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Many states are beginning to analyze whether or not having students take developmental courses prior to college level classes is academically effective as well as cost-effective. Co-requisite initiatives, programs, and models are beginning to circulate and many states and higher education institutions are left with a decision on what model will better serve their students and their long term goals toward graduation.

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-Assessment, Evaluation, and Research (AER)
-Law, Policy, and Governance (LPG)
-Social Justice and Inclusion (SJI)
-Student Learning and Development (SLD)

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Student support strategies as a coreq not a prereq

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CCA Co-Req Model - Transform Remediation for Chicago final(1)

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Tennessee performs study on Co-requisites. Are they cost-effective?

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Tennessee performs study on Co-requisites. Are they cost-effective?

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Recommendations for a better remedial transition. Placement exams, academic support, equality, co-requisites with college level courses, etc.

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Recommendations for a better remedial transition. Placement exams, academic support, equality, co-requisites with college level courses, etc.

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A non-traditional remediation process could improve graduation rates and accelerate time to completion, according to a new report from Complete College America (CCA).

About 1.5 million students, or 42% of all U.S. college students, begin their academic careers in remedial prerequisites that don't count toward their degree. Minorities are often overrepresented, with 56% of black students and 45% of Hispanic students enrolling in prerequisite courses.

But rather than serving as a launching pad for academic careers, the courses often become a stumbling block for the students who take them. Only 17% graduate with their intended degrees, because many fall off track before they're able to begin credited coursework.
Five myths about remedial education
Instead, CCA recommends that colleges and universities offer corequisite remediation, in which students can immediately enroll in degree-required coursework and receive concurrent academic support. In a corequisite framework, students take regular, credited courses but receive additional support, such as extra class periods to bridge the gap in their knowledge.

Corequisites will dramatically increase students' likelihood of getting through early "gateway courses" and starting on work required for their major within one year, according to the report.

Success in other states

Nationally, only 22% of students enrolled in remediation completed their introductory math and English courses in two years. But in states where corequisite remediation is common, that number has soared. In West Virginia, 68% of students finished English in one semester, and 62% completed math in one semester.

"I've never seen results like this in higher education. Never," says Sarah Tucker, West Virginia Community and Technical College System Chancellor. "These are huge, dramatic changes that will make a difference to our students."

The report recommends five tips for higher ed institutions interested in building a corequisite remediation program.
From our experts: Re-engineering developmental math
End placement exams. Placement exams should be phased out and replaced with an intake process that identifies academic and career goals, along with overall academic preparedness, the report recommends. The authors say that students should select a "broad area of study" by the end of the process, which they can ultimately narrow down to a specific major by the end of the first year.

Respect all students as students. All students at the college should be treated like they're full students, not remedial students that aren't ready for college yet. Put students in college classes from day one, the authors argue, and then give additional support to those who need it.

Deliver academic support. The report details different ways to provide students with academic support while they're in classes, such as adding additional sessions to review the material and requiring tutoring sessions after-hours.

Set up two-semester gateway courses. These college-level introductory courses should be finished by the end of a student's first academic year, CCA recommends. By setting that expectation, administrators can target students who may struggle with the two-semester model and give them extra support.
Strategies for promoting enrollment: Remedial ramp-up courses
Allow multiple gateways. Too long has college algebra been the dominant gateway math course, the authors contend. Instead, they argue, students should only have to take college algebra as preparation for precalculus or calculus.

And for everyone else? CCA encourages colleges to create alternative math courses, such as a more appropriate course in statistics (Bethke, eCampus News, 2/4; Complete College America release, accessed 2/5).

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A non-traditional remediation process could improve graduation rates and accelerate time to completion, according to a new report from Complete College America (CCA). About 1.5 million students, or 42% of all U.S. college students, begin their academic careers in remedial prerequisites that don't count toward their degree.

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California steps up in removing non-credit remedial courses to give students a sense of hope and progression towards graduation. Remedial class feel like a waste of time and money according to students

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California steps up in removing non-credit remedial courses to give students a sense of hope and progression towards graduation. Remedial class feel like a waste of time and money according to students

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FERMIN LEAL/EDSOURCE TODAY

The California State University system plans to overhaul its remedial education system by 2018, scrapping no-credit courses in English and math and replacing them with credit classes that include extra tutoring and built-in study sessions.

Too many students are placed by testing or high school grades into noncredit classes that aim to prepare them for college-level work. But that strategy often backfires by making them feel unwelcome on campus and that they are wasting time and tuition money, officials told a Long Beach meeting of the CSU trustees Tuesday. A switch to specially-designed credit courses will create a sense of progress toward graduation, reduce attrition and expose students right away to a higher level of academic work, administrators behind the plan explained.

