The July 4, 2008 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education highlights findings from a study conducted by Community College Research Center (CCRC) and National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) research affiliates. According to reporter Peter Schmidt:

In one, an as-yet-unpublished study of nearly 100,000 Florida community-college students, Ms. Long and Juan Carlos Calcagno, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, compared the long-term progress of students who scored just below the cutoff on a placement test — and were thus assigned to remedial classes — to the long-term progress of students who got into regular academic classes by scoring just above the cutoff.

In a paper summarizing their findings, Ms. Long and Mr. Calcagno say their results "suggest remediation has limited or mixed benefits." Students who took remedial classes ended up earning more credits over all, but not significantly more credits that were college-level. Those marginal students who took remedial mathematics classes were slightly more likely to persist to their second year of college but did no better than other marginal students in their subsequent math courses. Taking a remedial reading class did not have any bearing on persistence, and the students who took such classes were actually less likely to pass college-level English composition classes down the road.

--The full length article appears online at: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i43/43a01801.htm

(Subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education may be required.)

--Learn more about this research by visiting the NCPR web site at: http://www.postsecondaryresearch.org/index.html?Id=Research&Info=State+Data+Analysis