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The hope is that these efforts will also help students obtain their degrees sooner — one of the public university system's priorities. Cal State has committed to doubling its four-year graduation rate, from 19% to 40%, by 2025.

The implicit message here seems to be, "let everyone pass through the system regardless of how qualified they actually are, but we'll have to lower the bar to keep grades and graduation rates high."

In a society where there seems to be an increasingly prominent discussion about the (ir)relevance of university degrees, it seems astonishing that they would hold such a position. It's debatable whether there was ever a time when having a university degree actually meant you had a very high likelihood of being "ready to move into the workforce, ready to move into graduate or professional school.", but this certainly doesn't help...

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When you realize that it's all about equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity, it makes much more sense.

> It's debatable whether there was ever a time when having a university degree actually meant you had a very high likelihood of being "ready to move into the workforce, ready to move into graduate or professional school."

You're kidding right? That most certainly was the case... many years ago.

>The implicit message here seems to be, "let everyone pass through the system regardless of how qualified they actually are, but we'll have to lower the bar to keep grades and graduation rates high."

No. You are completely missing the point here. Graduation requirements have not changed. Students still have to pass the same amount of classes. What this will do is allow students to have a shot at taking actual credit courses rather than being forced into noncredit remedial classes they may not actually need. Remedial courses put an undue financial and time burden on students who would be better served with a bit of motivation and support to get through actual 101 level courses.

Is there a real issue here?

First of all, isn't failing the placement test prima facie evidence that you need remedial courses?

Second, at least my school generally gave you enough rope to hang yourself if you wanted to. You want to take arguably the hardest undergraduate math class in the US? Well go ahead...

> First of all, isn't failing the placement test prima facie evidence that you need remedial courses?

No. An anecdote:

In my tenth grade science class, they had a quiz where you have to memorize the name, atomic number, and atomic size of the first 20 elements of the periodic table. You then fill in the blanks on a table with each of these fields in the columns, and some elements in the rows. I passed this test.

In the first week of my eleventh grade chemistry class, we were presented with the same quiz. I knew I had previously passed this test, so I didn't study for it -- and got an F (~40%, IIRC). My Chemistry teacher -- concerned about my poor performance on this "placement pre-test", asked if I was sure I wanted to take his course. I replied yes, and went on to be the second or third highest mark in the class (an A).

(Of course, then I went into Software Engineering in University, and the lack of labs in our Chemistry courses completely ruined my passion for the subject.)

That's a great point. It's certainly possible to design a bad placement test.

It also seems that the now increasingly common format of multiple choice quizzes would be a "railroad" to designing bad placement tests - ones that verify remembering irrelevant details and how things are named/ordered/classified versus ones that verify skills and understanding of core concepts.

Quizzes (both single and multiple choice) are the worst possible way of testing student's knowledge, because they are sooo... easy.

Trouble here is that human memory is an associative memory - being given one piece of information helps you recall other, related piece. So when the correct answer is written down just few lines below the question you'll probably be able to identify it, even if your overall recall of the material is very bad. This strongly encourages learn-pass-forget style of learning.

To better test student's knowledge you need harder tasks: practical exam, asking to actually apply your knowledge. Or write an essay, which at the very least forces you to put your knowledge in some logical structure. Or the oral exam, where it's evident whether you can have intelligent discussion on the topic or not.

The only advantage of quizzes is that they are quick to do, quick to check, and give the teacher illusion of fairness (because there cannot be any debate whether or not answer is correct and complete).

> Quizzes (both single and multiple choice) are the worst possible way of testing student's knowledge, because they are sooo... easy.

Very much depends.

"Name members of X" is an easy question (unless there is a great amount of material that could be covered).

"Mark the following statements as correct or incorrect. Correct classification adds, wrong classification deducts points." can be a quite difficult type of checkbox-test.

Often there are ways to deduce the likely correct answer due to the way the questions and alternatives are formulated.

