35 percent of state’s college freshmen take remedial class

Thirty-five percent of the 21,666 students entering a public college or university in Arkansas for the first time in fall 2016 took at least one remedial course, according to the state Department of Higher Education.

Whether that percentage is up or down depends on the department’s methodology, which it changed this year.

The department previously reported remedial students as those who scored below a 19 on the ACT college entrance exam. But — with approval earlier this year from the state Higher Education Coordinating Board — the department gave public colleges and universities more flexibility in determining which students need to be placed in remedial courses.

Higher education institutions in Arkansas had begun changing how they offered remedial courses and how they placed students into those courses. Because of

that, the agency’s old methodology became outdated, said Marla Strecker, senior associate director at the department.

Under the old method, the department counted anyone who scored below a 19 as a remedial student. In the past year, schools have changed how they place students in either a developmental or college-level course, and not all students scoring below a 19 took a remedial class, she said. Now, the department is counting the number of students who have actually taken a remedial course, she said.

The new method also includes more students, since it counts summer remedial programs, she said.

Remediation is an important issue in the state.

For students, getting past a remedial class helps those students toward graduation.

For policymakers, knowing whether students are ready for college in a state that traditionally ranks at or near the bottom in degree attainment helps them shape ways to create a better-educated workforce. An Arkansan with a traditional degree or high skilled job training certificate has a better chance of finding a well-paying job and helps Arkansas recruit companies, state officials have said.

The changes come as more states are turning to what higher education leaders call a corequisite remedial model, which places students in a developmental course and a college-level course simultaneously, said Bruce Vandal, senior vice president for results at Complete College America.

Complete College America is a national nonprofit group based in Indiana that seeks to the increase the number of Americans with career certificates or college degrees.

The group has led efforts to change the structure of remedial courses to make students more successful in their first credit-bearing classes. It has worked with Arkansas and other states — with the financial help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — to provide grants to a handful of colleges and universities to explore improvements to remediation, Vandal said.

“What was interesting was at that point, we didn’t have clarity on what were the most effective models,” he said. “They [the colleges and universities] took different approaches, and, as they implemented, it was really one specific model that far exceeded the results of any other model: corequisite models.”

The corequisite model has increased student success in college-level math courses threefold and college-level English classes to double the old rates, he said.

That method has taken hold in such states as Tennessee, which has carried out a full-scale approach for every student at a Tennessee Board of Regents school, all the state’s public colleges and universities except those in the University of Tennessee System, he said. Texas recently implemented the approach for 75 percent of its students needing developmental courses.

In Arkansas, colleges and universities in the late 2000s initially turned to technology to create a self-paced method that higher education leaders said at the time would work to meet students where they were academically, Vandal said. But studies soon found that the approach would help students complete remedial courses faster, but not collegelevel, credit- bearing courses, he said.

Still, he said, not every college and university in Arkansas has latched on to the corequisite model, he said.

The changes in remedial classes and placement in Arkansas come as the state is trying to increase its educated workforce.

Remedial courses in their old form — semesterlong classes that sometimes required one 16-week developmental course after another, meaning multiple semesters — have traditionally been a barrier to students’ success.

Students pay for the noncredit remedial courses, which don’t count toward a degree. And, many times, students retook either developmental courses or the credit-bearing courses that followed, such as composition 1 or college algebra, setting them back even further.

Retooling remedial courses to make students successful can help them graduate on time and with less debt, higher education leaders have said.

The state Department of Higher Education changed Arkansas’ policy of placing students in remedial courses because of several changes, Strecker said. ACT Inc. phased out Compass, a placement test, after the company decided it was not as useful as it wanted the exam to be. The company also changed its recommendation for placement in English, dropping the threshold score from a 19 to an 18.

On top of that, the state was picking up Math Pathways, which places students in major-specific math courses. For example, a student studying psychology would be better served with a statistics course than college algebra.

“I would say that we are using student-specific, majorspecific placement,” Strecker said. “So, it is working, but I can’t jump all the way out there and say we’ve cured it.”

The state is also using the new method of measuring remedial students in its new data-driven approach to funding its public colleges and universities. Arkansas funds its public higher education institutions largely by enrollment but is switching starting July 1, 2018 to a method that measures student success in various ways, including progression toward graduation and actual certificate and degree attainment.

