Group items tagged

By Michael Winerip in the On Education column of the New York Times, October 23 2011. The article highlights students who have attended NYC high schools but then failed their placement tests when they arrived at CUNY community colleges. The system now offers an intensive remediation program called Start in which students focus on all 3 remediation subjects (reading, writing and math) for 5 hours/day, 5 days/week, all for a cost of $75 for the semester.

By Liz Willen on The Heckinger Report, October 29, 2010. Remedial education is often an obstacle to college completion. Students required to take developmental courses become frustrated and are more likely to drop out than those who don't have to enroll in these courses. Research is underway to identify alternative models.

By Richard Perez-Pena, Education section, New York Times, July 20 2012. This article profiles the New Community College, CUNY's newest 2-year college, set to begin classes in September 2012. The school has been developed to test several leading theories of how to make community colleges better, including stricter requirements, no remedial classes per se (but all include a remedial component), experiential and collaborative work, and much greater student support. See tag ncc for related articles.

Our August launch meeting will be held on the New Community College campus; here is more about what makes the New Community College "new."

By Peter Riley Bahr, published in The Review of Higher Education, vol 33(2), winter 2010. The article looks at remediation. Full abstract available on this page. Full article is available by subscription. Check with your college library for access via document delivery.

By Paco Martorell and Isaac McFarlin, Jr., Sept 2007. Evidence on the effectiveness of remediation from the state of Texas.

By Eric Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long, forthcoming in Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence and Success, Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein, eds., Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2006. Looks at preparation and remediation generally, but also focuses on a database of students maintained by the Ohio Board of Regents.

By Melissa Ludwig in San Antonio (Texas) Express-News Jan 21 2011. A pilot program in San Antonio points "students who test at the lowest skill levels toward shorter vocational programs or adult basic education" rather than the remedial classes at community college where they might previously have been assigned. The student profiled participated in a 10-14 week PACE program (combining basic education with college readiness skills) rather than the 4 semesters of remedial classes she would otherwise have been assigned.

By Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times, May 31, 2011. This article cites a recent report released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which finds that "as many as one-third of students entering higher education need to take some sort of remedial or developmental course...." Putting a human face on these statistics is the profile of one student who graduated from high school with a 3.0 GPA and a B in "College Algebra" but still needed to take a non-credit developmental math course when she got to community college.

By Mike Rose, The New Press: 2012. In this book, Rose looks specifically at the non-traditional students of community colleges, what their needs are, and how community colleges might serve them better. Rose is a popular education writer who frequently writes on basic skills and remediation.

Developmental Education - Beyond Remediation through Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. "The purpose of the Summer Institute is to give those who work with developmental students the theory and practical applications to improve the success, retention, and persistence rates of their students."

By Carol Pogash, from the Bay Citizen; published in the New York Times, June 24 2010. This story looks at City College of San Francisco (CCSF), a community college with a particularly long sequence of remediation courses. A trustee made a controversial recommendation that the sequence be shortened.

By Sugie Goen-Salter, in Journal of Basic Writing (CUNY), v 27(2), p 81-105, 2008. Goen-Salter's program intergrates reading and writing, in a innovative new measure to reduce the need for remediation. Article abstract is available on this page. For full text, check with your local college library.

RA's choice event was a presentation of Goen-Salter's program. PA provided the cite for this article, discussing the same program.

By Jack Stripling in Leadership & Governance column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2011. All sitting presidents (except recently hired Donald J. Laackman) of the City Colleges of Chicago "will be forced to reapply for their jobs if they want to keep them,and they must commit to achieving higher student-success rates if they are reappointed...." According to the article, "just 7 percent of City College students who require remediation go on to earn a degree...."

By Lisa W. Foderaro in the N.Y./Region section of The New York Times, March 3 2011. Dr. Gail Mellow is quoted in the article: "I embrace developmental education because it pivots lives." NOTE: The article contains some important current statistics about remedial and developmental ed needs in the CUNY system.

M.Z. posted this to the March 2011 Coffee Klatch.

By Thomas Bailey, Dong Wook Jeong and Sung-Woo Cho, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University in Economics of Education Review, Volume 29, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 255-270. "The purpose of this paper is to analyze the patterns and determinants of student progression through sequences of developmental education starting from initial referral. Our results indicate that fewer than one half of the students who are referred to remediation actually complete the entire sequence to which they are referred..."

For GSCC faculty, there is a copy of this article available in Coffee Klatch

by Jon Marcus on The Hechinger Report, December 26, 2011. Open University, a successful British online public university to be used as a model in the U.S. The goal is to help students who are intimidated by higher education adapt to and succeed in college. Next Generation Learning Challenges, a Gates funded initiative, will adapt two free Open University, at-your-own-pace online courses for use at about a dozen U.S. colleges and universities this academic year: one to help students be more comfortable with math so they do better on placement tests or move more quickly through remedial courses, and another to teach students skills to prepare them for college.

Budget cuts to community colleges highlights the fact that as a society we were never fully committed to remedial students in the first place. Young people and adults who have been criminalized and imprisoned are ineligible for loans, and cannot afford college to turn their life around. These cuts target the working poor, undereducated, and disadvantaged and are a threat to our democracy.

Democracy is dependent on educating those students who require developmental education. Funding dev ed is a moral and social issue, not just an educational one.

By Mike Rose. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan (1989) Book Description:"Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient--these are the stigmas that define the educational underclass to which Mike Rose once belonged. Here, he tells of his personal journey from a Los Angeles ghetto to a major research university, bringing a vital challenge to those who must shape America's educational agenda.

On Radio Times, WHYY Radio. Host Marty Moss-Coane talks withThomas Bailey of Columbia University's Teachers College and Joseph Merlino, president of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM. They discuss the question of whether colleges should offer remedial courses, why so many high school students need help and how high schools and colleges can work together to prepare students for the college work load.

By the SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies, May 2011. For this report, the SOURCE's editor-in-chief interviewed eleven community college leaders from across the country. Questions relate to: college readiness, remedial education, workforce development, educational technologies, student services, data analysis, funding/grants