It is soooo hard to design a good multiple choice math test. I am trying to do exactly that right now, and resign myself to knowing that it will just be one non-comprehensive piece of evidence.

I did not-so-well on the math subject GRE myself. It was the first time I'd done multiple choice higher(ish) math questions and I just didn't train to triple-integrate fast enough or answer questions about the properties of ring homomorphisms. Write a proof? Sure! I did fine actually getting the PhD. I also placed into 'remedial' math at Caltech according to their placement test; fortunately they let me switch out and up in the first week as it really wasn't appropriate.

The students taking Sally's class all knew what they were in for and many had been preparing for it for all of high school.

No, you are missing the point. For many years now, admissions standards have been so low that rather than teaching the courses they are scheduled to teach, college professors are forced to offer a remedial review of information that should have been mastered in high school. Many, if not most, high school graduates are functionally illiterate, lacking the basic reading and writing skills we took for granted in the recent past.

US students ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math, and 28th in science. Kids in Hungary and the Slovak Republic outranked us.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students...

The sad truth is that the university in the USA are just degree mills looking to make the most money possible. They have no problem steadily lowering their standards to match the steady decline in the US educational system as long as the federally-backed student-loans keep rolling in.

I know the US system has its issues relative to other places, but I have never seen research showing that people are in fact worse going out.

In fact, I feel like I've seen a study showing that the "new math" teaching methodologies that get parents so mad nowadays end up with kids being better at math...

Funny, my kids' math teachers have all stated to me, in public not whispers, they hate the "new math" and it is inhibiting them from teaching math correctly. Since I wasn't educated in the "new math" as a kid I have difficulties helping my children with their homework, which the teachers also admitted to being a problem. Typically I just show them how to solve the problem the way I learned and they pick it up much quicker.

To each their own I suppose.

Does Common Core use what we called "the new math" back in the 1960s? (Tom Lehrer's song is probably as good an intro as any.) Good math teachers seem to be hard to find. That was true in my school days also.

There's some similarities. The old new math was all about learning abstractions early. The new new math is all about approaching math problems from many different angles to build a sense of when you'd use certain techniques and why they work. The common thread is a lack of emphasis on rote application of algorithms without explanation of how they work. Arguably, that's less important in the era of pocket calculators and computers.

I dislike the lack of emphasis on rote memorization. IMO the correct approach should be 1) understand the concepts, then 2) practice until such concept becomes muscle memory, which will serve as the foundation for the next level.

This is the same approach that sports/martial art/artisans use (deliberate practice, etc). The concepts are tools, and being able to use those tools intuitively and instinctively is key to advancing to the next level.

Consider the standard long division algorithm. Would you rather students become fast and accurate in applying it or would you rather students have the skills to understand what's going on and derive it for themselves? Drilling will certainly help with the former, but it crowds out time that could be spent exploring concepts. There's a balance to be struck.

No, Common Core mandates what kids need to learn when, not how they're taught.

The Common Core math curriculum is actually quite good and based on solid academic research on how to best teach those concepts to the majority of kids. Most of the parents complaining about it just haven't taken the time to read through their children's textbooks and understand the alternative techniques.

We don't have textbooks, we have worksheets. Worksheets with little or no explanation as to the expectations of how to complete the work. That part was covered in class. I was not in class, I was at work. My children don't always understand the alternative techniques and cannot explain them to me. I cannot assist my children in learning alternative techniques I did not learn.

Since we're generalizing, I think that most people that complain about complaining parents haven't taken the time to listen to what the parents are actually complaining about.

I can totally understand the frustration at not being able to help their kid at multiplication, of all things.

It would be interesting if teachers could provide cliff's notes of the lessons so parents can help out. Would help the kids too!

Or even better, teachers could have kids prepare explanations for the techniques. Might take a while but I bet the children will remember the techniques way better afterwards.

The information is readily available for free to anyone who bothers to do a little research. Your time would be better spent learning instead of complaining.

