What is Co-Requisite Remediation?

Several posts here have involved a critique of “Co-Requisite Remediation”, which usually results in questions of “what do you mean by co-requisite remediation?”  Let’s take a look at what is usually meant by the phrase.  #CCA #Corequisite #SaveMath

The first thing to know about corequisite remediation is that it is a new and ill-defined phrase.  Before about 2011, corequisite remediation was a micro strategy — to help with specific weaknesses, a course would include focused remediation within a limited portion of the class.  Most math faculty do remediation within courses, and this initial use of the phrase ‘corequisite remediation’ seems to have been an effort to focus on this work to support collaboration across institutions.

Within the past 5 years, the phrase “corequisite remediation” has been almost exclusively being used by Complete College America (CCA) and their co-conspirators.  The methodologies they suggest are goal-driven, which means that the actual practice is ill-defined.  That goal is:

Place students directly into college-level courses instead of developmental course(s) followed by college-level.  http://completecollege.org/tag/corequisite-remediation/

The CCA agents have been very effective at using their rhetoric to support this ‘method’; unfortunately, for us practitioners, corequisite remediation is implemented in such diverse ways that we have small probabilities of interpreting the results in practical ways.  Further complicating our interpretation is the fact that the CCA agents will report that the “results are in” and “data supports” co-requisite remediation.

Sadly, we find  ourselves in the situation where almost all supporters of corequisite remediation are policy makers or administrators, while the majority of practitioners are skeptical or ‘non-believers’.  Neither side can convince the other, as long as the problem is ill-defined and we lack practical research on various methodologies used.

Like I said, corequisite remediation is a goal statement, not a single method.  Here are some common implementation patterns:

• Students in gen ed math (statistics or quantitative reasoning) who did not place at that level are required to register for a second class — a class providing the remediation.
• Students in gen ed math who did not place at that level are required to register for special sections of the course which incorporate additional time for the remediation.
• Students in gen ed math who did not place at that level are required to complete a remediation workshop (before the semester, during the first week or two).

In general, (1) The methods for remediation are not uniform and often not shared, and (2) pre-calculus is almost never used.  And, although I use the tag “quantitative reasoning”, the course is sometimes liberal arts math or an everyday-math type.

So, the corequisite remediation targets college-level math courses which tend to have a smaller set of prerequisite abilities.  Intro statistics is a course widely believed to have minimal requirements on the behalf of students; the liberal arts math course is often very similar in the demands for ‘skills’.  In most cases, the prerequisite was intermediate algebra or comparable test level.  Therefore:

Co-requisite remediation is often used for courses which have had an artificially high prerequisite in the past.

Separate from the remediation issues, we should correct our prerequisites for college math courses.  AMATYC has a position statement on this … see http://www.amatyc.org/?page=PositionInterAlg

I suspect that we will begin to see presentations at our conferences (AMATYC and affiliates) documenting the practices and results of co-requisite remediation; that will help the rest of us make an informed judgment on any possible validity.  I do not expect any “gold standard” research in this area (randomized, controlled studies which can be replicated), due to the politicized context.

Perhaps this has helped a little.  I remain a skeptic of the rhetoric surrounding corequisite remediation.

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1 Comment

• 

  By schremmer, February 22, 2016 @ 11:26 am

  Re. “Place students directly into college-level courses instead of developmental course(s) followed by college-level.”

  I agree with Rotman: This makes no sense whatsoever inasmuch as 0+0 by any reckoning is still 0.

  To wit, inasmuch as Precalculus is “facts and skills”, it does not matter if the “remediation” occurs before or alongside: it cannot possibly work either way.

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