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John E. Roueche is a professor anddirector of the Community CollegeLeadership Program at the University of Texas-Austin, where he holds the Sid W.Richardson Regents Chair in CommunityCollege Leadership.

Making RemedialEducation WorkCommunity colleges still have a long way to go to meetthe needs of at-risk students. Here are six recommenda-tions to improve your colleges programs.

By John E. Roueche and Suanne D. Roueche

Suanne D. Roueche is director of theNational Institute for Staff andOrganizational Development, andsenior lecturer in the Department ofEducational Administration, Collegeof Education, the University of Texas-Austin.

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This article compiles current think-ing and events, but we do not attemptclosure here. Rather, we attempt a begin-ning by sharing our observations in order

to inform and encourage, and by drawingfrom them some recommendations forfuture action. This is the birds-eye view,which we wrote in 1993:

Students are leaving high school nobetter prepared than they were in themid-1960s. In fact, evidence indicatesthat despite higher grade-point aver-ages, these students skills and compe-

tencies are at the lowest levels inAmerican history. Moreover, we arenot talking only about literacy, orunprepared or underprepared studentsas viewed from their mastery or theirattainment of cognitive skills; we arelooking at a new generation of adultlearners characterized by economic,social, personal, and academic insecuri-ties. They are older adults, with familyand other financial responsibilitiesthat require part-time, or often full-time, jobs in addition to courseworkrequirements; they are first-generationlearners with unclear notions of theircollege roles and their goals; they aremembers of minority and foreign-borngroups; they have poor self-images anddoubt their abilities to be successful;and they have limited world experi-ences that further narrow the perspec-

tives they can bring to options intheir lives.

O f the most serious challengescommunity colleges have faced,not one of the challenges hasremained so controversial, has so divided

community colleges ideologically, and hasremained so resistant to change as hasremedial education.

It is a tragedy that there has been solittle progress toward establishing bettersystems of remedial education. It is mind-boggling that educational institutionshave not joined together to prevent theserious threat that a large population of at-risk students presents to Americas

economic and social well-being. Even theappearance of broad-based resolve orstrategy continues to be just out of reachof the academy, and the responses of individual colleges to the problems of remedial education remain looselydefined as to purpose and largelyunexamined as to outcome.

It is not surprising that a heightenedinterest in the possibilities of success andthe consequences of failure with at-riskstudents is driving unprecedented investi-gation into the way colleges embraceremedial education; it is surprising that ithas taken so long to occur. It is clear thatif community colleges do not betteraddress remedial education, this countrywill suffer enormous consequences.

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A A H E B u l l e t i n

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Serving as a backdrop for these realities is the com-munity colleges mission blur, which was created inpart by the challenge of being all things to all people;of facing classroom climates that are negatively affectedby inner-city decline and poverty and by single-parent

adults with little time to improve their lives; of grap-pling with the public misconception that there are toofew jobs rather than too few people trained to do them;and of gearing up for the public school dropouts whocondemn future generations of children to poverty andundereducation and America to higher crime and lowerproductivity. Unfortunately, these issues may onlyappear to be traveling parallel paths . . . [but] they willcollide . . . on many fronts with such magnitude thatviable repair cannot occur for decades. Since we wrote

those words in 1993, our future has become our present.RecommendationsOverarching recommendation: Survey the landscape for

proactive responses.The remedial education landscapeincludes some extraordinarily successful structures; thatis good news. Some community colleges have tackledthe problems of academic unpreparedness for at least adecade and have documented their success thoroughly.They have made the tough decisions and committedthemselves to seeing them through before outside forcescompelled them to do so. They had a clear vision of theneed to identify goals a vision that at the time musthave appeared lofty, but that put them on a path togood progress and to evaluate their progress criticallyand judiciously. The community colleges are the first toacknowledge that the tasks of agreement and imple-mentation were not easy, but that the rewards areworth the effort. The successes they have achieved withacademically at-risk students may be as exciting forthese colleges as discovering that they are in far better

positions to respond to current questions and criticismsof community colleges performance with all students.

By stepping up to the task of responding to thechallenges that at-risk populations bring and achievingsome success, these colleges have married goals thatcritics argue are mutually exclusive the goals of access and excellence. Kay McClenney, vice presidentof the Education Commission of the States, argues inher 1998 paper Community Colleges Perched at theMillennium: Perspectives on Innovation, Transforma-

tion, and Tomorrow in Leadership Abstracts, that the

will to achieve any transformation, or change, is criticalto success:

For more than a decade I have been watchingthe transformational process in one particularcommunity college at the Community

College of Denver. I have watched while, withtight resources, CCDs people have doubledenrollment, while also dramatically increasingstudent diversity and student outcomes, defin-ing methods of assessing and documentingstudent learning, and most incredibly, virtuallyeliminating the achievement gap betweenminority and non-minority students. It did take10 years of work. But the first thing it took wasdeciding to do it.

