Colleges Report High Remedial Course Enrollment Rate For Unprepared High School Grads

Education Week:

Richard Mohammed always thought of himself as a pretty good student.

He graduated from Olney High School in 2005 with a B-plus average and optimistically entered Bucks County Community College, eager to study nursing.

Read the whole story: Education Week

Comments

[Joseph Schmoe]

08:14 AM on 06/12/2011

Community colleges are raking in the federal aid bucks by expanding their remedial departments in a shameless attempt to get all the money they can from students who do not have the skills to succeed--no matter what their reasons. And the few students who make it past the remedial courses benefit from community college administrators who encourage instructors and adjunct to "pass these students" regardless of their inability to read, write or perform basic math.
It's a joke, start to finish. Except it isn't funny.

[J R M]

07:03 PM on 06/12/2011

There is nothing shameless about it.

When I went to college more than 40 years ago I took an Sociology 100 class which had 300 students. At the beginning of the class the teacher said "Look to your right. Look to your left. At the end of the semester, half of you will have dropped." He was right, and I found the class easy beyond belief.

Now the universities are not admitting the questionable students at all. The community colleges get them. Some fraction of them spend an additional year or so trying to learn what they should have learned in High School. Those that do, can and should go on. Later is better than never. It is also cheaper to do the catching up at the community college level.

Those students are having to pay for their remedial classes and are not earning college credit because the material is not college level. They are paying all right, in both time and money.

[been2there]

05:11 PM on 06/11/2011

NCLB has really made this problem worse. I work at a community college, and we have seen a drop in skills that is beyond anything I could have guessed would happen!
Students are so focused on the test that they fail to do the work. They fail to learn to see writing in context of expressing ideas, they even fail to understand that they should think.

[Ignoratio Elenchi]

05:47 PM on 06/10/2011

There is one thing that I learned a long time ago: if you don't read, you will not be able to write. Students can pass their eyes over words on a page, and never absorb a thing from it. There is no threat you can level on a teacher that will change this. And it takes PRACTICE to write well. In the same way that you cannot compel a child to be a good musician if they won't practice, you cannot force them to be a good writer if they won't work at it.
I was shocked at how easy any subject in undergrad was simply because I knew how to write. And shocked by how many did not know.

[am10]

11:09 AM on 06/10/2011

I noticed this when I was in college twenty years ago. While half the students were kids who simply screwed around in high school and needed to get working, the other half just were not smart enough to get into college.

[Joseph Schmoe]

08:16 AM on 06/12/2011

So, which "half" did you belong to? Thanks for demonstrating innumeracy as well as illiteracy.

[am10]

03:03 PM on 06/12/2011

I guess we all screwed around in high schools but still got by with good grades. Just pointing out remedial classes really don't seem to jive with higher education.

[jwalker13]

09:29 AM on 06/10/2011

I work as an English tutor at a two year college, and I can attest at the lack of knowledge in students today. Generally speaking, the papers that I read are poorly constructed, littered with countless grammar errors, and void of critical thought. Students simply do not have the knowledge to progress appropriately.

Some may assert that college is merely a social club. It is for many, and it isn't for many more. Many of my students do try to do their best, but the reality is that their best is not good enough. The public education system, due to the endless pressure from the government to cater to ignorance of psychometrics, has failed many a student. If we're ever to decrease the amount of remedial courses, we must get away from reliance on standardized testing to "prove" that teachers are teaching. We must, instead, prove that parents are doing their part to enforce good habits.

Trust me when I say that educators like myself and others are working very hard to teach you and your child. You, however, have to put forth the effort as well. Otherwise, I'm just throwing knowledge at the wall and hoping that it sticks.

Speaking of, it's time once again to go to work and to attempt to assist students.

[ArdentV]

06:40 PM on 06/09/2011

What is the solution or solutions? I wish I knew. Maybe H.L. Mencken was right. That our schools are nothing but glorified social clubs with multiple social groups seeking attention from and for all those students. Actually I disagree with him but his commentaries provoked a lot of thought. Try and tell a family their child is not performing well because of lousy work habits, more concern about who will be the date for the prom and will he or she be "popular." I often what has become of the idea of shame. I think students and their parents might do well to address the issue that failure to perform (assuming the ability is extant) is shameful. But no, teachers must not hurt a child's self esteem. Isn't a sense of self worth something that is earned? It would appear that many Americans only want their child "educated" without pain either fiscal or intellectual and that the schools turn out a product molded along the lines of their parent's prejudices. Oh, yes, there are many a good student entering collegiate studies. But I would suggest that there would be a lot more competent entrants if the schools adhered to a set of academic standards. Of course, we could argue this forever but still, I am of the opinion that too many students expect little of themselves and yet expect that a collegiate educations is an entitlement. I hope more respond to this article.

[lcr999]

05:48 PM on 06/10/2011

The solution is to let people (students) who want , by their actions, to fail, to fail. A person with a b minus high school average should not be in any kind of college. It that is the group that community colleges are serving, we should just call them Remedial High Schools and leave College for those that actually serve college level material.

[eventhorizon66]

11:46 AM on 06/09/2011

Implement entrance exams for middle school and high school. Students can't progress to the next level if they haven't mastered the basic skills. No more social promotion.

[J R M]

11:06 AM on 06/09/2011

Given the rapid growth in college expenses, it would make more sense to route almost all students through the community college system to get their prerequisites and general education requirements completed before going to a university or full college to complete their degree.With luck, they might also grow up a bit before they are on their own. It would save them a lot of money, particularly if they can live at home while attending community college. If it takes them 3 or 4 years to get to the necessary level and/or grow up, they have done so without taking on a great debt.

