Charging school districts for student remedial courses won't improve college preparation

Posted Date: 04/01/2021

Earlier this session, a Kansas Legislative House committee defeated a proposal to require school districts to financially compensate higher education institutions for the cost of remedial or developmental courses required for students. Such a proposal has been made before and could come up again this session.

It is important to note that high school graduation requirements are not the same as courses to best prepare a student for college, and that students and their families decide which courses to take. Not surprisingly, students who take college prep courses are far less likely to need remedial courses, as are recent high school graduates.

In recent years, Kansas scores on the ACT tests have declined, but at the same time, the percentage of students needing remedial courses has also declined, and more students are passing college courses in high school.

Charging districts for the cost of remedial programs for their graduates would be unfair, unequal and counterproductive. Students need better planning for college and careers. Taking funding from schools will not help.

Key Points:

The courses required for high school graduation are not the same as the courses that are most likely to prepare students for college.

It is suggested that schools should pay for remedial courses (called developmental courses by colleges) because any high school graduate should be prepared for college; therefore, if a student needs remedial courses, it must be the fault of the school system.

However, since at least 1996, Kansas state law has recognized that a high school diploma is not necessarily enough to prepare a student for college. K.S.A. 76-717 has allowed the Kansas Board of Regents to adopt admissions standards for state universities that exceed the high school graduation requirements alone.

The Board of Regents has defined a college preparatory curriculum that requires more total units in core academic areas and more specific courses within those areas. (See below.)

Students who take high school courses designed to prepare for college do better than students who do not; and the longer a student is out of high school, the more likely they will need extra help.

Data from the ACT test shows that Kansas students who report taking more courses in English, math, social studies and science are far more likely to score as college ready than students taking fewer courses.

According to data from the State Board of Regents, at the state universities, which have admissions requirements and a maximum 10 percent exceptions window, about 10 percent of students are placed in developmental or remedial courses. At Kansas community colleges, where only a high school diploma is required, about 35 percent of students are placed in such courses.

Students aged 20 and older are more likely to be placed in developmental courses than students aged 17-19, especially at the state universities.

Many students choose not to take college preparation courses.

According to ACT reports, about 25 percent of Kansas students self-report taking less than the ACT recommended “core” curriculum to prepare for college, or about 6,250 students out of those tested. That is more than the number of 17-19-years in remedial courses in 2019 reported by the Regents for community colleges (4,166) and state universities (938).

There are many reasons students choose not to take college preparation courses. They make not be planning to attend college, and although the percentage is declining, many employment fields do not require college. They may not interested in such programs. Such students may change their minds about college when it is too late to take such courses.

As long as college prep courses are not required for high school graduation and some postsecondary institutions continue to enroll students without such courses, many students will likely continue to graduate from high school without them.

Trends in college preparation and remedial courses.

According to the ACT testing program, 41 percent of Kansas high school graduates met three or four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in 2019, the last year before the COVID pandemic. Kansas was above the national percentage of 37 percent of 2019 graduates meeting three or four benchmarks. However, the Kansas percentage has dropped from 46 percent in 2015, after rising for the previous decade. That decline followed eight years of Kansas education falling behind inflation and the U.S. average.

Although Kansas ACT results have been decreasing, since 2015 the percentage of 17-19-years at community colleges in developmental courses also decreased from nearly 40 percent to 33.3 percent, and at state universities from 14.1 percent to 8.9 percent, according to the Kansas Board of Regents.

The number of postsecondary academic courses earned by Kansas high school students in dual and concurrent enrollment courses has also been increasing.

Charging districts for the cost of remedial programs for their graduates would be unfair, unequal and counterproductive.

According to the Board of Regents, there is not a statewide standard for placement in developmental and remedial courses. Charging school districts for these costs would be unfair because it would be based on at least three things districts can’t control: whether or not students choose to take college prep courses, whether they change their mind about attending college and when they attend, and which colleges they decide to attend and what standards those colleges use.

Low income, disabled and minority students tend to start school less prepared, have more difficulties during school and are less likely to be as prepared for college than other students. However, these students need to attend postsecondary education to overcome these challenges. Charging school districts will take more funding from districts that need resources to assist these students.

A better way to improve college readiness is to support the Kansas Board of Education’s goal of improving individual plans for study to help students focus on career goals and whether that will require postsecondary education; and improving college and career counseling to help students understand how to better prepare for college. These are critical elements of the State Board’s Kansans Can program.

Sources:

https://www.kansasregents.org/resources/Dev_Ed_Report.pdf

https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/cccr2018/P_17_179999_S_S_N00_ACT-GCPR_Kansas.pdf

https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2020/2020-Average-ACT-Scores-by-State.pdf

http://www.act.org/content/act/en/research/reports/act-publications/condition-of-college-and-career-readiness-2019.html

https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/cccr-2019/Kansas-CCCR-2019.pdf

High School Graduation vs College Preparation Courses:

Under Kansas law, graduates from an accredited Kansas high school must meet at least one of three criteria to be guaranteed admission as a freshman at state universities:

(A) The applicant has completed the precollege curriculum prescribed by the board of regents with a minimum grade point average of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale or has been recognized by the board of regents as having attained a functionally equivalent level of education; or

(B) the applicant has a composite American college testing program (ACT) score of not less than 21 points; or

(C) the applicant ranks in the top 1⁄3 of the applicant’s high school class upon completion of seven or eight semesters.

State law also requires each institution to have a policy “permitting the admission of not more than 10% of the total number of freshman class admissions to the state educational institution as exceptions to the minimum admissions standards” in state law.