Dive Brief:
- A group of about 20 state higher education offices as well as other organizations have come together to identify six principles that should guide the transformation of remedial education and better serve students.
- Inside Higher Ed reports one critique is that the principles do not do enough to specify exactly how schools can achieve greater integration of support services into courses, and the process of implementing them will require significant investment of time and money by schools in states that may not have legislators willing to fund it.
- The principles include conducting an intake on each student to identify what supports they need to pass credit-bearing courses their first year, embedding supports into credit-bearing course curricula and instructional strategies, and providing focused remedial education to those who need it to prepare them for their degree programs.
Dive Insight:
Additional principles include prioritizing college-level math and English course placement as the default for all students, helping students choose courses, especially in math, that are aligned with their academic programs, and supporting students from intake through graduation using performance and progression data.
Principles for remedial education were first released in 2012 and have most recently been updated to reflect advances in research about remedial education. Nearly 70% of community college students enroll without college-level reading and math skills. A striking proportion of those who take remedial courses for no credit do not graduate.