At Issue: Developmental Education and the Success of Our Community College Students.

Abstract

Introduction The growing national evidence on the number of students who enter community colleges with weak academic skills demonstrates the dramatic increase in the incidence of underprepared students matriculating into postsecondary education. But the same evidence demonstrates that what happens to these developmental students upon enrolling into institutions of higher education is perhaps even more alarming: Developmental education as it is now practiced is not very effective in overcoming academic weaknesses. This deluge of underprepared students into two- and four- year institutions demands that these numbers be nationally and locally acknowledged and that the realigned scope of developmental education be recognized as an urgent goal for our institutions. Never before in the history of education has developmental education been a targeted focus on community college campuses. The size of the developmental population at the nation's public two-year colleges has grown over the past decade from 43% enrolled in remedial courses during 2003-2004 (Horn & Nevill, 2006) to 60% in 2009-2010 (Hale, 2010).An overwhelming proportion of students entering community colleges are underprepared to meet the rigors required of college-level course work. Nationally, 73% of community college entrants under age 24 scored into the lowest two quartiles of the SAT or ACT (Goldrick-Rab, 2007), and only 22% of high school graduates nationally scored at a college-ready level in all three basic skill areas. According to Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder, current ACT data (2011) reported an alarming figure; only 16% of Michigan's high school graduates are considered college-ready. The downward trend in our education is alarming. According to UPI.com. (2008), our nation's students are trailing behind when compared to other industrial nations; the United States ranks 18 out of 36.Because of global and economic changes, these data serve as the impetus to do things differently. Also a growing concern is that college-ready is no longer limited to the underprepared high school graduates; the scope of developmental education has grown. Not only does the educational system realize the need to do a better job of preparing high school students for college, but our educational system is now faced with the need to find ways of preparing the thousands who are suddenly out of work. Indeed, the idea of developmental education reaches beyond remedial. Developmental students of all ages often lack direction and goals, motivation, self-confidence, and belief in their own self-efficacy. This scope must expand to include content-specific, college-level gateway courses that are not often thought of as developmental. …