Journal Article

Is College Remediation a Barrier or a Boost? Evidence from Tennessee

Kane, Thomas J, Bennett, Christopher, Kozakowski, Whitney, Weisenfeld, Dana, Boatman, Angela, Hitch, Rachel

2020

Overview

For millions of students at American colleges, freshman year starts off with an unpleasant surprise: despite graduating high school, students find themselves assigned to remedial classes in math or English, which they must pay for and pass before being allowed into college-level courses. Policymakers looking to increase postsecondary enrollment and completion have put their focus on lessening the delays created by remedial course requirements. The problem is especially acute in Tennessee, where in 2013, only one in three adults had more than a high-school diploma and two in three incoming college freshmen at local community colleges were placed in remedial classes. Studying Tennessee's experience is uniquely valuable because it provides a chance to compare two different alternatives to traditional remediation policies. First, the state began allowing students to complete their remedial math requirements while they were still in high school. Under the Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support (SAILS) program, students designated as needing remediation based on their junior-year ACT math scores can enroll in an online remedial course during their senior year. In order to learn about both alternatives to prerequisite remediation, the authors look at changes in outcomes for three different waves of high schools that introduced the SAILS program between 2013 through 2016, and they compare them with outcomes at high schools that never had the program. In the first year of the program's implementation, when completing SAILS allowed students to forgo prerequisite remediation, the authors measured the impact of eliminating the delay of prerequisite college remediation. In the second and third years, after the co-requisite policy was in effect, the authors again measured the effect of SAILS participation, this time measuring the effect of eliminating co-requisite requirements. Findings suggest that both high school-based remediation like SAILS and co-requisite remediation have advantages over prerequisite college remediation. Both allow students to get a faster start and complete more credits within the first two years. In addition, co-requisite remediation also may be more successful than high-school remediation in helping students to pass their college-level math classes, by eliminating the time lag between remediation and the demands of college courses. However, the findings also suggest that the role of remedial course requirements as a cause of low completion rates has been overstated. Prerequisite remediation is neither the major cause of low completion (as many of its critics have argued) nor a major solution for students with weak math skills--the authors find no effect of SAILS participation on the math achievement of remediation-eligible students in high school, relative to the typical high-school math course.

• Publisher: Hoover Institution
• Subject: Acceleration (Education) / College Mathematics / College Students / High School Seniors / Mathematics Achievement / Online Courses / Outcomes of Education / Prerequisites / Remedial Mathematics / Remedial Programs / Required Courses