The No College Remediation Promise

by Joseph Hawkins

The Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) promise has appeared in several publications.¹ The basic promise goes something like this, If you are in college in 2014, you will not be required to take any remedial coursework.

Honestly, the first time I saw the promise I thought it was joke. The promise, however, is real. But really, how on earth can a public school district guarantee such an outcome? And if 2014 comes and goes, and we still have MCPS graduates required to complete remedial college coursework, what happens? Are there penalties in place for those making the promise? Will MCPS hand out reimbursement checks to graduates required to take remedial courses? And by the way, I have never seen published baseline data on college remediation rates for MCPS graduates—what is the current state-of-affairs?

In reality, 2014 will come and go and nothing monumental will happen. No one from MCPS will be taken to a woodshed and spanked for making such a dumb promise. And as sure as the sun rises each day, MCPS graduates will still be taking college remedial coursework. There is one basic reason why the latter will still be true in 2014 and beyond.

Public school districts do not control colleges. There is way too much variation in how colleges define remediation to make good on the no remediation promise. We might believe that a graduate with scores of “3s” on several Advanced Placement exams is prepared for college (and they probably are), but if that first-year student sits down in the August of their freshman year and scores below a certain cut-point on their math placement exams they will be placed in a remedial math course. Period! MCPS simply has no control over this reality.

In general, it is true that many college and universities exempt first-year students from even sitting for their placement exams when those students have high SAT scores or high other stuff (e.g., ACT scores, AP scores of 5). MCPS is on the record indicating that the exemptions takes place with a combined SAT score of 1650. Certainly such a high SAT score might do the trick. The problem is there are huge numbers of black and Hispanic MCPS graduates without such scores. Currently, both black and Hispanics MCPS seniors score, on average, 200-250 below 1650. And given how little these groups’ means move from year to year, there is no evidence to suggests that by 2014 means will jump from 1400 up to 1650.²

But let’s return to the no remediation promise. Professionally, I have nothing against college remediation. It can work, and in reality, without it a good slice of poorly prepared high school graduates or returning older adults would never make a successful transition to higher education.

My first real job—with full benefits—was teaching remedial reading at Howard University. I taught for five years. Toward the end of time at Howard, I was assigned the responsibility of tracking and documenting the successes and failures of the University’s remedial students. In addition, for two years on a part-time basis, I taught remedial reading at Prince Georges Community College. My views on remedial or development college coursework are shaped by these experiences.

My views?

I’m a pragmatic realist—as long as colleges are around, and they control their own placement standards, there will be undergraduates placed in remediation. And even though some colleges are currently experimenting with revising how remediation takes place—exposing students to shorter remediation experiences or online tutorials, the fact is these “new” experiences—regardless of what we label them—are still at their core remediation.^{3 4}

At the time I worked at Howard, remediation was only a recommendation for entering first-year students and not a requirement. Recommendations for remediation were based on placement test scores. It has been decades since my time at Howard, but what I recall is this about the impacts of remediation: First-year students who successfully completed their assigned remedial courses had better grades and graduation rates than first-year students who either did not complete their remedial requirements or who had never enrolled even though they had been recommended for remediation. Again, remediation can work.

The debates about college remediation have not abated since my Howard days. Researchers still crank out papers about their impacts, which in general, conclude that remediation—beyond the extra cost, which is huge—is perhaps more beneficial than harmful. The fact that some students need remediation is not the end of the world. The promise of no remediation at all, however, probably needs to end.

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1Here is a link to one such publication: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3754644.

2Link to the most recent MCPS SAT report: http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2010/Class2010SAT-MCPS-MD-Nation_09-10-10_OctoberUpdate-Graduation.pdf

3See this article for how Montgomery College (Maryland) is changing their remedial courses: http://www.gazette.net/stories/12082010/montnew190928_32543.php

4See this article for how other colleges are changing their remedial courses: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021104924_5.html#eight