With an eye to increasing graduation rates, the California State University is adopting far-reaching strategies to help students overcome obstacles posed by remedial classes in math and English.
The changes stem from new policies announced Wednesday by California State University Chancellor Timothy White and tackle several aspects of remedial education for freshmen that advocates have been championing for years.
The strategies outlined by White emerge from concerns that students in remedial classes take far too long to reach their academic goals — and in many cases never do so because they have to take sequences of remedial courses before they can take college-level courses for credit. Many get discouraged and drop out before graduation.
By the end of this month, CSU will drop math and English placement tests the system has been using for years and for the first time rely on multiple measures such as a student’s high school grade-point average, grades earned in math and English, and test scores on standardized tests like the SAT, ACT or Smarter Balanced assessments to determine whether incoming freshmen are placed in courses that include remedial work.
Terminating use of the placement test with multiple measures emerged out of concerns that the placement tests don’t accurately predict whether a student is ready for college level work or not.
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