Part of the department’s new policy also will require public colleges and universities to submit placement plans, which they will test this fall. The plan, Strecker said, will compel the institutions to examine their own data and tailor ways to better serve their students.

The department’s latest remediation report, using the old method, shows an increase in remediation rates: from 39.7 percent of 22,138 students in 2015 to 42.4 percent of the 21,853 students in 2016. The old method only reports students who scored below a 19 on the ACT, not whether they were actually placed in a developmental course.

Using the new method, the percentage dropped to 35 percent of 21,666 students entering a public college or university for the first time in fall 2016. More students were placed into a remedial math course — 27.7 percent — than English, 17.4 percent, or reading, 11.3 percent, according to the department.

Overall, the four-year institutions had smaller percentages of students taking remedial coursework in 2016 — 25.8 percent of 14,897 students. Two-year schools typically have higher rates of remediation, which is central to the mission of the community colleges, Vandal said.

In Arkansas, 55.3 percent of the 6,767 students entering a community college for the first time in fall 2016 took at least one remedial course, department data show.

Among the four- year schools, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville had the lowest percentage of students taking a remedial course at 6.3 percent of the 4,922 entering in fall 2016. The flagship campus, which has one of the most stringent admissions standards in the state, has stuck to traditional remedial courses — the semesterlong course — but will change the format this fall and spring, said Suzanne McCray, the university’s vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions.

Still, students may earn “lopsided” scores, for example, scoring well in English but scoring in the developmental range for math, she said. The university also makes exceptions, mostly for Arkansas residents, for students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, she said.

“We have such a small number of remedial students,” McCray said, “but we want to absolutely make sure that the students we admit are successful. I would stress that if a student struggles with one thing, it doesn’t mean they aren’t a great student. They’ve just got a little hill to get over to tackle that.”

This fall, the university is getting rid of reading remedial courses because students can overcome any gaps in reading through grit, she said. Instead, students who score below a 19 in that area will go into a corequisite American National Government course.

UA is looking to carry out changes to remedial math and English courses in the spring, she said.

The university is still using ACT scores to place students in certain courses, though it is considering using other measures, such as high school grade-point average, she said.

“We want to watch and see how these new courses work,” she said. “We do feel like the ACT score is a flag, and we want to make sure the student is prepared for the next course. We’re going to move slowly on making any changes.”

At Arkansas State University, administrators have taken to using high school GPA as an additional measure for placement, said Jill Simons, assistant vice chancellor for undergraduate studies. The school tested that in fall 2016 because research shows high school GPA “is a strong predictive indicator of college success,” she said.

Students who earn borderline scores on the ACT but have good high school GPAs can be placed in a credit-bearing course with some tutorial assistance, she said.

The Jonesboro university was one that received a Gates Foundation grant in 2012 and has since reworked its remedial courses, including combining reading and writing developmental courses into one called Academic Literacy that can be taken in the same semester as composition 1. This fall, ASU is reducing the number of hours for that combined course from four to two.

“We reduced the number of hours to further reduce the cost for developmental instruction for students,” she said. “Instead, we are able to build in supplemental support for these students to make up the difference in instructional hours.”

For math, the university uses a software-based program coupled with math facilitators.

“The new format allows students to advance at their own pace,” she said. “This is an extremely important development as students who need math remediation often have very different needs.”

Among the four- year schools, the University of Arkansas at Monticello and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff usually have the highest percentages of students needing remediation. UAPB has conditional enrollment, which allows students with ACT scores of 15 to 18, while UAM is an open-enrollment university, admitting students regardless of test scores or high school grades. Both schools have many students who do not require remedial education.

“We’re here to give opportunities for anyone who wants to improve their education and have that college degree,” said Peggy Doss, UAM’s vice chancellor of academic affairs. “If you invite people into your university knowing that they may need some assistance, it is our moral imperative to ensure we provide as many interventions and support as we can to ensure their success.”

At UAM, administrators have changed the semester-long format for developmental education to eightweek courses. For example, if a student needed additional help in English, the student would take fundamentals of English for the first eight weeks of the semester, and if he passes, composition 1 in the next eight weeks.

“We’re letting [students] concentrate on one of those at a time,” Doss said. “The more time they interact with faculty, the greater the bonds and the greater that communication. We are very, very serious about knowing our students as individuals and the whole student — not just the student on the academic side.”