<p>While browsing the online edition of a small local paper for one of the colleges my son is applying to I read with interest an article stating that the small state college had the third lowest remediation rate of the public colleges in that state. Students with below a 19 on the corresponding section of the ACT were required to take remedial math and or English course. That college's remediation rate was 37.4%. The state's flagship, where my son is also applying has a remediation rate of 11%. Big difference. The overall state remediation rate was 55%. My son is applying to a lot of schools and will see which merit aid offers roll in and then choose. This entails applying to some schools with statistics like those quoted for the first school.</p>
<pre><code> I am wondering how to obtain this information for other schools not in this state, and how to interpret the information. It makes me think that the larger number of honors classes the better. Any other thoughts?
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<p>You could look at the middle 50% SAT/ACT scores for the schools. Obviously students with very high scores are less likely to need remediation. This is a major problem for colleges these days. Students are not coming out of hs prepared for college level courses.</p>
<p>She does not exaggerate. I can confirm that in my State, most students in the typical mid-level suburban high school – not either extreme of the high-performing public or the most abysmally impacted of the urban schools – are not being taught to read and think critically. It is not happening. Increasingly in my job I encounter students who cannot do college level work, despite earning decent grades and an average score on the SAT. If it’s not a crisis now, it will become a crisis, and soon. </p>
<p>And I have said this before, I’ll say it again: The nation, yes the nation, is not reading. An utter fixation on quick media has changed the country’s taste for patience and completeness, and the preoccupation with animated visuals is also affecting this tolerance. My students are not reading; their parents are not reading. (You know, books: those antiquated, fanciful, charmingly anachronistic relics from the golden age of literacy.)</p>
<p>I would love to see all colleges disclose remediation rates. Overall, I’ve read that approximately one-third of all college students take remedial courses. This has got to be at least one reason why college costs are soaring, since they are taking over teaching that should have been done in K-12. And students who take remediation courses in colleges are much more likely to drop out.</p>
<p>As a teacher and parent of two boys (one in college, one just starting high school), I can say that most kids do not read for fun. I’m a high school media specialist. I have tired all sorts of ways to get kids to read – contests, posters, promotional things. What killed the joy of reading for a lot of kids was a program that they had to be in as sixth and seven graders. They had to read a certain number of books for an A. Try nine, 250-page books per nine weeks. At that point, they just open the book, see the length and either check it out or not.</p>
<p>Many students are not prepared for the rigors of college work. Some of my honor society members were just discussing this. One of the biggest problems is organization. One of my students pointed out that kids often do their homework, but cannot remember where they put it. So the kids suggested that maybe they should teach younger kids organizational skills, so that if they learn now, they will be better prepared to take on more rigorous things.</p>
<p>Interesting question. I don’t think the remediation rates imapct my kids very much because they aren’t in those classes because of AP scores, ACT scores etc. It does impact some parents I would guess. I would think it “extends” the college semester because I I’m assuming the remediation classes do not count toward graduation credit required…maybe I’m wrong. Seems like an expensive path for parents to get their kids college ready. Personally I’m not certain it “sucks” university services from my kids. I also don’t think that it is the responsibility of public high schools to prepare all kids for college, there is always that percentage that is borderline material at age 18 and if the parents want to fund the kids to go then they write the checks.</p>
<p>I think that if colleges were to ask, on their applications and at interviews, about books their applicants have read for pleasure, outside of the school curriculum, and to give the answers students provide some weight in the decision process, they would attract applicants who have read widely and thoughtfully.</p>
<p>I would also consider that many students are somewhat lopsided these days. The student who needs remedial work in English could be light years ahead of peers in math or science, for example.</p>
<p>You’d be surprised . . . I work in an Honors Program at a highly ranked public university. For a number of years we asked that question on our application. We dropped it because it was clear the vast majority of the kids were talking about a book that had been assigned in school (how many kids really read War and Peace for fun?) OR they talked about Harry Potter. And the way they talked about books was akin to a 7th grade book report. Turned out to be a useless question.</p>
<p>Since I became a professor 20 years ago, it’s been increasingly clear students don’t read for pleasure. It shows up in their reading comprehension, their critical thinking abilities, their knowledge base, and most of all in their writing. I do not know many of the rules of grammar (I tuned all that out in high school) but I write well because I read a lot as a child so I know if something “sounds” right or not. Many of today’s students don’t have that “ear” for writing.</p>