I do the research online to figure out how to explain it. The point is I shouldn't have to do that. I'm only guessing at explaining things with the, hopefully, proper context as to how the teacher expects it to be versus what I found on the internet.

But I'm happy everything works out so easily for you. I could only hope that one day I'll be as smart as you seem to be.

Most of the people who hate Common Core have no idea what it is and hate it because That Muslim is associated with it.

It's pure politics.

Agree that Common Core is good as a set of standards and as a set of teaching methods. However, I know how some ed companies put together their "common core" materials -- just permute existing crap and relabel. There is a lot of bad material out there with the Common Core label.

Hatred of Common Core is political in nature, and therefore not amenable to reasoned discussion.

If you hate something on political grounds, you're not going to be amenable to finding out what it actually is, for example.

Why would that be surprising? Hungary and Slovak Republic are countries with long traditions of strong education.

For a while, isn't that what we prided ourselves in here in America?

The US has generally done well in expanding access to schooling. That has not been the same as strength in education.

It's surprising because the per capita expenditure on education is higher in the US than pretty much everywhere else[1]. Assuming everything else is approximately equal (there are enough teachers, teachers havw proper access to materials, the intelligence of children is the same, etc) it implies that either spending more on education has a negative impact or that the US is using the wrong teaching methods.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...

It's not all about the money, it's obvious....

While educational spending per student is higher in the US, the travesty is where that money is spent. It's not all spent on the students. If it were, the US wouldn't have the (overall) terrible public educational system that it has.

https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/SMART-kapp-IQ-Pro-65-inter...

I recently visited a school with one of these in every classroom. Every student has a laptop. Every classroom has an unused commercial "curriculum" product in the corner.

And given how much administrators make, and presumably embezzle, I'm not even sure these are bad investments, in a relative sense.

I'd also look at purchasing power parity... A dollar goes a long way in education in countries with weaker currencies.

Or... it could imply that in the US the perception is your future depends less on whether you can conquer advanced math, so students aren't as motivated to learn. I would argue that perception is a bit wrongheaded, but perceptions are what people use to make decisions.

I grew up poor. A common sentiment among my peers about math was "I will never use this". No teacher ever corrected this sentiment. Teachers and parents alike seemed to accept that the kids were not able to succeed academically. There was no malicious intent, just acceptance. The kids were actors in a social environment in which trying hard in academics was a source of stigma rather than status.

The overwhelming majority of kids (including me) received poor educations. I learned this in college when I was shocked by the difficulty of the courses. The majority of the kids passed high school because the standards were lowered.

I think lowering the standards in college is failing to target the source of the problem. I believe the further you get from hard skills (e.g., math or cs) the more relevant your soft skills become (e.g., cultural fit)[0]. The fact of the matter is that poor people have a distinct culture and it involves many elements that are not normative. I don't know if it is objectively more difficult to assimilate culturally or learn hard skills. On the other hand, I found it so difficult to assimilate to my PhD program in a social science that I didn't finish. I found programming to be much easier, albeit still a difficult mid-career change, than assimilating culturally. If it is the case that acquiring hard skills offers better opportunities for the poor to rise, then that is exactly what teachers and parents should be telling their kids. That is exactly what those with "sympathy for the poor" should be funding.

[0]Brendan Eich & the Googler who wrote about diversity are counter examples. I can (but I won't) argue the case they have better chances financially due to their hard skills compared to a person in a occupation lacking said skills.

Finland was able to turn itself around in a generation from one of the worst pre college education systems in the West to one of the best, ironically using research from the USA. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-schools-r... Of course, a smaller, more homogeneous society would be easier to change than the USA.

I am worried that the sense of entitlement to a college education will just continue to dilute the value of a degree to where only those attending the very elite of schools will have anything of value.

Reading through this article reminds me of decades ago approaches to making sure graduation rates for high school went up. they simply changed the requirements and load, put the burden on faculty, and labeled anyone who disagreed as a bigot/racist/etc. So we ended up with students who do not know how to learn and their understanding of basic math, science, and literature, suffered.