For college bound students, the schools need to work backwards from the college entrance requirements to their offerings. My high school cheated - for its college prep course it adopted Drexel's freshmen engineering course schedule as its senior year classes and worked backwards to make sure that we had the needed perquisites to do the coursework. The only class choices I had in high school were: French or German and 2 years of physics or a year of physics and a year of biology. We carried a full load. It worked.

[timbeaux]

01:13 AM on 06/11/2011

What would make sense is to fix the elementary and secondary schools so they graduate kids who can read and right.

Start in grades 1-3, emphasize reading and nothing but reading. Flunk any kid who can't read at grade level. Then implement similar changes all the way up to grade 12. Kids who flunk more than three times are out of school, that's all. What we've got now is social promotion, no F given ever, and classroom after classroom that's been hijacked by the lest interested kids and are hopelessly boring for the most interested kids, who are the ones we need most.

[broui]

02:22 PM on 06/13/2011

I assume you don't want to ignore math in the k-3?

In my experience as a teacher for 11 years, social promotion is one of the largest factors in the problem.

I teach high school. My particular school is among the poorest and most diverse in the state and the population is highly unstable and transient. The average reading grade level equivelent is 5.5 (mid-way through 5th grade) when they enter. But somehow, we're supposed to get them to the 10th grade by test time in the 10th and college-ready by graduation. Tall order. We're doing triage.

Math skills are the same issue.

But as I implied with the intro to the school, the problem is far more complex than social promotion. Poverty, diversity, transiency, instability all add up for these young people.

The solutions aren't easy. Certainly not as easy as you lay out, all due respect.

[SangZe]

06:20 PM on 06/08/2011

Colleges need not accept illiterate young people, nor are they required to teach what they should already know.

[senseandnonsense]

07:57 AM on 06/09/2011

Community colleges have open enrollments. They are a second-chance for those who were too busy not paying attention in high school. Should we just throw these people away or accept that they are now willing to learn?

[am10]

11:11 AM on 06/10/2011

Agree with you to an extent. Many kids were simply in too toxic an atmosphere as teens to excel in school. However, I draw the line at teaching kids (in a college setting) things they should have known before high school. If they are illiterate and/or can't do basic math, than they need adult/continuing ed.

[lcr999]

05:52 PM on 06/10/2011

The had one chance to learn, completely free, paid for by the government. We have better places in education to spend money than in providing subsidized remedial education. Allow those who want to fail, to fail so that system resources can be spent on real education for those who want to excel

[lcr999]

06:02 PM on 06/08/2011

"pretty good student"----"B Minus average"

Huge disconnect. This person is out of touch with reality.

[J R M]

03:41 PM on 06/08/2011

Not surprising. It is my understanding that the average work level in high school as well as college has decreased over the past few decades.If students are preparing for college early on, they will be ready. But if they sort of drift through, they will not be ready. When I went to college 40+ years ago they let everybody in and then flunked them out fast. Remediation is more humane. To prepare for college, students are going to need to work hard and consistently for several years. My 9th grader has been putting in 3 to 6 hours a day in study plus weekend time all year. Next year she will be at 6++ hours as she takes calculus, 2 IB science, 1 AP science, and IB English and IB American history. After that she expects to hit community college under the running start program with a number of credits handled by AP exams as she starts all her introductory and distribution courses for a double major in electrical and mechanical engineering She should graduate from high school with her AAS and all her prerequisites and general distribution requirements behind her.

There is nothing keeping others from following a similar path. Her comment was that some students have Chinese Tiger moms, others have Russian Bear fathers, and she has an American Eagle father. She spent last summer doing a correspondence course in Honors Geometry. This summer she will do the same with Pre-Calculus.

[redsongia]

04:49 PM on 06/08/2011

I took all those AP/IB classes in high school too. Do her a favor and get her in somewhere other than community college. I went to a fairly well regarded UC school, and the average course material was just sadly disappointing. Luckily, it was a large enough school to find some amazing professors with great accomplishments in both the economics and german department, once I fought through all the "general requirement" classes. Private schools offer scholarships, don't be afraid to encourage her to shoot for top schools; the UCLAs, UTs, Stanfords, CaseWesterns, Columbia's, etc. There will still be dead weight there, but she will have access to serious practitioners of whichever field she choses. At community college you just practice more basic skills out of workbooks.

[J R M]

05:51 PM on 06/08/2011

After completing next year she will have completed her sophomore year by credits. She will apply for early admission at the University of Washington, Seattle, but the honors early admission program only admits 20 to 30 students, so the odd are long. She will be too young to be a resident student, as she will turn 15 during the summer before she goes. So she has to stay at home. The running start program is her backup and has the advantage of being all but free. If she goes to UW, she will drop out of the high school, joining the official dropout statistics as she goes off to the honors program at UW.

[kinger50]

05:49 PM on 06/08/2011

While I think your child is admirable, in most cases, students simply do no know how to write an essay. Why are they in college if they can not write? That is the one I puzzle over. Everyone in college should be able to write a five paragraph essay or they should not be in college at any level.

[J R M]

06:18 PM on 06/08/2011

I was a teaching assistant for senior mechanical engineering design and senior materials lab. We made the students write 3 or so reports a semester. We always had to threaten to turn the reports over to the English department for spelling and grammar grading (to account for 30% of the grade) before the students took enough care with their writing. The reports were from 10 to 20 pages long. I was looking for the technical content, but the English had to be clear and understandable. I ignored minor structural issues, after all, it was an engineering class.