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.
At the same time, though, the presence of remedial classes is often a cash cow for the colleges; the courses can end up providing funding to other areas.
What can be done to improve the situation? Producer John Tulenko traveled to two community colleges in Maryland that are taking different approaches to the problem.
This program is made possible by the following funders:
Grade Level Reading Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
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June 22, 2012 at 9:05 am
Joe Beckmann says:
What you did not cover, and what’s critical to this kind of malfeasance, is the role of AccuPlacer, the test community colleges commonly administer to “recruit” candidates for their ineffective remedial classes. Although they do make this test available to area high schools, so those most “at risk” might assess their real liabilities, very, very few ever take it, since most of the “risky” high schools have such ineffective - or compliant, or conspiring - counseling departments.
Perhaps worse than this invitation to malfeasance, the College Board explicitly describes this test in diagnostic, rather than pass/fail terms: “You cannot “pass” or “fail” the placement tests, but it is very important that you do your very best on these tests so that you will have an accurate measure of your academic skills.” This gives often the lowest income students precisely the wrong information, since “passing” means avoiding critical expenses, often un-reimbursed by college grants or loans, and “failing” means paying an often very large bill before the “admissions” actually take place. And, for that very large bill, as you DO report, they often get … nothing.