How to Prepare More College-Ready Students

It is useful to highlight some particularly good state studies and actions regarding college student risk factors and college support for struggling students. A superb report was released on February 12, 2007 by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education through their Developmental Education Task Force. It is entitled Securing Kentucky’s Future. It has six core recommendations:

1. Update college admissions regulations
2. 
   Create an integrated accountability system tied to performance funding
3. 
   Fund infrastructure improvement
4. 
   Align college readiness standards and tie to educator professional development
5. 
   Better link educator preparation to college readiness
6. 
   Develop early student interventions

Among the specifics in the report is a detailed plan on how to help students with poor college preparation once they enter college. A key passage is quoted below:

Best practice, as implemented in the Council’s admission regulation, will require that under-prepared students (a) receive developmental help in their first semester of college (or perhaps before that in summer workshops); (b) be required to stay in developmental education until they successfully complete the course(s); and (c) take the appropriate credit-bearing course(s) immediately following completion of developmental work.

Implementing these changes will require improved (and more directive) advising, revisions in course registration procedures, and additional resources to increase the availability of developmental education in the first semester for all students in need.

Labels: College Completion, College Preparation, College Success, ready for college