New Remedial Approaches Can Increase College Completion

Placement in remedial courses does lower college completion rates, but new approaches are helping more remedial students with college success. Chabot College near Oakland, Ca. uses a learning community that keeps the same students together with the same teacher for three semesters including the first levels of credit courses that transfer to universities. Students who enter remediation ask when they read : What am I looking for? What should I focus on? They help each other and form a close bond with the teacher. Many of these students lack confidence in their own abilities. Chabot also provides a paired course in a subject matter area like history for these same students. This helps students grapple with big questions in a disciplne as well as reading techniques.
To find out more email khern@chabotcollege.edu. She has some evaluation results that show more progress for these students, but still a large majority do not persist in college.