<p>Which remedial courses exactly are these students in? How many have only one pre-college level of math to get through? How many have multiple levels of pre-college math, pre-college reading, and pre-college English composition to finish before they can enroll in true on-level coursework? How many (like Happykid) are on full merit scholarship for their field of study but facing two semesters of pre-college math before enrolling in College Algebra?</p>
<p>My DD has seen her mom and I read since she was little. DD may laugh at my taste for military history, but she knows my preferred pastime is a book. And that I like to talk about them as well. This last couple of weeks she and DW made a deal - DW would FINALLY read the Harry Potter books, and DD would read DW’s favorite author, Anne Tyler.</p>
<p>I teach some of those courses (we call them “developmental”). Who’s in them? Just about anybody. My school doesn’t accept test scores for English placement. We give an assessment of our own. A lot of the kids who can’t pass are the kids you’d think would be in there - kids from poor urban schools who’ve been given a shot at college (partly because of the college’s mission, but more than likely through athletics), kids with lower test scores, but a surprising number of kids who were honors/AP students at their “really good” high schools. It’s common enough that I hardly blink when, after the first class, I am approached by someone convinced he or she really doesn’t need to be there. My counterpart in the math department has many similar stories. </p>
<p>As far as relationship between remediation and graduation, well, the more remediation a student needs, the less likely he or she is to graduate. Will any of this affect the OPs child? If he doesn’t need remediation, I don’t see how it would. He’d never be placed in those courses.</p>
<p>If the major is science or engineering, the school might have a lot of weeders that remove most of the unprepared leaving the better students in the upper-level classes.</p>
<p>At the college where I work, a portion of kids are in developmental English, but almost *everyone *is in developmental math. As others have said, the school goes by its own placement test, not students’ past curriculum, grades, etc. I’ve met students who passed HS calculus, but when given a test for algebra, sans calculator, they fail. Often because it’s stuff they haven’t done in years. Sometimes it’s because they have always used calculators and can’t do basic arithmetic.</p>
<p>Personally I don’t think that students majoring in humanities or other non-numbers based majors need Alg. 2 or trig. for their major or in real life (I certainly haven’t used them in the past 35 years.) However, they’re required, and they keep a lot of adjuncts, many of them abysmal teachers, employed.</p>
<p>And I say that as someone who *can *do math, despite being a humanities person (and have the recent GRE score to prove it. :)) So, it’s not sour grapes.</p>
<p>Garland,
i get what you mean. One of my sons did fine in two semesters of calculus in college. He is now studying for the GRE. He recently took a practice test and was shocked at how much basic math he could not remember!</p>
<p>“That’s interesting. I guess I have a lot to learn about merit scholarships.”</p>
<p>So did I PayFor! It all depends on the field of study. Happykid evidently brought something to the institution that they really liked, and the application only asked for transcript, LOR and two short essays.</p>
Unfortunately, many of the students arrive with the solidified notion that they are “not good at math” and “can’t do that stuff”, which is tacitly acceptable in our society. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and they don’t make much progress in the remedial courses either. I taught this type of course (as one of those abysmal adjuncts) for many semesters, and found that most of the students came out about where they went in, regardless. </p>
<p>One semester I made the class do about 1000 problems on the theory that if they practiced it enough times they would come to realize they really could do it after all. To no avail. After that, I swore off remedial math, leaving the field to the other abysmal adjuncts. Trust me, this is the last course the regular faculty wants to teach.</p>
<p>I look forward with great anticipation to being an unemployed former abysmal adjunct very soon!!! Yea!!!</p>
<p>Sylvan. My sincere apologies. I know that there are good remedial math adjuncts. It’s just that in my observation, there are many who aren’t. there just are not that many qualified teachers willing to teach that kind of class. The school I work at has some good ones, but more horrid ones. The students with good ones typically do quite well.</p>
<p>Perhaps there is a reason for that “solidified notion”…I grew up in a family of engineers and an aunt who was a mastered degreed high school math teacher (rare for the early 50s). I can not grasp complex math. Can do basic algebra and geometry and still can but after that no clue. I managed to sweat my way through college required calculus and stats classes. Out of three kids one is exceptional at grasping complex mathematics, one is mediocre and one is hopeless…the two in college managed to test out of taking remedial college math and one got the one gened completed with a B- but simply has zero apptitude. I tested back in the day very, very high in the old Enlish portion of the SAT and mediocre at the math and so did my non-mathy boys. Our brains simply do not grasp the process. I remember asking a prof in grad school to explain something he was teaching so I could understand why and he told me that “that” would be explained in higher math class. That’s when I gave up the ghost. Sometimes it’s genetic…really. But I do recall really wierd math teaching when the boys were young. I turned around and we taught them “our way” of doing multiplication, division and some other concepts…I think they even called it new math. It was ludicrous and if that’s the only math education kids got in elementary school no wonder they are remedial.</p>