What is Your Strategy?: A Framework for State Remedial Education Policy

Today, GPG released its policy framework for how states can more effectively integrate reforms to remedial education policy into efforts to increase college attainment rates. With over 42 million adults between the ages of 18 and 64 who are candidates for higher education, and likely have academic deficiencies, it is clear that effective remediation is critical to state and national college completion strategies. See Press Release.

What is your strategy?

GPG believes that effective reform of remedial education can not be achieved merely by tweaking your assessment policy, adjusting your cut scores or through individual institutional reforms to instructional delivery. Instead, remedial education needs to be examined in light of state goals to increase the number of people with livable-wage jobs and careers and college degrees. In addition, remedial education policies must reinforce mandates on higher education to increase program productivity and operate with fewer public resources. GPG believes that remedial education can play a critical role in state postsecondary reform efforts if policies are aligned and leverage the following policy levers:

Data and Reporting

Most state and system reporting on remedial education is focused on the percent of recent high school graduates who are placed into remedial courses. Few states gather data on the participation of adult students and even fewer report on how well remedial students perform in their remedial or college-level courses. While there are great concerns about the costs of remedial education, only a handful of states actually track and report on the cost of remedial education to students and institutions. If states are serious about the reform of remedial education, they must gather, analyze and report data on the success of all students in remedial education.

Assessment and Placement

Most states have not carefully examined the impact that current policies on approved assessments, delivery of assessments, cut scores and placement requirements have on student success. With more research showing that the main cause of failure in remedial education is because students never complete-or even start-their remedial sequence, states need to understand how their assessment and placement policies facilitate student enrollment in and completion of remedial education.

Delivery

Many state policies can impede innovation in the delivery of remedial education. Enrollment-based funding, registration reporting dates or specific course requirements for students placed in remedial education can keep faculty from developing innovative delivery models that are more competency-based and accelerated. Many states encourage institutions to provide alternative delivery approaches, but rarely provide incentives or requirements to implement and sustain these models. Moving students through remedial education as quick as possible necessitates a review of policies to ensure more rapid completion.

Funding

The funding of remedial education can be a primary mechanism for driving innovation. However, it can also provide a disincentive to both institutions and students. Performance-based funding for remedial education or disassociating funding from enrollment in remedial courses can communicate to campuses the need to provide remedial education in innovative ways. Likewise, making students pay a higher tuition rate or assume the exclusive burden of paying for their remediation can discourage enrollment in remedial education and, as a result, decrease the likelihood of completing their remedial education sequence and moving on to college-level work. States should examine how funding impacts the delivery of remedial education and whether it provides an economic disincentive for students to complete their remediation.

Accountability/Continuous Improvement

Including remedial education as part of a state strategy to increase college attainment means creating benchmarks for success, mechanisms to hold institutions accountable and processes for continuous improvement. Few states have established performance indicators for remedial education and those that require institutions to develop improvement plans gather little data or provide few carrots for their successful implementation. Moving innovative ideas to scale also requires a system-level commitment to measure who is doing the job well and who needs to improve.

Over the course of the next year and a half, GPG will be developing model policies and strategies for each of the policy levers, as well as a toolkit that will enable states to develop a more systemic approach to remedial education for their state.