Earlier this year JLARC, the state legislature's watchdog agency, reported that nearly half of Virginia's high-school graduates entering the state's community colleges need remedial education, particularly in math. This is intolerable for many reasons, not the least of which is the soaking it gives the taxpayers. When a student requires remedial work, it means state taxpayers must pay twice to teach him the same thing — first in high school, and then again at the community-college level. The data raise questions about the Standards of Learning as well. If the SOL regimen lived up to its promise, then remediation would not be necessary.
To make matters worse, students who need remedial coursework have less success than their non-remedial peers. Figures from the state community colleges show that only 16 percent of students who need help catching up in English or math graduate within four years, compared to 21 percent of students taking only college-level classes. For students who need help in both English and math, it's even worse: Only 12 percent of them graduate in four years.
Many students transfer to four-year colleges, of course, but similar disparities show up among transfers. Twenty-nine percent of students taking remedial work graduate or transfer within four years, compared with 39 percent doing college-level work only.
Blame for this situation does not fall on the community colleges. They are not to be blamed for new students who need remediation. Yet the system is striving to improve matters. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that they soon will begin to target math remediation more narrowly — helping students only in those areas where they are weakest rather than requiring them to take a full-spectrum math class covering things they already know. Glen DuBois, chancellor of the state's two-year colleges, says they have "thrown out the assumption that all students need the same math curriculum."
It's a smart and promising reform — one for which DuBois and the system deserve credit. But it still does not address the fundamental problem that lies beyond the colleges' reach: improving high-school education to the point where graduates don't need remedial ed in the first place. That improvement may begin with the SOLs not only in content but in the ways they are taught.
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