Just what type of degree program will these young people actually obtain? Without the base Eskills how can they manage the more difficult subjects to come?

Ha thanks. I am from Slovak Republic originally. I don't think our schools are that good to be honest but I think there is a stronger emphasis on math/physics and technical skills in schools in Eastern Europe. Probably historical reasons.

I have always thought (guessed, really) that it is because Eastern Europe (and, more recently, many parts of Asia) recognize something that the West sometimes forgets, even though that is where you will find the strongest evidence for it: technical competence can lead to radically better lives.

Another factor: I know several people who went into math because it could not be politicized. There was not a party line to toe.

They should hear about the Pythagoreans' discovery of irrational numbers (in which the discoverer is said to have been drowned at sea for undermining their belief that only positive ratios could exist): https://brilliant.org/discussions/thread/discovery-of-irrati...

Interesting point, but if I remember correctly it was religious zeal rather than political.

I'm a recent graduate and work at my Alma mater, a large semi-private University.

The bar was extremely low, especially at the business school. I was perplexed after reading people's discussion board posts or edit group work. Many students had serious trouble writing coherently or using proper grammar. Math classes were even more ridiculous.

Around sophomore year I gave up on school work in favor of software development and still managed to graduate with a 3.2 GPA.

I'm looking for a new job in part because I disagree with their decision to seriously ramp up marketing and recruitment. IMO if a university can't stand on their faculty / programs / research they aren't really worth attending.

StanislavPetrov is correct - the incentives are set up for the colleges to graduate you. If they don't have enough students, or too many drop out, they won't have enough income.

> US students ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math, and 28th in science. Kids in Hungary and the Slovak Republic outranked us.

I understand the spirit of your example, but mentioning esp. Hungary is quite out of place. I work in an international context and have many colleagues from all over Europe - and the Hungarians absolutely kick major ass (Apologies to the HN community for the choice of language).

That is exactly the point. When the US has the #11 world GDP/capita and Slovakia has the 39th ranked GDP/capita (at 55% of the per capita GDP compared to the US), shouldn't the US strive to have higher educational standards? It's not down putting the Slovak educational system, it's more of a shot at the US system and the lack of emphasis on educational rigor.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

The US should strive to have better standards -- but it seems that there are interests that aim to have a less-educated population. There are strong forces thwarting the establishment of a well-paid and well-educated teaching profession in the US, strong forces against having standards in education (witness the fight against Common Core), and then strong forces determined to co-opt any minor successes in that direction (witness the crap materials produced by our major ed publishers labeled "common core", and the incredible profusion of badly-written tests that are in the end only designed for profit).

The US citizenry allows this, overall. Partly there is the manipulation of reasonable desires for "freedom" and "local control," and part of it comes from the social attitudes toward math and science that lead to STEM being disproportionately dominated by children of immigrants in the US.

Those studies are based on high school students...

Yes lower-ed degree mills are a huge issue, and need regualating, but that hardly applies to CalState, which is a top tier public school: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/cal-state-la-1140

> Those studies are based on high school students...

Appropriately so, when the issue is their preparedness for further education.

> Yes lower-ed degree mills are a huge issue, and need regualating, but that hardly applies to CalState, which is a top tier public school.

The concern is that it appears to be taking a step in the degree-mill direction. Reading the article in full does not assuage that concern:

“Our timeline for implementation is aggressive,” Minor [Cal State’s senior strategist for academic success and inclusive excellence] said, but “we've got more than enough evidence to suggest that our current treatment of students, with the use of developmental education courses, doesn't serve them very well. ... And we have worked with and talked to our faculty... who are ready to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work that we need to do to serve our students better.” [all elisions were made in the Times article, so I am trusting the journalist has not misrepresented Mr. Minor.]

The justification seems to be that this will work because a) other things do not, and b) we want it to work. Anyone who understands how bureaucracies respond to "aggressive" mandates that specify outcomes for unproven methods probably has misgivings.

