New Remediation Rules for Georgia Colleges
About 20% of Georgia college students enroll in some kind of remedial education class. But new rules that will take effect this fall are designed to reduce that number. Remedial education classes are offered in three core areas—math, reading, and English. Under the new rules, students can qualify for remediation in one or two areas and still attend college. But they won’t be able to attend if they qualify in all three.
Lynne Weisenbach is the University System of Georgia’s Vice Chancellor for educational access and success. She says the change isn’t meant to be punitive.
“The success rate of those students was really not good, in the 4 and 5% range,” she says, “So that was really a level of us being upfront with students about the chances of success.”
But Weisenbach says, those students can wait a semester and try again.
“There are lots of things they can do and come back and retry,” she explains, “So those doors aren’t locked, but it’s being upfront about that.”
Weisenbach says the idea is to make remedial education more effective. She says one way they’re doing that is by offering a combination class for students who need a little extra help in math, for example.
“We’ve been experimenting with offering the courses concurrently,” Weisenbach says, “So, the students are taking remediation at the same time they’re taking that math course. And the data is showing that works very, very well.”
Georgia’s technical colleges are also revising their remedial program. Executive director for academic affairs Joe Dan Banker says they’re tailoring their program to students’ needs.
“We’re breaking it into smaller pieces,” he says, “Instead of an entire course, we have modules. In math, we actually have a total of 15 modules.”
So, if a student needs a review of fractions, for example, he could take a class that just targets that concept.
But the problem doesn’t necessarily begin in college. Fulton County Schools superintendent Robert Avossa says making sure students are ready for college is part of his district’s new strategic plan.
“We want to ensure that 80% of the students who meet the requirements for SAT are prepared to go to college and don’t need to be focused on remedial courses and the kinds of things we’re hearing from our university system,” he says.
All Georgia school districts will implement new national standards in math and language arts this year. State education officials hope that will better-prepare them for college.
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