Alabama Remedial Education: One-Third of Students Unprepared for College

Over a third of Alabama high school graduates have been found unfit for college.

According to the latest numbers collected by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE), 34.4 percent of students enrolled in a two- or four-year college program in 2010 required at least one remedial course in math or reading, the Washington Examiner reports.

Hardly an isolated incident, the state statistic matches the national one determined by the Department of Education. USA Today reported last May that, "a third of first-year students in 2007-08 had taken at least one remedial course, according to the Department of Education. At public two-year colleges, that number rises to about 42 percent."

According to the 2008 study "Diploma to Nowhere" by the nonprofit Strong American Schools, remedial education in public universities costs the federal government between $2.31 and $2.89 billion annually. In reality, the cost is even higher, as students are essentially taking classes over again. In Alabama alone, remedial education costs the state economy $51 million directly, and an additional $29 million in lost income.

Students themselves may not be aware how far behind they are. According to the same Strong American Schools study, nearly 80 percent of the students surveyed believed they were ready for college when they left high school, and four out of five in remedial education had a high school GPA of 3.0.

Just as the shocking cheating scandal unfolding in Atlanta reminds Americans of the underside of American education, some believe that high school has gotten easier to allow individual schools to survive. Under No Child Left Behind, failing students can result in the government closing schools.

Jerome Cook, principal of Bessemer City High School told the Birmingham News: "I don't think it's fair that some of these kids are leaving with As and Bs and then go into college and have to take remedial courses. I think they've dumbed down the curriculum trying to make sure students have good GPAs and test scores, and it's hurting these kids in the long run."

Despite this, Alabama had the highest gains in the nation at the 4th grade reading level according to the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

ACHE executive director George Fitch argues that this progress is the key to the solution.

"You do not create an engineer or a researcher in their senior year of high school or their freshman year of college. You start them in second, third or fourth grade," Fitch told the Birmingham News.

Comments

[methodman]

01:15 AM on 07/17/2011

Education demands people become willing to speak with a diagram. Thoughts bring physicality but because people feel so stupid because of genuine non-exposure too many people get anxiety and give up without giving themselves a chance at object to object or energy or conceptualizations or processes. All Students need to know how to make a Flowchart. They should be teaching those 5 symbols in the second grade.

[methodman]

01:13 AM on 07/17/2011

A lot of the reason is the throwback religion and the fact that the translators of the Good Bible used replacement language. Convert those Bible story words into objects, energetic(math) words, conceptualizations and processes. The progressive discussions can be contemplated from that Book but the Christian Pastors have poisoned it to where on their terms it's more of a waste of time and you probably should just neglect it They really hate conversations anyways.

[DuffyShort]

01:04 PM on 07/15/2011

Hardly news, the way we have starved education since the 1980s. And even though I hate Alabama and Auburn in sports....they seem to have a fairly well educated population...if they could just loose that "south in the mouth" thing....PS they vote Red, so they are getting what they pay for.....I sure they are a default leaning state......

[taylor5]

01:03 AM on 07/15/2011

Let's not equate remedial coursework to ineptitude. A student who has not been exposed to the in depth exposure of a math, science, or indeed english course would be best served by remedial course work. Because with a solid foundation it is still possible for that student to do well in these areas. Remember the ability to think is independent of intelligence.

[mlaiuppa]

12:22 PM on 07/14/2011

I'm sure California is even worse.

California only has one school librarian for every 5,000 students. That's 51st in the nation even behind Washington D.C. (The national average is about 1:900)

What do school librarians teach? Well, they teach research. They also teach about copyright and plagiarism. Teachers are not trained to take up the slack of an absent school librarian and they aren't. I just sat through exhibitions at my school. With the exception of three students every student I asked what was your source of information I got "books and the internet". Where on the internet? Google. What group or website did Google lead you to for your information. Uh, I forgot. Of the three that remembered, one used Wikipedia and one used About.com.

Pitiful.

Will these students be prepared for college? No way.

But they'll score well on the standardized tests.

That's what happens when school budgets are slashed. School Librarians are the first to go. Then music, art, PE, anything that is not a CORE subject. Pretty soon we'll have nothing left but STEM.

And they'll do worse and worse and everyone will scratch their heads and wonder why.

There are no electives in education. Everything works together if you present it correctly.

It's called interdisciplinary teaching.

See if you can get hold of an old program by James Burke called "Connections" to see what I'm talking about.

[morefromLA]

11:26 AM on 07/14/2011

What can you say? After you say Alabama, you've said it all.

[J R M]

08:03 PM on 07/14/2011

Unfortunately, I think many other states will not do much better and some may well do worse. Why do you think that school boards across the country have opposed testing and publicly reporting student subject matter knowledge.

[maninal2]

11:15 AM on 07/14/2011

I guess praying really doesn't compensate for underfunded schools. Who would have guessed?

[trespanieli]

12:19 AM on 07/14/2011

Last year 25% of the freshman class at my university were conditional admits, meaning that they would need remedial classes. This percentage has been growing over the past few years.

[Js420]

11:40 PM on 07/13/2011

Have to make up those 12 yrs of science.

[Seedomang]

10:32 PM on 07/13/2011

This country is falling apart!

[morefromLA]

11:28 AM on 07/14/2011

With Alabama leading the way.

