Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 37

In December 2021, she withdrew.
Many American high schools, however, have not had the
L
inda's experience is not unique. Students lack college
preparation not only in Memphis but also across Tennessee
and the country. In Tennessee, only 17 percent of public
high school students test ready for college in English, math,
reading, or science. Nationwide, even before the pandemic,
nearly two-thirds of community college students and a majority
of all American college students showed up on campuses
" unprepared " -defined as requiring remediation. Data from
2011 showed that at community colleges, only 10 percent of students
who took remedial courses earned their associate's degrees
within three years, while nearly half never completed them.
Higher ed institutions face an abiding conundrum with
students who begin behind. Getting them up to speed to learn
at the college level is necessary but wastes the students' time
and money (remedial classes typically don't count for credit
toward a degree) and discourages them from remaining enrolled.
Now, however, this unsolved question looms large over
an entire generation. How should the country and its educational
institutions deal with students who lost out on years of
pandemic-era learning?
Previous efforts have met with limited success. In 2015,
Tennessee became the first state to shift remedial course work
systemwide from a prerequisite model to a corequisite one.
Accordingly, Linda took her remedial English class during the
same semester that she took credit-bearing English 101, rather
than separately. Studies show that corequisite remediation
improves students' completion rates of lower-level courses
but fails to help more students achieve their degrees.
States like Florida have chipped away at required remediation
altogether. In 2013, Florida eliminated placement tests
and made remedial classes optional. The number of students
passing college-level English and math classes increased, but
the changes also came with enhanced academic support services,
which simultaneously helped students, and course passage
rates, while ticking up slightly, remained shockingly low.
Through a program called Seamless Alignment and Integrated
Learning Support (SAILS), Tennessee experimented
with moving remedial math earlier in a student's education.
The program used high school juniors' ACT scores to place
them into remedial math classes during their senior year of
high school. Those who passed the classes would not have to
retake remedial math in college. Participants became much
more likely to enroll in college-level math courses; however,
they passed those college-level math courses at the same rate
as traditional remedial students.
Other states tried similar measures, with mixed results.
The Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative, which, at
the time, required participation by some high school students
in Math for College Readiness, resulted in greater enrollment
in college-level classes but no proof of more success in them.
With similar programs, West Virginia did not achieve progress,
but Arkansas and Mississippi did, according to the Community
College Research Center.
resources to offer sufficiently high-level courses to prepare
students to meet college learning expectations-especially
high schools with significant racial and ethnic-minority student
populations. Only 57 percent of African American students
have attended schools where they could graduate ready
for college.
Even at high schools where such classes are available, the
highest-risk students frequently avoid them. This was true
well before COVID-19, when students rarely, if ever, faced online
learning.
During the pandemic, Linda's Latina classmate at
SWTCC, Tracy, tried to keep her young siblings and cousins,
who were home from elementary school, logged into their activities
and focused throughout the virtual school day. However,
she could tell that no one, including her, was learning
what they were supposed to be learning. Students at all educational
levels, particularly those needing the most help with
college preparedness, developed more significant deficits.
Tania's mother, who has
schizophrenia, mostly stayed
in bed; her father worked
long hours. In Mexico, he had
left formal education after
sixth grade and liked the
idea of his daughter going to
college. It fulfilled his vision
of the American dream.
Simultaneously, those in a position to guide students
into college missed out on contact even with students who
were attending and participating in online high school course
work. Mentors from college-access nonprofits, representatives
of free community college programs, and scholarship
providers lost opportunities for building relationships. School
counselors had less ability to facilitate essential milestones
like making college officers aware of particular students or ensuring
that students turned in key documents.
In emergency meetings at the height of the pandemic
that I attended, coordinated over Zoom across Tennessee,
various college-access practitioners lamented not having the
minimum contact information, especially email addresses,
for applicants. Before the pandemic, staff had a chance to at
least talk with students when they got off morning buses on
their way to class-and even then, some students struggled.
Before COVID, when school was in person, skipping classes
would have led to a truancy charge. In the virtual educational
Washington Monthly 37
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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