, cut funding, or hold high schools accountable. Yet, these all-or-nothing solutions oversimplify who is entering remedial courses and how they got there. The spectrum of today’s remedial students includes:

• Nontraditional, returning students who’ve been out of school for years and need to brush up on learning skills while pursuing a degree or certificate.
• Students with undiagnosed learning disabilities.
• Low-income, minority, and first-generation students.
• Misplaced students who were misidentified as needing remedial classes.
  Multiple studies indicate up to 20 to 30 percent of remedial students are misidentified and don’t belong in developmental classes.
• Students who failed to master high school material due to a lack of focus, emotional/social maturity, home support, poor instruction, or a combination of these factors.

As funding plummets, remedial students still remain, as does the need to fill many of the 3.9 million U.S. job openings that require a college degree. Realizing remediation will be anything but a quick fix, many people and organizations are offering cost-saving strategies.

What does remedial reform look like?

Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently argued that Pell grant funding — a need-based grant that helps qualifying students afford college — should not be available for students who require remedial education. Instead, he believes this $40 billion annual federal aid should only be awarded to students who take credit-bearing classes. The argument has merit. Statistically, the 35 percent of students who require remediation in four-year institutions complete a degree within six years, and worse, less than 10 percent of students enrolled in one or more developmental classes in community colleges graduate within three years.

Petrilli’s solution raises many questions. Is limiting college access to low-income students really a solution to remediation? Will high schools have the bandwidth to take accountability for the underprepared students who are denied grant-funding because they don’t possess basic skills? Are college-ready students more deserving of federal dollars than those who are underprepared for college?

Already, a recent change to Pell grants is negatively impacting developmental students. In the past, students were allowed to receive funding for up to 18 semesters. Now, they are limited to 12 semesters. For many students who work while going to school or are required to take several semesters of remedial education, this reduction in aid is a huge barrier to degree attainment.

Institutions, as well as people like Petrilli, are evaluating their best response to the remediation crisis. For example, in Ohio, only 25 percent of residents hold a college degree. The state hopes to improve the number of grads by adopting a new formula that aligns the amount of funding four-year colleges receive with the amount of graduates they produce. The community colleges are also seeing a shift to performance-based funding but not at as high a rate as four-year colleges. Like Ohio, more states than not have transitioned, are transitioning, or are discussing transitioning away from enrollment-based funding to performance-based funding.

Another solution for some states is to simply get rid of remedial funding. In addition to Ohio’s performance-based funding, the state government will start phasing out funding for remedial classes in the 2014-15 school year and completely end funding by 2020. In Connecticut, a bill attempted to cut remedial courses and put those students who would have been placed in a remedial courses in college-level, credit-earning courses. A bill was ultimately signed into law which allowed students to take one remedial course.

There are a number of different strategies being proposed by states and colleges to cut costs in remedial education. Until the pipeline to college improves, however, the need for remediation will remain. Without careful analysis of tradeoffs, cutting funding, courses, and opportunity is not reform: it is giving up and hoping someone else will pick up the slack. We need a holistic solution for the short and long term. As the NCEE stated in their report this morning:

“The logical conclusion might be for community colleges to raise their expectations and for high schools to step up the rigor… but that would not help today’s large proportion of high school graduates who do not meet the criteria to enroll in credit-bearing college courses.”

What are solutions which impact pipeline preparation before college?

Remediation may never be completely eradicated, but improvement can be made in the K-12 to college pipeline to better prepare students for college from the start.

Continue reading at The Huffington Post

Students’ lack of preparation takes on many forms beyond academic deficits. It shows up with them not knowing what to expect from college, not knowing how to anticipate challenges and obstacles, and not having the grit and determination to succeed. It shows up with their lack of follow through skills, and their not knowing how to take advantage of resources to craft a college experience that will deliver the abilities and connections to launch a successful career. It shows up with students lacking the emotional and social awareness to make sound choices and navigate college systems. And it surfaces with students embracing unrealistic expectations of what simultaneously can be managed, including: full and part-time work, families, social lives, and other demands.

Underprepared students are a cost to the nation and a cost to themselves. It’s argued that taxpayers pay for remediated students twice; once in high school and again in college. Students who take the same remedial class multiple times are spending money on a course that takes away from the amount of money they have to spend on their college-level courses and possibly from hours they can spend at their job. Though many choose higher education as a pathway to higher potential earnings, many choose to drop out due to seemingly temporary hurdles, like finances, failing grades, and unpreparedness.

Remedial classes were designed to allow students to pursue higher education who didn’t master basic skills in reading, writing, or math in high school. Every year, as many as 1.7 million first-year students entering both two-year and four-year colleges will take a remedial course to learn the skills they need to enroll in a college-level course.[i]

• More than fifty percent of students attending a two-year college will need to take a remedial course.
• Almost twenty percent of students attending a four-year college will need to take a remedial course. [ii]

As many as 1.7 million first-year students will take a remedial course to learn the math, reading, or writing skills they need to enroll in a college-level course. Whether urban, rural, suburban, low-income, athletic, artistic, academic, high-achieving, or low-achieving, too many of today’s students aren’t prepared for the challenge of higher education.

