<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>