CSU is literally middle tier in the scheme of public post-secondary education in California, being sandwiched between the junior colleges on the lower end and the University of California on the higher end. While certain campuses like Cal Poly punch above their weight, the system as a whole is not selective.

Just because the dumbest people participating in university courses have gotten a lot dumber doesn't mean that anyone else is affected by this change. Lowering the bar for acceptance is not the same thing as lowering the quality of education.

Hell if anything, universities are making up for the massive shortcoming of public schooling by offering courses to people who would not have otherwise received anything resembling an education.

As for the degree mill statement, who cares? Since when do degrees matter anyway? If destroying the integrity of the accreditation system results in more people getting an education, then so be it. Accreditation is almost never anything more than a racket anyway.

It matters if they have professors that grade on a curve. Take all of those students who wouldn't pass the math entrance exam and put then in the same College Algebra class. They are all terrible students but the curve grading passes 80% of them.

> allow students to have a shot at taking actual credit courses rather than being forced into noncredit remedial classes they may not actually need

If the placement tests are done well, they would indicate that which remedial classes the students may need. If the tests are flawed, fix the tests, don't eliminate them.

While putting them into 101 classes may help them, it slows down the rest of the class -- the students who are up-to-speed on the skills required for the class get less attention spent on them because more focus must be placed on the students who didn't pass placement.

> If the tests are flawed, fix the tests, don't eliminate them.

The tests are fine and we know it. The students are bad and so are their parents, who were also bad students.

Source: I was a bad student who had to change a lot in life. Magically when my attitude towards school changed so did my grades. Teachers can only do so much yet burden almost all of the blame.

> Magically when my attitude towards school changed so did my grades.

Funny how that works.

"Why won't you learn?!" "It doesn't matter to me!" is not a recipe for success.

I appreciate what you said. Made me want to jump out of my chair and clap. But then I would have been escorted to the loony bin, so...

Why do you believe that having a test administered by the school is the only way to identify students needing remedial help? The school is arguing that they can do a better job of identification by using existing grades and test scores. What's your evidence against this argument?

"Graduation requirements have not changed. Students still have to pass the same amount of classes. "

This is where you are wrong. Classes such as remedial English or basic mathematics did not used to count for college credit, they now do. Therefore students can graduate with a lower level of performance than was previously possible.

Incorrect; this is not granting credit for existing remedial courses, it is eliminating the existing set of remedial courses, and the testing and other policies aruoud them, and requiring new models (but not dictating one single model for all campuses.)

There area number of alternative remediation models that have been used in other institutions without the problems experienced by the current CSU remedial ed program that campuses may be guided by. This is all expressly laid out in the article.

You're right that there is some flexibility, but the basic move is to grant credit for remediation [see below]. Whether that means turning the intro courses into multiple semester courses or giving credit for summer prep. The problems with basing placements on high school grades is why they had to create the assessments in the first place. The better solution is the early assessment program, but since California has eliminated the high school graduation exam requirement, it gets harder to see which college bound student needs help in the 11th/12th grade level.

"Freshmen who would usually be directed to developmental English or math will instead enroll in the same general education classes as their peers, but they might receive additional tutoring or take the course at a slower pace, stretched over multiple semesters. A summer program for incoming freshmen who need extra preparation will be redesigned to count for credit." http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert...

> but the basic move is to grant credit for remediation [see below].

Your quote does not really support that description; it suggests that they will be directed into either non-remedial for-credit courses with additional tutoring or other support, or courses with the same content (and credit) as non-remedial courses but a stretched timeframe. The former is clearly not credit for remediation (the only “remediation” is outside of the for-credit classwork), the latter arguably could be described that way but the content is not remedial, only the manner of presentation.

> since California has eliminated the high school graduation exam requirement, it gets harder to see which college bound student needs help in the 11th/12th grade level.