Remediating underprepared students is not a solution in and of itself. It can afford amazing opportunities to students who only need a refresher, like the returning student or the student who slacked off her last year in high school. However, sending students to a remedial college course who do not have a foundation of basic skills often leads to failure. In the report “Saving Now and Saving Later: How High School Reform Can Reduce the Nation’s Wasted Remediation Dollars,” researchers outline the “Real Cost of Remedial Education.”

Cost to the Nation: An analysis by the advocacy group Alliance for Excellent Education estimates remedial classes cost $3.6 billion a year nationally.

Cost to the Economy: On average, those who have completed some college make $17,000 less than those with a bachelor’s degree. This amounts to less tax revenue and disposable income. It’s estimated that the U.S. would make $2 billion in additional earning if students who dropped out had instead completed their degrees at the same time as nonremedial students.

Cost to Federal and State Governments: Between 2003 and 2008, state governments spent $1.4 billion dollars and the federal government spent over $1.5 billion in grants to students who did not return to college the next year.

Cost to the Taxpayer: Taxpayers pay for students to learn the same material twice – once in high school and again in a remedial college course.

Cost to the Student: Students at 4-year colleges pay 42 percent of their college tuition and fees and students at two-year colleges pay 14 percent.

Most remedial classes don’t count toward graduation. If a student must complete several remedial classes before he can begin other coursework, it could add semesters and significant additional tuition costs to his college experience, not to mention lost time and money if the student drops out of college. Though many students choose higher education as a pathway to higher potential earnings, many choose to drop out due to seemingly temporary hurdles, like finances, failing grades, and unpreparedness.

Remedial classes have their place, but they are not beneficial for all students. The 1.7 million students who enroll in a remedial class each year tell us that it is becoming more and more common for students to leave high school without the basic reading, writing, and math skills it takes to enroll and succeed in a college-level course. If we want more college graduates, we need more focus on college preparedness.

At LifeBound we believe it’s never too early for students to start exploring their passions and interests that they can eventually align with a college major, certificate program, or career. Help students make connections between the choices they make today and the dreams they have for their future. Introduce them to positive role models, talk about the careers and salary opportunities of someone with an associate’s degree versus a high school diploma, and encourage them to find a tutor or peer to help them with subjects they are struggling in.

Only 32 percent of students who graduate from high school are academically prepared for college, according to research from the Manhattan Institute Center for Civic Information¹. Remedial classes in English, writing, and math are offered at many of today’s community and four-year colleges to address the overwhelming amount of students leaving high school without basic mastery of their core subjects.

Remedial classes are controversial because their worth is questioned in the grand scheme of things. Yes, remedial classes can open opportunities for more students to enter college who otherwise wouldn’t have the academic credentials to pursue an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree. However, remedial classes can also offer a false hope to many students.

One study found students earning their associate’s degree who take at least one remedial class are half as likely to graduate in three or four years as the students who don’t. Another study of full-time students earning their associate’s degree at a community college found only 1.2 percent of those who took a remedial class finished in the standard 2 years. Only 13 percent finished their associate’s degree in four years². Of students attending four-year colleges, two-thirds of students who take remedial courses will not earn degrees within six years³.

Remediation has many costs. Experts say it costs taxpayers twice as much, since they pay for the remediated students to take the same course in high school and in college. It also costs the student. As the tuition for higher education rises, more students are dropping out due to the high cost. This is especially a problem for those who have only budgeted, for example, to go to school for 2-years to earn a two-year degree; when in reality it will take many who need remedial courses more than four years to complete an associate’s degree.

Remediation isn’t a college problem; it’s a preparation problem. The solution to remediation is in K12 schools, communities, policy makers, after school programs, parents, and students. We can’t close our eyes and wait for someone else to bring the money and solutions to solve the college remediation crisis. It’s a problem for the 1% and the 99%. Individuals and big corporations. Elementary schools and colleges.

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¹“Remediation at the College Level: Who Needs It, and Does It Help?” by Professor Bridget Terry Long. Usable Knowledge. http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/leadership/LP101-407.html

²“Measure Would End No-Credit Remedial Classes At Colleges,” by Kathleen Megan. 19 March 2012. Hartford Courant. Accessed on 18 July 2012. http://articles.courant.com/2012-03-19/news/hc-remedial-bill-0320-20120319_1_remedial-work-college-credits-remedial-college-classes

³“College Preparedness Lacking, Forcing Students into Developmental Coursework, Prompting Some to Drop Out.” 18 June 2012. The Huffington Post. Accessed on 18 July 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/students-lacking-college-_n_1606201.html

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