It's not who goes; it's who can stay

By Susan Estrich

This year, 64% of the freshmen entering the California state college system failed the entry-level math test, and 43% failed the verbal exam, even though all of these students were in the top third of their high school graduating classes.

In Compton, a poor, urban district currently in state receivership, 100% of the graduates failed the math test, and 89% failed the English. Even at the elite University of California campuses, 35% of entering freshmen needed remedial instruction in basic English proficiency.

Across the country, the need for colleges to provide remedial education to high school graduates has prompted a heated debate about budgets and standards. While immigrants lacking language skills account for a portion of the remedial education budget, the bulk of it goes to teach students the basics they should have learned in high school.

In New York, where 87% of the students entering one of the City University's six community colleges fail at least one initial exam, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani has proposed removing remedial work altogether from the CUNY curriculum. In Georgia, the regents voted last year to limit the number of freshmen needing remedial work. Massachusetts was one of four states to consider charging high schools for remedial courses for their graduates.

Opponents of remedial courses argue that the business of colleges should be providing a college education, not teaching students what they should already know. They argue students who start out unprepared don't end up graduating; at CUNY only 1% of the students in the two-year community colleges graduate in two years, and only 16% in four years.

Nationally, the statistics are only somewhat better. A 1995 federal survey found that 41% of college freshmen at public two-year colleges took at least one remedial course in 1995, while only 23% of those who had started at such institutions had received either a community college degree or a bachelor's degree within five years.

But even where limits are being imposed, they are being put off to some future date. In Georgia, the cutoff date is not until 2001. In California, the trustees of the Cal State system voted three years ago to end remedial courses by 1999, then compromised and extended the phaseout until 2007. Ever since, the number of freshmen needing remedial work has been increasing. Saying that students should learn more in high school does not make it so; as long as there are students who lack basic skills, most community colleges will see it as their mission to educate those students.

In California, the statistics on remedial education on the Cal State campuses were largely overshadowed by the release days later of the post-affirmative action admissions numbers from the elite University of California campuses.

Amid screeching headlines about substantial drops in the admission of black and Hispanic students, the chancellor of Berkeley personally took to the phones to try to convince the black seniors who had been admitted to come to Berkeley.

But the reason the chancellor must take to the phones is the same reason Cal State is spending $10 million per year on remedial courses: The pool of qualified minorities is too small. In California, the poor, urban districts where minorities are concentrated have the fewest graduates who can pass basic entrance tests, even if they go on to college, which most don't. The black dropout rate at Berkeley has in the past been so high - 42%, as compared to 16% for whites - that ending preferences ultimately may have no impact on the very small number of minorities who graduate each year from the university.

The changes must come earlier. Tennessee's governor has proposed testing all high school students at the 10th-grade level, giving them two years' notice on areas needing improvement. In California, state colleges are sending legions of students into high schools as mentors and tutors, and have contracted with the Educational Testing Service for a diagnostic test of English skills to be given to high school students during their junior year.

But even that may be too late for children who fall behind in elementary school and never catch up. They're the answer to the affirmative action debate. While the two sides trade blame for the numbers, the children are not learning to read.

Susan Estrich is a syndicated columnist and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

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