#2 Remediation doesn’t work
At TCC, remediation actually DOES work for some
students. 71.1% of the 463 students who started in developmental math and enrolled in College Algebra within
two years of their first semester at TCC successfully completed that course with a grade of C or better. 66.2% of
the 494 students who started in developmental English
and enrolled in Composition I within two years of their
first semester at TCC successfully completed that course
with a grade of C or better.
study is a critical measure of success toward college completion.
The content in required gateway courses should align with a student’s academic program of study – especially in math.
Enrollment in a gateway college-lvel course should be the default
placement for many more students.
Additional academic support should be integrated with gateway
college-level course content – as a co-requisite, not a prerequisite.
But most TCC students do not complete their developmental requirements. Only 15.8% (460 students) of
TCC’s Fall 2010 cohort who tested into developmental
education at entry completed all their remedial requirements in one year. After two years, this number had risen
to only 562 students, or 19.3%. Over 20% of first-time
students testing into at least one developmental area
when they entered TCC in Fall 2010 had not enrolled in
any developmental course at TCC by Summer 2011.
Students who are significantly underprepared for college-level academic work need accelerated routes into programs of study.
#3 Too few complete gateway courses
At TCC, we need to decrease the number of students who
test into developmental courses, increase the persistence of students taking developmental courses, increase gateway course enrollment and success rates for students who start with their college
careers with developmental requirements, and increase their rate
of certificate and degree completion. The goals are clear. Now we
need to chart a course.
Of the 2,806 students in TCC’s Fall 2010 cohort
who tested into developmental mathematics, 11.7% (329
students) successfully completed College Algebra with a
grade of C or better within their first two years at TCC. Of
the 1,663 students in TCC’s Fall 2010 cohort who tested
into developmental writing, 19.7% (327 students) successfully completed Composition I with a grade of C or
better within their first two years at TCC.
#4 Too few graduate
The three-year graduation rate for first time, fulltime, degree or certificate seeking students in TCC’s Fall
2009 cohort was 23.0% for students who entered at the
college level but only 8.7% for students who entered at
the remedial level.
Multiple measures should be used to provide guidance in the placement of students in gateway courses and programs of study.
Students should enter a meta-major (a broad content area) when
they enroll in college and start a program of study in their first
year, in order to maximize their prospects of earning a college
degree.
TCC is now forming a task team to explore the way ahead
for developmental education at TCC. With faculty leadership and
using an action research cycle, the task team will identify the problem, investigate current practices, propose possible solutions, implement innovations to increase effectiveness, and then assess and
improve the innovations. The task team will begin its work this
summer and propose possible solutions in Spring 2014 for implementation and evaluation in the 2014- 2015 academic year.
Resources:
Complete College America. Remediation: Higher Education’s Bridge
to Nowhere, 2012.
While TCC is currently meeting and even exceeding its degree completion targets for CCA, our student
success data suggest that at least some of CCA’s claims
about remediation hold true at TCC.
Charles A. Dana Center, Complete College America, Inc., Education
Commission of the States and Jobs for the Future. Core Principles for Transforming Remedial Education: A Joint Statement.
December 2012.
What should we do about it?
Office of Planning and Institutional Research. Tulsa Community College Annual Student Assessment Report: 2011-2012 Activity.
http://pir.tulsacc.edu/sites/default/files/u2/Annual%
20Student%20Assessment%20Report%202011-2012.pdf.
CCA recently reported a new “consensus on remediation” that outlines “seven core principles for a new
approach (Core Principles for Transforming Remedial Education: A Joint Statement. December 2012):
Completion of a set of gateway courses for a program of
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