Sooner or Later, Ability Rules - Freddie deBoer

There’s a fact that you hear a lot about in behind-the-scenes higher education chats that seems not to have penetrated with the public: remediation has gotten harder and more expensive, and over time the problem grows and grows. Why have remediation costs exploded? Look at the graph above. There is no underlying trend in educational data that would suggest that this vast improvement is underwritten by actual student learning gains. We decided the high school graduation rate was a national scandal, we found that we could not actually bring students up to standards, so we cheated and graduated them anyway. Can’t actually meet standards? Hey, there’s “online credit recovery.” Need a model high school without model students? Here’s one where everybody gets As, regardless of ability. Can’t get students through even with all of these lowered standards and with all of these dirty tricks? Don’t have any standards at all. When I worked at Brooklyn College there was this constant vexing problem

There’s a fact that you hear a lot about in behind-the-scenes higher education chats that seems not to have penetrated with the public: remediation has gotten harder and more expensive, and over time the problem grows and grows. Why have remediation costs exploded? Look at the graph above. There is no underlying trend in educational data that would suggest that this vast improvement is underwritten by actual student learning gains. We decided the high school graduation rate was a national scandal, we found that we could not actually bring students up to standards, so we cheated and graduated t