It was suspended through 2018, and there is a recommendation to repeal it, but the exit exam wasn't based on current curriculum standards and the other assessments (including several in eleventh grade) that are aligned with those standards aren't being eliminated. So I don't think it has any bearing on how hard it is to identify students falling behind.

I think the point is- courses that cover material that used to be considered below college level will now be given college credit. Or courses that cover college material will now be stretched into two semesters, doubling their credit. The logical result of this is that the material level that is covered in college will go down, as people will be using up credits on lower level courses.

HS graduation exams are useful feature of most successful school systems. That so many people were passing those but still requiring remedial instruction indicates that there was something lacking. However, if graduation rate is the metric you are optimizing for, there is no need to pull those in.

On the one hand, I remember my high school math teacher complaining about how colleges even had to offer remedial education (she considered it proof that high schools were generally failing to do their jobs).

On the other hand, I personally didn't go straight from high school to college, so I was given a particular placement exam, and when I passed it I was put in college algebra (instead of being allowed to take the next harder placement exam). It was clear to me after about a week that I remembered more math than the school thought I had. Of course, I should have tested out of the class and used the free time to take something that would have been more useful to me.

I wish the school had been less rigid about which math class they would allow me to take. But the obvious outcome with this policy change will be that students will have to decide which class to take, and some will get it wrong. Will they be allowed to fail? Will that help double the graduation rate? Will more classes simply include remedial material? If so, is that an improvement?

The problem is students who should be in remedial courses are going to turn the first year of college into High School Part II for everyone.

As far as I can tell from the article the goal is to reduce the number of classes the students need to graduate. They are not say that that graduates will not meet the graduation requirements for math and english but that they have better ways to get them to learn what they need to learn to graduate. I have no doubt that every extra class that a student needs to take makes it less likely that he/she will graduate. It seems like the change is positive.

The real problem is that high schools aren't preparing some students for college. That's really where things need to change.

I don't know about you but the last time I saw a class take on extra teaching load to help students "catch up" and not sacrifice on other teaching goals was... never. You seem unrealistically hopeful that things are going to work out the way they claim.

But then the change contradicts your statment that the purpose "is to reduce the number of classes the students need to graduate" because if a student readiness for Math and English are low, then it doesn't make sense for them to move ahead.

I agree with your final point. I also believe if the current mandate is to ensure students are prepared for upper course load, then at least the entry to admission perhaps need to be increased? Or at least offer a free one-semester remdial class. If someone is not ready to do a "2x+3=6" then high school education failed to do its job and allowing the student going into a college knowing every college requires some math class to graduate (pre-calc, or as calculus+), only do more harm.

Exactly. And sticking them in a 101 level class when they really should be in remedial can end up having taking the same amount of time if that student now needs to take the class twice (or more) to pass.

Except that they are now allowed to take other classes at the same time, which was previously disallowed.

Well, if those classes don't require the Math/English level they needed, then that makes sense.

The Khan Academy is a great resource for those students. Ideally we would fix the system, but in the meantime we can point them to how they can use software to catch up with (and eventually surpass) their peers.

Fixing high schools for real would require us to get engaged with politics -- that's at least three more years of hard work ahead of us.

If a university lowers the bar, it will reduce the value on the job market of a degree from that university - names like Hardvard and Yale and whatnot have a high reputation, whilst they hand out degrees with the same names as other less reputable universities.

This is the only reason Harvard and Yale have any value. You could take the first year student intake at these institutions and distribute them randomly to other universities and the end result would be the same as letting the students study at Yale or Harvard.

No. If you distributed the students admitted to Harvard among other universities their education would be impaired by the fact that the professors would have to dumb down the material taught in their classes to their less bright colleagues. Not to mention that the professors themselves would not be as smart and accomplished as Harvard professors.

I think you are overestimating how much influence professors have (something I lament as a former professor). The high achieving students succeed despite anything their professors might have done or said.

A distinct flavor of hubris arises from self-proclaimed brilliance being so easily impaired by a silver spoon that isn't quite as shiny.

Yet it is certainly true. More than the professors, I think the peer group matters in pushing students to their full potentials.

It probably has more to do with the simple name of the university opening doors.

Investors and employers will give more to a Harvard grad than to an equally accomplished state-school grad.

"the professors would have to dumb down the material taught in their classes to their less bright colleagues."

A fascinating side effect of open courseware and online lecture videos is the elimination of that peculiar historical belief. For example, per video evidence, the kids in Professor Strang's linear algebra classes are definitely not observably smarter than the kids I met in my linear algebra class. There is a small measurable quantitative difference, but in practice there is no observable qualitative difference. The much maligned concept of human biological differences observationally do not extend to mere ivy-attendance.

Counter-anecdote:

I passed University physics by watching MIT OpenCourseWare lectures and those kids learned in a week what took us three...

They will always have the cream of the crop. It's not comparable to a Cal state.

PwC, E&Y and others dropped university requirement because they don't tell anything about people.

This is a downward spiral. Universities get less picky, A inflation, more money for universities but devaluing degrees. Companies catch on and drop the requirement for degrees.

"Our own internal research of over 400 graduates found that screening students based on academic performance alone was too blunt an approach to recruitment. It found no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications undertaken."

http://www.ey.com/uk/en/newsroom/news-releases/15-08-03---ey...

Companies will not drop the requirement for degrees, they will simply want the degrees from the universities/colleges that don't engage in this nonsense.

No, they have dropped the requirement, see the source.

I think this is not fair.

First, many college remedial courses don't achieve their aims. They have high DFW rates (D means you can't progress, as C or better is usually the prerequisite, F is fail, W is withdraw). Their graduates often don't do that well in the next class anyway.

Second, there is a lot of evidence that providing good teaching and targeted intervention in the 101 class (rather than the remedial class) increases achievement and advancement. One really interesting example is the Wisconsin Emerging Scholars program. It is not remedial, but it does take students who are no more prepared for calculus than any other students and ask them to spend more time on the harder material in class, and these students do better. Many WES students are from demographics with lower math achievement in regular classes.

While remedial classes have face value, they don't actually have a track record of success! Why persist with something that does not achieve what it aims for?

> The implicit message here seems to be, "let everyone pass through the system regardless of how qualified they actually are, but we'll have to lower the bar to keep grades and graduation rates high."

This is how highschool was for me. I dropped out of a highschool with a 98% graduation rate. In that situation, no one cared if people were learning or even about what's best for the society or economy. For the school it's about building a system that gives them the desired numbers. Second anecdotal: Education has been giving girls better grades. There is a college in California that is famous for their animal science and veterinary programs. Girls don't want to work with big animals. So the school simply does not have enough people interested in big animals. They tried lowering the GPA requirement just so they could let enough boys into the program. This caused their school ranking to fall, and they immediately reversed the decision.

Schools are playing politics. Favoring girls in education has led to problems across the board as people just assume girls will want to do the same jobs at the same rate.

All anecdotal for sure. Definitely nothing conclusive. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents.

No, it's that empirically, the delays imposed by the existing requirement to complete remedial classes before taking any other classes has been counterproductive. They aren't lowering standards to pass substantive classes, the are requiring different mechanisms for closing the gaps that have worked better than the current CSU remediation model in other institutions.

Nowhere in the article was it even suggested that graduation standards would change; given only 19% of students graduate within 4 years, the system is clearly willing to hold the line on graduation standards. Instead, it's discussed at length how to help those students require remedial work to get through in 4 rather than 5 years.

Yes, and more specifically they are hoping to (a) reduce the number of students forced to take remedial classes when they actually were prepared for regular classes and (b) increase the sense of belonging and progress in students who do need remedial work by allowing them to take regular for-credit classes alongside any remedial work. There's no reason a student can't take French 101 just because they aren't up to speed on their math yet, and the current system that prevents them from doing so directly causes increased frustration and dropping out because of the wasted time.

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