SUCCESS RATE OF REMEDIAL EDUCATION AT ATLANTIC CAPE COMMUNITY COLLEGE IN NEW JERSEY PROJECT PROPOSAL Diane D Amico The Press of Atlantic City

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1 SUCCESS RATE OF REMEDIAL EDUCATION AT ATLANTIC CAPE COMMUNITY COLLEGE IN NEW JERSEY PROJECT PROPOSAL Diane D Amico ` The Press of Atlantic City Community colleges have become a cornerstone of the American Higher Education system. Accessible to all, they offer affordable postsecondary training for careers, or an alternative path to a bachelor s degree. But students who require remedial coursework often must complete that work before they can even begin their academic program. In New Jersey, community colleges have been given a higher profile as the funding-strapped state Legislature turns to the local two-year schools to provide an affordable option in a state with among the highest public four-year college tuitions in the nation. Recent laws have provided more scholarship funds for community college student (NJSTARS), and required the community and four-year state colleges to create more seamless transfer policies (NJTRANSFER). One snag in the process has been the high percentage of students who require remedial courses. Nationally that number has ranged from 29 percent (NCES 2008) to 60 percent (Lumina Foundation 2008). At Atlantic Cape Community College more than 75 percent of students entering in the fall of 2006 required remediation. The college offers multiple remedial courses and counseling. But is that enough? Do students complete remedial courses successfully, and if so, do they go on to complete their degree? Or do they become discouraged and drop out? Is remediation it a double-edged sword, creating barriers to success even as it helps students succeed. Or does it serve as a filter to catch those likely to fail anyway? I hope that the answers to those questions can help students, colleges and Legislators make more informed decisions about community college access, scholarship funds, and financial aid.

2 The research design for this project will be a longitudinal case study of fulltime students attending Atlantic Cape Community College in southern New Jersey who require remedial education and are working toward an associate s degree. The college serves about 7,000 students on three campuses in two counties. About half of all students attend full time. Through a combination of statistical data, a student survey and personal interviews, I hope to provide a better understanding of the remedial experiences of these students. The college will provide statistical information on the remediation, retention and graduation rate of students, made available as data only, without individual student identification. This data is available through the state Open Public Records Act, and some of it is publicly posted online. Data will be collected for the freshmen classes entering college in the fall of 2004, 2005, 2006, and While federal graduation data is collected on a three-year timeline for community colleges, remediated students may take longer, and I would like to see if there is evidence that they do persist. The collection of data for four groups of students may also provide some insight into the effectiveness of remedial programs developed by the college. For example, in previous years the state s 19 community colleges each set their own benchmark scores on the Accuplacer standardized placements tests in math and language arts used to determine if a student needs remediation. Under this system, a student could be assigned to remedial courses at one college, but not another, depending on his or her scores, and the colleges could modify their benchmark scores each year. Today all 19 colleges use the same cut scores, but changes in scoring benchmarks may have had an impact on the number of students requiring remedial courses and their success rate during the period in the study. Because of the age diversity of community college students, the data will be divided into two groups, those entering just out of high school, and those entering as older adults returning to school.

3 Within the group of students entering after high school, there will be a subgroup of NJSTARS students who graduated in the top 20 percent of their high school class and are receiving fully paid state scholarships. The colleges have been tracking this group of students as part of the state program. State Legislators were appalled last year when Jane Oates, the executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education testified that 30 percent of the NJSTARS students required at least one remedial course. Just 21 percent of the first class of NJSTARS scholars statewide who began college in 2004 had graduated two years later, and only 45 percent graduated in five semesters. Tracking these students can offer additional insight into the effectiveness of the remediation process and other factors that contribute to college completion. Once I have the data, I will research and analyze why some students succeeded and others did not. I would like to set up a survey to ask students about their remedial experience and its impact on their progress towards a degree. Among the options are an online survey distributed by the college that would also ask students willing to be interviewed to include personal contact information. This method would protect the privacy of the students, but also hopefully provide a large enough sample for interviews. I also plan to attend remedial classes and interview students and professors. In all cases, I will identify myself, explain the project, and obtain permission to use names and comments from all participants. One limitation of the project is the potential difficulty of reaching students who have graduated or dropped out, and may be less likely to respond to the survey. Another limitation may be the volume and value of the data collected. Depending on the student survey results, this proposal may become more specialized, focusing on just one cohort group for which there is both sufficient data and student response. However, the additional data collected could serve as the basis for additional future research.

4 REPORTING PLAN Summer 2009: Work with college to compile and analyze data on remediation rates; develop student survey. Take Accuplacer test. Fall 2009: Distribute survey, attend remedial classes, interview staff and students. Spring 2010: Write stories for The Press. Summer 2010: Complete capstone project for U. Penn. The fellowship will allow me to take some concentrated periods of time off from work to concentrate on the project. It will also help pay for my final capstone advisory course at U. Penn.

5 Suggestions for Project Diane D Amico The Institute staff felt your project needed a bit more focus and direction. Here are some of our suggestions, thoughts and questions, which you can discuss with your mentor and editors as you do more reporting and more tightly focus your project: Story needs to be about people more than data why do some students succeed but others don t? You must identify a narrower and more do-able story; we don t really see one at this point as you are overwhelming the reader with academic data We suggest you may want to narrow your focus by identifying NJSTARS students and talk to them about their HS experiences. Touch base with a few of them during their first semester and get their impressions; how many still have to take remedial classes? Why? Is college communicating well what they need? Maybe throw in statewide policy angle. What does this say about their high school education? Make sure this is geared to readers who don t know much about community colleges; take them inside the lives of some of these students and tell stories so they don t get bored and stop reading