For many students, being placed into noncredit remedial courses "represents strike one before they ever set foot on any of our campuses," Loren J. Blanchard, CSU executive vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs, told the trustees Tuesday. "It represents a deficit model that must be reformed if we really hope to achieve our equity and completion goals."

The change could affect tens of thousands of incoming freshmen each year. For example, about 38 percent of last fall's 61,757 CSU freshmen were found to need remediation in either English or math, and 14 percent in both subjects, university statistics show. About 59 percent of African-American freshmen and 47 percent of Latinos need some extra preparation, significantly more than whites and Asians.

Depending on their placement, those students now might be required to take as many as three noncredit classes in a subject just to get up to college-level courses and a significant portion of them - 13 percent in recent years - do not return to school for a second year; many others say they feel they wasted a year of time and a lot of money.

"We have every reason to believe this will be a game changer for CSU and the students we serve," James T. Minor, who is senior CSU strategist for Academic Success and Inclusive Excellence, said in an interview before the meeting. The current system of placing underprepared students in purely remedial or developmental classes that do not count toward their degree "is not a particularly good model for retention and degree completion," he said.

Some of the 23 CSU campuses already offer students who need remediation the redesigned English and math classes, often known as corequisite or stretch classes. In those courses, they usually are assigned extra work and must attend class for an additional hour or two a week compared with a traditional credit course. But as a systemwide policy, it would be a major change. Many details of curriculum and scheduling remain to be worked out campus by campus and at department levels, and in some cases may involve enrichment sessions offered during summer and winter sessions, they said.

The new approach to remedial, or developmental, education would fit into both a national and California trend. Several other states, such as Tennessee, reported success in putting students in so-called corequisite courses starting in 2015. The City University of New York is taking similar steps by 2018 and also is starting to allow math requirements to be fulfilled by statistics or quantitative reasoning classes, not just by algebra.

This new policy also dovetails with the CSU Graduation Initiative, which seeks by 2025 to improve the systemwide four-year completion rate for first-time freshmen to 40 percent from the current 19 percent, and the six-year rate to 70 percent from the current 57 percent.

California community colleges - where 80 percent of new students are required to take a remedial course - are also focusing on new and better placement of students into college-level work, with less reliance on tests alone and more weight given to high school grades.

Jeff Gold, CSU's assistant vice chancellor for Student Success Strategic Initiatives, Research and Innovation, emphasized that the academic rigor will not be reduced. "We are not asking campuses to change the quality of what they are doing. We are not asking them to waive students through. We are not asking students not to work hard for this," Gold said. Instead, the new program will offer extra help and services to students who need it and, he said, the message to students will be: "You will be moving toward your degree right away and, by the way, you belong here."

The change will be accompanied by reforms in testing and placement, he said. CSU now relies on the Smarter Balanced test students take in the 11th grade, high school grades, and the results of the ACT or SAT, plus a university placement test. Gold said CSU will be "taking a hard look at which we can do without."

The new policy was presented as an informational item at the trustees meeting. Officials said it did not require a vote since it is considered an administrative change within the decision realm of system Chancellor Timothy P. White. Still, the matter was cleared in advance with key trustees, faculty leaders and other stakeholders.

Trustees Chairwoman Rebecca D. Eisen said Tuesday she was "just thrilled" to hear the report about remedial courses. She said students feel trapped in what she described as "the Bermuda Triangle of Remediation" and think that the university "is not the place for them." But the change, she said, will help more students "feel this is something they can do."

Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, an organization that works to improve access to higher education, said in an interview that she welcomed the CSU change. "We think reform in remedial education is overdue," she said. Siqueiros said she expects the new policy will help CSU improve its graduation rates, especially for minority and low-income students. While many details will need to be worked on, especially on placement with less emphasis on testing, she said that evidence at community colleges and schools in other states suggests "this is good policy for students."

At Cal State Dominguez Hills, the mathematics department already switched most of its developmental courses to corequisite classes in statistics and algebra that bear college credit but require an extra hour a week for tutoring and review of material, according to math Chairman Matthew Jones. A student who places two levels below college-level work still is urged to take a summer "Early Start" program that brings no credit; but if they complete that, they then can skip the next step on the ladder and go directly into a corequisite class, he explained.

The pass rates for the corequisite courses are about the same as those for traditional math courses and overall, Jones said, the change seems to be working well in moving students toward their degrees faster. While courses are redesigned to accommodate the extra material, Jones said the same college-level material is covered as in a traditional credit course. He said moving students more quickly into credit classes reduces their chances of dropping out because of issues in their personal lives or with their education: "The longer the path, the more chances there are for a student to get tripped up."