[ArdentV]

09:47 PM on 07/13/2011

There are many reasons for this abominable situation but I would like to share one experience with an "Honor" student whose opinion of self matched that of Donald Trump. She started her advising session with "I will talk to you if you know something about medical school. I am going to be a cardiac surgeon. Her HS gpa was 3.88. Her ACT scores were 12 and 13. She didn't even qualify for basic math or English. I worked on her schedule putting her into several "developmental" classes. Her mother seemed upset that I wasn't impressed and asked me, "Didn't you hear her, she is going to be a cardiac surgeon." My reply was, "Madam, she had better be a good Freshman first." The mother was furious and filed a complaint. The young woman failed her "developmental" courses. Was I unfeeling? I will let you readers judge.

[benji85]

08:35 AM on 07/14/2011

Kind of hard to be surgeon if you can't do basic math, never mind the calculus needed for the range of chemistry classes.

[ArdentV]

09:37 AM on 07/14/2011

Thank you for your response. There is a lot more to this story but suffice it to say, near the end of my career I found more students whose self image in no way matched the brain power needed to achieve their stated goals. Grades were all but retention of knowledge was a foreign concept.

[morefromLA]

11:29 AM on 07/14/2011

No, you weren't. Facts are friendly.

[ArdentV]

12:34 PM on 07/14/2011

Thank you for your response. Never thought of facts that way. They sure are educational.

[Candide33]

09:04 PM on 07/13/2011

Need to bring back the tracking system, vo-tech is not a dirty word!

[pphhrogg]

07:16 PM on 07/13/2011

College is eye-opening for many kids who got very good grades in high school. I never had to study to get all As in high school, so when I went to college I didn't even know HOW to study. After getting a D in Anatomy, though, I sure learned fast how to study successfully!

[benji85]

08:39 AM on 07/14/2011

Indeed, I was the same way.

Yet as I study calculus, now in Introduction to Differential Equations, I ask myself why aren't these classes taught in high school? The general thought is these classes are hard, but they aren't, my classmates and I are capable of doing half the derivation and integrating in our heads.

[JustAWiseCrackingGuy]

01:32 PM on 07/14/2011

Because there are a significant group of people who are completely incapable of understanding math, let alone teach it. I always have done well in Math courses, but the truth of the matter is that past Geometry, there will be a number of students who obviously are just flailing. They could offer those courses, and assuming that they could fit them into schedules (many High schools have trouble fitting Calculus into the curriculum), but they would probably have an issue filling a full class at smaller and lower scoring schools.

[HAlexandria]

11:26 AM on 07/15/2011

I had Calculus in high school, differentiation, integration and applications are easy, it's the proofs that teens have issues with. Proofs are not "mechanical"(something you can train computers to do), they require s specific type of understanding and insight/intuition.

The jury is still out on at what age those sections of the brain develop.

[lcr999]

05:49 PM on 07/13/2011

"Over a third of Alabama high school graduates have been found unfit for college."

And at least half of Huffpo writers are unable to write an intelligent article. The study says 1/3 of Alabama HS students who (attempt) to go to college need remedial courses. That doesnt count those who do not even attempt to go to college. The first sentence says something quite different.

[maninal2]

11:19 AM on 07/14/2011

Hyperbole and misleading headlines is Huffpo's calling card. They would have had more impact if they'd discussed the almost 50% that don't graduate and have little to no chance of college admission..

[Vic22]

05:31 PM on 07/13/2011

I was a C student, so when I went to college I assumed everyone was a lackadaisical student. I found out that I was surrounded by students who had 4.0+ gpas in high school who were even less prepared than I. Grades alone tell very little of the full story

[Spike5]

07:09 PM on 07/13/2011

Unfortunately, that is the reason we end up with standardized tests. There's no way to compare grades between schools without some objective criteria.

[forgetpartylines]

07:46 PM on 07/13/2011

Exactly, in Minnesota our schools get ranked based on test scores of standardized tests and the teachers that administer the tests aren't even allowed to be in the same field as the tests being taken. I took french in high school and got a C yet was tutoring kids in french from a neighboring school and got them A's.

[Vic22]

09:11 PM on 07/13/2011

I agree, except, from what I've read, once the rescored the SATs in 1995, they no longer correlate well to ability or intelligence, but to wealth. The test prep industry is huge, and I have know very incapable kids who have been able to afford tutoring that has gained them hundreds of points

[pauldununfola]

08:58 PM on 07/13/2011

I see students like yourself all the time. They are just C+ students in my classes but they do something that A students often do not- They are critical thinkers and tend to read for pleasure. I'm more impressed by students who ask provocative questions than those "A" students who do all the work, and study for the tests but will not take academic risks.

Critical thinking will help students in college but that isn't what is being tested on standardized tests. The test (In CA) is heavily weighted toward English and math and so
you have students who get good grades but in college they are surpassed by C+ students who can critically think.

[Vic22]

09:14 PM on 07/13/2011

I agree. Success in schools these days is not about critical thinking or creativity, but moreso about pleasing the teacher, following directions, and regurgitating information. I have many friend who went to "elite" schools who are perfect automatons, but cannot deal with ambiguous situations outside of school.

All I have to say is thank God for standardized tests. I did decently well on those, so some schools were willing to take a chance on me