Some might be surprised that efforts to succeedwith at-risk students could so dramatically change theentire institution, that everyone stands to profit byefforts to meet the needs of those most in need of instruction and support. We contend that, consideringwhat we know today about improving students acade-mic performance, this outcome should not be surprisingat all.

There is so much more to learn about what andhow success has been achieved with at-risk students.The programs described in this article provide some fla-vor of the excellent places at which to begin a search.From this good news observation, we make these rec-ommendations to community colleges:

Recommendation 1: Examine the essential characteristicsand components of other institutions successful remedialcourses and programs, not necessarily in the interest of adopting their strategies, but perhaps of adapting them. Noplans are as appealing to implement or as successful as

those that carry the made here stamp; however, thereare no reasons good enough and no time to reinventthe wheel.

Recommendation 2: Employ a more collaborative effortto learn from each other.There is no reason to hang, sep-arately or together. Over the past few years, researchershave identified colleges with successful remedial pro-grams or program components. We believe that thereare other successes that will remain unknown because

college leaders and remediation professionals either donot disseminate information or do not disseminate itwidely and effectively.

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F e b r u a r y 2 0 0 0

Recommendation 3: Ask the questions about your ownperformance that are being asked about others, and takeaction. For example, an institution might study thecore performance indicators in South Carolina andColorado; their history of study, development, imple-

mentation, and revision makes them excellent docu-ments with which to begin developing criteria formeasuring program effectiveness. Colleges should col-lect data about goal achievement; most colleges do notunderstand, or fail to make, the critical links betweengoal and expected outcomes in identifying the appro-priate data to be collected. Every community collegeshould consider how well its program measures upagainst the criteria other colleges use to measure andreport their performance. No college should ignore

questions that policymakers, media, and communitymembers ask about its performance, whether nationalor local. Flash points know no physical boundaries,and news travels fast.

Recommendation 4: Provide a holistic approach to pro-grams for at-risk students.If colleges are totally commit-ted to being successful with at-risk students, they mustbe prepared to think holistically. At-risk students cometo college with such diverse needs that stand-alone ser-vices or classes no matter how successful in helpingat-risk students will not achieve a colleges largergoal of retaining these students and helping themachieve their own goals of improved performance andacademic success. A successful learning lab, a strongreading program, or an excellent mathematics program,if offered as a stand-alone instructional service or class,falls far short of the broader institutional commitmentthat colleges must make.

Recommendation 5: Abolish voluntary placement in

remedial courses.Voluntary placement in remedialcourses when assessment data indicate that basic skillinstruction is critical to a students successful future per-formance is a major shortcoming in what otherwisemay be well-planned programs. Colleges that valueassessment need to ask themselves why they make somuch effort to assess students academic skills infact, making assessment mandatory and then leavethe decision to enroll in remedial courses in the handsof the unprepared students.

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Recommendation 6: Create a more seamless web.Criticswho point to remedial education in college as evidenceof a dysfunctional public education system are alsoquick to criticize higher educations refusal to challengethe educational systems poor performance. Placing

blame requires too much time and energy, and it shouldbe put aside in the interest of using time more wisely. Aplan for improving student performance, developed andimplemented by colleges in partnership with publicschools, elementary through high school, has the great-est potential for achieving college readiness for first-time students.

ConclusionsMark Twain observed thata good boat captain doesnot know just one spot inthe water well; he knowsthe shape of the river. Our20/20 hindsight tells usthat most community col-leges have wasted theirhoneymoon years withremedial education. Theyhad the luxury of time tolearn the river that is,to resolve their differencesand clarify their ideologiesabout remedial education as a major curriculum effort,to establish remedial education policies and programs,to experiment with their own strategies and adapt themost successful strategies of others, and to learn howbest to evaluate their performance with at-risk students.

Institutions probably did not recognize that theywere in this phase, because they were facing manyother serious challenges. But current events should be

creating a sense of urgency unlike any that communitycolleges have felt before. Unfortunately, colleges nolonger have the luxury of planning a measuredresponse. They are compelled to learn the rivers shapeby studying the experiences of captains who have ven-tured farther ahead on the river.

This article is an excerpt fromHigh Stakes, High Performance: Making RemeEducation Work , by John E. Roueche and Suanne D. Roueche. To order, cthe Community College Press, 800/250-6557; email: aaccpub@pmdsee www.aacc.nche.edu/bookstore.