[Ohiogift] NYT on Remedial classes

[Margaret DeLacy]

Friends:

Below is a link to and excerpt from an editorial that appeared in today's New York Times.


"Guess Who's Taking Remedial Classes"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opinion/guess-whos-taking-remedial-classes.html?_r=0
 
"remedial students at private, nonprofit four-year schools spent an average of $12,000 extra to study content that should have been learned in high school. The total cost for all students and their families for remediation was nearly $1.5 billion for the 2011-12 school year.

The cost can be measured not just in dollars, but also in unmet goals. Among full-time students seeking a bachelor’s degree, those who take remedial courses are 74 percent more likely to drop out of college than nonremedial students.

The study challenges commonly held preconceptions about who needs extra help in college. At private, nonprofit four-year schools, for example, students whose families were in the top 20 percent of income nationally actually took more remedial courses than students in the bottom 20 percent at the same colleges.

The study does not indicate the specific places where these higher-income students grew up. But the income data suggest that many come from suburban communities whose schools did not prepare them for college-level work."