Remedial Education

Last updated on: February 18, 2014 at 3:34 pm by Jane the Actuary

Remedial Education 2014-02-18T15:34:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So I’m not going to be able to fix the problem of high college costs. I don’t know how to force administrators to care about keeping tuition under control, or even lowering it. I don’t know how to interest employers in some alternative to hiring college graduates, regardless of the value of the course of study, just because of the credential itself. But here’s what I would do with respect to remedial education.

The numbers show up periodically — shockingly high percentages of students taking at least one, if not more than one remedial class, having their graduation delayed and being set up for lower success rates in college in general. And the fix is easy — and something the government can do in fairly short order.

(1) Don’t allow federal financial aid to be applied to remedial classes, and don’t allow universities to “cook the books” by providing institutional financial aid for these classes and deeming the federal financial aid as applied to the remainder of the tuition. You want to go to college when you’re not prepared? Then pay for it yourself.

(2) Require (as a condition of the various funds the feds disburse) that high schools accept all students regardless of age who can benefit from their course of instruction, with no or minimal tuition, and provide appropriate alternate instruction (e.g., night classes) where needed. This means that a student who left high school some years ago and wants to return, can do so, even if they’re now in their 20s. And a student who has amassed enough credits to graduate but isn’t prepared to attend college, can continue, in a form of 13th grade, to take those college prep classes that they missed previously, or even to take AP classes (which are becoming, for all intents and purposes, the equivalent of “A” levels in the U.K., if I understand their system correctly, except administered by a private organization rather than by the government). Of course, if a student enrolls but fails to attend, the school could establish a policy of exclusion from further coursework or charge “full cost” fees.

I was thinking about this because of a conversation on facebook — and because, when the school district continuing education brochure comes around a couple times a year, there’s always information on GED exam tutoring and classes, but nothing on high school completion. I looked around on the internet, and, in fact, this doesn’t really seem to exist. My local high school district doesn’t offer this, except for young adults, who would be on track to finish by age 21, and a search on the internet brought up only programs offered by some community colleges.

And, of course, if you look at the remedial classes offered at the local community collge — well, they have a single “reading” course vaguely worked as, basically, we teach you anything you don’t know about reading, as needed, to prepare you for college; and they have math courses starting at addition and subtraction. As for other subject matter — science, history, etc. — if you didn’t learn it in high school and you’re not ready to learn it at the college level, you’re never going to.

My sense is that the G.E.D. has replaced the adult high school diploma nearly universally — and my expectation (though I don’t have any direct experience) is that passing the G.E.D. isn’t really a marker of the sort of skills needed to begin college work. Which means that if the only path, for those who miss the traditional route, is GED + remedial classes at collge, we’re failing in the design of our school system.

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