Group items tagged

By Jennifer Brooks, The Tennessean, July 2 2010. Tennessee is looking at revamping their remedial education with hybrid and online classes in community colleges. In four-year colleges, remedial needs are often addressed with extra work/extra time in the regular classroom.

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 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.

On PBS NewsHour, April 20, 2010. Jeffrey Brown interview with Mary Spilde and Hilary Pennington about the increased focus on boosting graduation rates in community colleges. Remedial education, innovative technology models and standards for accountabililty are topics covered.

"What used to be known as remedial education now goes by either developmental education or basic skills. Lexicon aside, it's become apparent that these classes don't work. At least half a dozen reports released in the past year (two in the past couple of weeks alone) warn that the United States is headed for an economic calamity unless we can figure out how to get more students to successfully complete some type of postsecondary education program. It doesn't have to be a baccalaureate degree. It could be an associate's degree or a professional certification, but by the year 2018 about two-thirds of all jobs will require some college education, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. Of those, 22 million will require actual degrees, AA or better, but at the current rate, we're already off track by some 3 million degrees."