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CSU to overhaul remedial education, replace no-credit with credit-bearing classes

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A move from noncredit remedial courses to specially designed credit classes will offer extra tutoring and support to thousands of CSU students. Nearly 40 percent of last fall's CSU freshmen were found to need remediation in English or math, and 14 percent needed remediation in both subjects.

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs into law a new method of remediation that could possibly be more cost-effective.

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs into law a new method of remediation that could possibly be more cost-effective.

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A wave of remediation reforms has swept across the country in the past few years, and now Texas has passed a law that features a popular approach to developmental education.

Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the use of corequisite remediation as the required model for students in developmental education courses. Corequisite remediation places students in college-level, or gateway, English and math courses, but pairs those courses with additional supports.

"We took a look at the models around the country and saw a number of states where the corequisite models are working better than the other jumble of developmental educational models," said Raymund Paredes, commissioner of higher education for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. "We know Tennessee is doing well with the model. Colorado is doing well. We looked at the data and said we need to try something different."

More than half of students in the state's community colleges -- approximately 54 percent -- take developmental education courses.

The new law gives all of the state's public colleges and universities that have developmental education programs until 2018 to have 25 percent of their developmental students enrolled in a corequisite course. The mandate increases to 50 percent by 2019 and by 2020 to 75 percent.

Paredes said the gradual scaling up will give those colleges that prefer other remedial reforms an opportunity to try their approaches, gather data and demonstrate to lawmakers that other models are just as or more effective. But if they can't, the Legislature could decree that 100 percent of remediation be corequisite, he said.

Early research in Tennessee, which was one of the first states to scale up corequisite remediation in math, writing and reading for its community colleges, showed significant increases in students passing college-level courses.

Nearly 20 other states are moving to do the same, but without a legislative mandate, said Bruce Vandal, senior vice president for strategy, math pathways and corequisite remediation at Complete College America, which has been a major advocate for the reform.

"I don't know a particular state with a bill ready to drop, but after you see it in Texas, it's fair to say other legislators will take notice," he said.

Some critics have voiced concerns about corequisite remediation. They question whether or not it helps students who score the lowest on academic readiness exams and say the reform only works with additional financial resources. But the approach has caught on as passage rates have increased.

"Students scoring a 13 or below on the ACT are still passing college-level courses at much higher rates with the corequisite model than they were in the older model," Vandal said.

Under the previous approach to remediation, for Tennessee students who scored no more than a 13 on the ACT in math, less than 3 percent completed a gateway math course, a CCA report found. But in two years of using corequisite remediation, 58.3 percent of students passed the gateway math course despite scoring a 13 or lower on the math ACT.

But some in Texas remain concerned about the new state law.

Austin Community College, for instance, is launching a pilot corequisite math course in college algebra this fall that will enroll 200 students, said Carolynn Reed, the math department chair for the college.

"It's a pretty radical change," Reed said. "It's a total change in curriculum. You can't just put the two courses together. There are different [corequisite] models, and we're learning what is allowed and not allowed under the law."

The Austin pilot will use two instructors who will co-teach each corequisite course. But it can be a challenge to figure out which of the current adjunct professors meet the qualifications to teach the courses, she said.

"We have adjuncts that are only qualified to teach developmental math and adjuncts only qualified for college-level courses and some who have qualifications for both," Reed said, adding that it's easier for those who are qualified to teach college-level courses to get the qualifications to teach the developmental classes, but it's more difficult for those adjuncts with just the developmental qualifications to do the reverse, which requires a master's degree.

"A lot of this is still very unknown, and we'll probably know more once we try something in the fall, but it's a mix of excitement in trying something new ... and a mix of concern about the unknown and how this will affect adjuncts and our students," she said.

The Austin pilot courses will meet five days a week for a total of seven hours, and that level of instruction may not work for every student.

"It's very intense," Reed said. "We're concerned for the students at our community college who are part-time -- they have to work and have commitments outside of school, so they may not be able to commit to coming to school five days a week."

Paredes said one of the good things about the bill is that there are different types of corequisite approaches the colleges can offer.

"We're not suggesting we all do corequisite education in Texas the same way," he said. "Some will do it by offering more tutoring, others will have more paired courses, some will have supplemental instruction. There are a lot of approaches, and one of the things we'll do with the coordinating board is monitor all the strategies and identify the approaches that work best."

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Texas Legislature requires colleges to use popular reform approach to remedial education

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A wave of remediation reforms has swept across the country in the past few years, and now Texas has passed a law that features a popular approach to developmental education. Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law the use of corequisite remediation as the required model for students in developmental education courses.