Community Colleges and Remedial needs

[skysidhe]

I saw this article this morning. I am surprised but shouldn't be, that community colleges are now heavily leaned upon to bring students up to par with college course requirements.


Isn't it the responsibility of the high schools to get kids ready for college?

About three-quarters of the 17,500 freshmen at the community colleges this year have needed remedial instruction in reading, writing or math, and nearly a quarter of the freshmen have required such instruction in all three subjects. In the past five years, a subset of students deemed “triple low remedial” — with the most severe deficits in all three subjects — has doubled, to 1,000.

The reasons are familiar but were reinforced last month by startling new statistics from state education officials: fewer than half of all New York State students who graduated from high school in 2009 were prepared for college or careers, as measured by state Regents tests in English and math. In New York City, that number was 23 percent.

Many of those graduates end up at CUNY, one of the nation’s largest urban higher-education systems, which requires its community colleges to take every applicant with a high school diploma or equivalency degree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/ny...l.html?_r=1&hp