Study: Remedial math in high school leads to ‘modest’ boost in college credit
Allowing high school students to take remedial courses or allowing college students to take “co-requisite” courses while also taking college-level classes are two ways to increase the number of credits that students earn by the end of their second year in college, according to a new article based on study published in 2019.High school students in Tennessee’s Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support, in which students enroll in an online remedial course if their junior year ACT scores demonstrate a need, earned an additional 4.6 additional college credits by the end of their second year at a higher ed institution, compared to students from schools that didn’t have the program, according to the study led by Thomas Kane at Harvard University.
But the benefits of the program were “modest’ and did not increase students’ chances of completing a degree in two years. Meanwhile, a 2015 Tennessee policy allowing college students to take a remedial math course at the same time they take a college-level math course was found to be slightly more successful at helping students pass college math.
