"Remedial education is expensive and controversial — but is it effective?" According to Scott Jaschik's article in Inside Higher Ed, "That’s the question that two education researchers have attempted to answer based on an analysis of nearly 100,000 community college students in Florida."

Jaschik is referring to a National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) study conducted by Juan Carlos Calcagno, a senior research affiliate at the Community College Research Center, and Bridget Long of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. The paper, which is available through the NCPR and National Bureau of Economic Research. (NBER) web sites, describes how the researchers used a detailed dataset and a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of remediation.

--Read the full-length article on the Inside Higher Ed web site at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/31/remedial (registration may be required)

--Download the paper, "The Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance"