Remedial-class spending down

Arkansas’ public colleges and universities spent $43.2 million teaching noncredit, remedial classes last year to students who were not prepared for college-level course work, a new report compiled by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education shows.

That’s a decrease from $46.7 million in the 2011-12 academic year and from $49.8 million in 2010-11, according to the report presented to state lawmakers Monday.

The 2012-13 total is made up of more than $18 million in direct expenditures, suchas faculty salaries and classroom materials, and more than $25.1 million in indirect expenditures for general expenses like student registration.

Arkansas is working to reduce the expense of remedial courses by better preparing students before they graduate from high school and by redesigning the courses so they are more tailored to students’ needs, Higher Education Director Shane Broadway said.

“There are a lot of different ideas that are seeing success,” he said. “It’s just a matter of looking at different areas of the state and seeing which one will work in certain places.”

At Arkansas’ public institutions, students who score below 19 in at least one area - math, English or reading - of the ACT college-admissions test are required to complete remedial course work in that area before continuing to traditional, for-credit classes. The test has a maximum score of 36.

In the fall of 2012, 47.8 percent of 23,240 first-time students required remediation in at least one subject, a decline from previous years, according to a report by the Higher Education Department. That figure includes recent high school graduates and older, nontraditional students who have never attended college and who may need remedial courses because they have forgotten some material they mastered in high school.

Some students must repeat remedial classes multiple times to earn a grade that is high enough to continue on to traditional courses, and those academic struggles reduce their chances of completing a degree, higher-education leaders have said.

And remediation rates have drawn concern from state lawmakers who are concerned about the amount they cost the state’s higher-education institutions.

In the 2012-13 academic year, institutions raised about $23.2 million in remediation-related revenue derived from sources such as tuition for the courses and private grants, the report shows. The remaining $20 million in remediation expenses were covered through general revenue from the colleges and universities.

Leaders in higher education and the state’s Department of Education are working on several grant-funded efforts to redesign the way remedial courses are taught and administered, Broadway said.

Those include a pilot effort to identify academically struggling students and intervene before they graduate from high school with concurrent courses taught by a nearby community college and a special program that allows students to take remedial courses targeted to the specific areas they don’t understand while they also complete a general, for-credit course in that subject.

Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell has said the state’s adoption of Common Core curriculum standards will help boost college readiness among graduates and allow teachers to better track students’ academic progress, allowing them to intervene earlier.

By 2015, Arkansas will replace its standardized student achievement tests with an assessment based on the new curriculum standards and developed by a multistate consortium. That test will be calibrated with college-readiness standards and could eventually replace the ACT as a college-admissions criteria for some participating states, education leaders have said.