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But what bothers educators and policy-makers is this: Many are also recent graduates who have left the high school stage with a diploma, only to find out a few months later that they’re not ready for even basic college work. Others are students who have mild developmental disabilities. Many of those students, certainly, are returning adults who left high school years ago.

At community colleges, which do the heavy lifting in remedial work, it has been estimated that 60% of first-time students need at least one remedial course. Nationwide, it has been estimated that one in five students at universities enroll in a remedial class. “I thought I would be taking a step ahead, like into calculus.” “I was shocked,” said Poole, who said he graduated from Summit Academy High School in Romulus with mostly B’s. But last fall, there he was - just months after he’d been handed a high school diploma - assigned to remedial math in a Wayne County Community College classroom rather than traditional classes at Wayne State University, as he’d planned. Factoring polynomials, working through linear equations, defining slopes. Math was never really a problem for Cameron Poole. What is taught in high school falls short In Michigan, more than $28 million is spent on remediation at the community college level alone.Įducators say there’s plenty of blame to go around - underperforming schools, overwhelmed parents, distracted students and even misaligned curricula throughout grades K-12 and into college.īut almost everyone agrees on this, said Henry Robinson, who oversees some of Wayne State University’s remedial programs: “For a number of reasons and in a number of ways, we are failing our students, and that means some of the brightest ones, too.” National data suggests that one in five students at four-year colleges seek remedial coursework, too.Īnd it’s a costly problem. Walk onto any of the state’s 28 community colleges, and one of every five students is enrolled in a remedial education course. As a result, remedial education classes are flourishing at colleges and universities. Many of them never catch on, even by high school. But it stumped more than half of Michigan’s fourth-graders last year. It should have been a simple math question.

#Simple math wow free#

BY ROBIN ERB, FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERĮxpert says universities, high schools need to work together