Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005 | 11:11 a.m.
More than 40 percent of recent Nevada high school graduates entering college this past fall and summer needed remedial education to be able to do college level work, according to a new report university system officials issued last week.
It cost taxpayers more than $3 million to bring the 2,871 students up to speed in math and/or English, the report showed. About 34 percent, or 989, of those students needed help in both subjects.
The number of students needing remedial education has gradually crept upward every year, particularly at UNLV, where about 45 percent of the 2,255 entering high school graduates needed some form of remedial work this past year.
In 2001, only 39.4 percent of the 1,634 entering high school graduates needed remedial work at UNLV.
At the Community College of Southern Nevada, the percentage of first-time students needing remedial education increased from 30.2 percent of 1,733 incoming freshman in 2001 to 34.7 percent of 1,636 incoming freshman in 2004.
It costs $207 per credit hour to offer remedial courses at the state's community colleges, $231 at the state college level and $309 at the universities, according to the report.
University and Community College System of Nevada officials released the report last week to the Board of Regents, state lawmakers and Nevada school districts as part of a legislatively-mandated look at remedial efforts, Chris Chairsell, interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said. Lawmakers, regents and school district officials are looking for better, cheaper ways to improve the transition between high school and college in order to improve overall retention and graduation rates.
The report looks at the remediation rates at every UCCSN institution as well as the student need for remedial work based on each school district and each high school. About 40 percent of the students coming out of the Clark County School District needed remedial work, compared with about 42 percent for Washoe County, the second largest district in the state.
The report drew the ire of regent audit committee chairman Doug Hill, who called the findings "dismal" and asked that it be placed on a future agenda for discussion.
The national remedial rate for all postsecondary institutions in 2004 was about 30 percent, according to the American College Testing Program. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that about 40 percent of all public, two-year community college students and about 20 percent of all public, four-year university students don't have the basic math and writing skills they need for college work.
The state's high remedial rate is a cyclical, systemic problem that likely will never be completely resolved, Chairsell said.
The most obvious reasons for poor student achievement in college is that students were not properly prepared in high school or didn't perform well in high school, but it is also tied to how well the teachers themselves were trained during their time in college and how students were advised in high school in preparing for college, Chairsell said.
A task force made up of people representing school districts and the university system has been working for the past year on ways to better prepare students for college, Chairsell said, with an emphasis on getting students to take core classes in math, science and English with an emphasis on writing through their senior year.
The Board of Regents also approved a core curriculum in 2004 for students vying for one of the state's Millennium Scholarships. The curriculum, which will be a mandatory requirement for Millennium Scholars graduating in 2010 and beyond, is aimed at improving the preparedness of all college-bound students and even those seeking to enter a technical school or go straight into the workforce, Chairsell said.
"A rigorous high school curriculum will help you do all three, and at the end of it you will have choices," Chairsell said.
Many students, however, do not decide to attend college until their senior year, Chairsell said, when it too late to cram in those core courses.
The Clark County School District is mandating that students take algebra in the eighth grade and that all tenth graders take the PSAT to encourage them to take courses that will prepare them for college, Jane Kadoich, director of guidance for the school district, said.
The school district is also trying do a better job of educating parents about the difference between high school graduation requirements and college admissions so parents understand why the harder curriculum is necessary, Kadoich said. She said the realities of Southern Nevada's economy, with its basis in the service industry, make it unrealistic to mandate college-preparation classes for all students.
The increased remedial rates, however, may be tied to an increase in the number of Nevada high school graduates entering one of the UCCSN's institutions, education officials said. About 33 percent of Nevada high school graduates enrolled in a UCCSN institution in 2004, compared with only about 24 percent in 2000, Tyler Trevor, associate vice chancellor for academic and student affairs said.
Higher education officials credit the boom to both the Millennium Scholarship and increased recruiting efforts through things like the "go to college" brochure the Board of Regents' started putting out with grant money from Ed Funds three years ago.
Both programs have done an especially good job at increasing college access for low-income and minority students who are less likely to have taken the high school curriculum they needed to prepare for college, Trevor said.
The remedial classes are important to help students gain those skills they need quickly and to be successful in college, both Chairsell and Trevor said.
Although national studies show that students who take remedial classes are less likely to graduate than non-remedial students, state data shows that remedial students at the community college level are more likely to come back the following semester than non-remedial students and that remedial students at the university level are just as likely to come back as their peers, Trevor said.
"There's a lot of negative publicity about remediation but you have to look at the flip side of remediation," Trevor said. "It gets them in the pipeline and they are just as likely or more likely to stay in it than other students."
Higher education officials also challenged the notion that remedial classes are somehow "bonehead" math or English. Many students just need a brief refresher course because it may have been years since they took algebra, Chairsell said, who said she would likely fail a math placement test.
Most of the students in remedial courses are older, non-traditional students, and not the recent high school graduates looked at in the report, Chairsell said. Of the 5,627 students who enrolled in remedial education in summer or fall 2004 at CCSN, only about 10 percent were recent high school graduates.
According to a Board of Regents policy enacted last year, a student needs to take remedial classes in English or math if they scored less than a 510 out of 700 possible points in those areas on the SAT or less than a 21 out of 36 possible points in those areas on the ACT, Chairsell said.
Regents also encouraged individual institutions to use more diagnostic tests to pinpoint exactly where a student is deficient and what remedial courses he or she may need, Chairsell said. CCSN is already mandating that students take a diagnostic test prior to enrollment, and the system encourages students to take the remedial courses first so that they are better prepared.
The Board of Regents is weaning remedial education away from the universities as part of an overall plan to increase admissions selectivity at both UNR and UNLV. Both universities will be increasing their GPA requirements and will no longer receive state money for remedial classes as of fall 2006, Chairsell said.
Both universities may offer the classes on a self-supporting basis like continuing education does now, Chairsell said, but the state money will go to the community colleges to offer more remedial education there at a cheaper cost to taxpayers.
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