The Resiliency of Remedial Education

Links We Mention

Incomplete: The Unfinished Revolution in College Remedial Education by Anne Kim, FutureEd

Student Success 2.0, Future U. 

The New Student Ready College, Future U.

Chapters

0:00 - Intro
02:49 - Remedial Education in Context
07:26 - Calls for Change
11:29 - A Wave of Reform
14:53 - Progress Stalls
16:59 - Recommendations for a Reform Rebound
19:33 - Responding to Criticisms of Remedial Ed
24:58 - A New System with More Options
31:00 - Correcting a Broken Business Model

Transcript

Michael Horn:

Jeff Obviously, I got my start working in education at the K-12 level, and when I moved to start working in higher ed, one of the early things that caught my attention was all this research that started coming out showing that remedial classes at colleges and universities were not working and they were really hurting students.

Jeff Selingo:

Yes, Michael and that research, in many ways, jump started a revolution across higher ed, something that we don't always see, where states and colleges actually follow what the data are showing us. In this case, that remedial education wasn't working and that there were better paths forward. There was this flurry of activity, but then those changes seemed to stall or even reverse, and most people didn't take notice. But our guest today, Anne Kim, did, and she's here to tell us about the history of remedial education, where we are today, and where we should go in the future. That's ahead on this episode of Future U.

Sponsor:

This episode of Future U is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, working to eliminate race, ethnicity, and income as predictors of student educational success. Subscribe to Future U wherever you get your podcasts, and if you enjoy the show, send it along to a friend so others can discover the conversations we're having about higher education.

Michael Horn:

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo:

And I'm Jeff Selingo.

Michael Horn:

Jeff, so we did a lot of setting of the scene up front there, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today because this practice of remedial education and the suggestion that there's a better path forward was super interesting to me at that time. But I confess I just assumed that, like, we all got it, progress is moving forward. You know, we're sunsetting remedial education. Until you flagged a report for me.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, Michael. And it was our friend Tom Toch at FutureEd, which is also a distributor of the Future U podcast. Tom flagged us that FutureEd, which is a think tank out of Georgetown University focused on education, had published this new report by Anne Kim titled the “Incomplete: The Unfinished Revolution in College Remedial Education” that was published in June. And so I knew you were super curious to learn more because this practice impacts a lot of students and institutions in higher ed. So let's get to this conversation. We're thrilled to welcome Anne to the show, and Anne is a Senior FutureEd Fellow and a contributing editor at Washington Monthly. Anne, welcome to Future U.

Anne Kim:

Thank you for having me.

Remedial Education in Context

Jeff Selingo:

So, Anne, you recently authored this piece that FutureEd published called the “Incomplete: The Unfinished Revolution in College Remedial Education.” And before we get into your findings and recommendations. Let's talk a little bit about setting the stage for our listeners. Because historically, when students tested below certain levels on assessments that they took when they entered certain colleges, they were, they were placed in remedial courses, right? In reading and writing and basic math. And in colleges were essentially saying, we've accepted these students into our college or university, but they're not ready for college level courses. So can you help us understand kind of that basic practice? What were the classes they were enrolling in instead? What was required of those students? How did they interact with the rest of the college experience? Is this something they had to take first before they even did college level courses? Could they take them at the same time, things like that?

Anne Kim:

Right. Well, I think it's important to understand a little bit about the origins of remedial education in the United States and to first really appreciate that its intent is to expand access to higher education, to really democratize it for people who otherwise might not be ready for college level work. I think that's even more important context here for understanding how the structure of remedial ed arose in the US So if you don't mind, just a really quick trip back in time to colonial America. One of the fun facts that I learned researching this report was that the first school in America to offer remedial education was actually the first university in America, and that was Harvard. So back in colonial times, scholarly texts were written in Latin, which most colonists did not know. So what Harvard did was they supplied Latin tutors to get everyone up to speed. Now, as more and more colleges were established, they were finding that nobody had the knowledge to be able to tackle college level work. In 1849, for instance, the University of Wisconsin, Madison became the first to establish a college preparatory department.

Anne Kim:

That became the norm until the so called junior college movement was now community colleges took on this task of getting people ready for college level work. Now at the same time you had another wave of developmental education with the establishment of historically black colleges and universities after the Civil War. Yes, these colleges offered college level work, of course, but an important part of their mission was to provide basic education to people who had been formally enslaved and denied any access to education at all. I think all this history is important because modern college remedial education is still very much grounded in this mission. Its intent is to expand access to higher education and to make it possible for people who may not be deemed academically ready to pursue college level work. In many cases because maybe they had a subpar high school experience or they've been out of school for a very long time and returning after long hiatus. We're talking here mainly about open access institutions, community colleges, regional universities whose mission is to take all comers. Here's how it works in practice. As you mentioned, Jeff, in many parts of the country, incoming student takes a placement test that's typically standardized. If you are considered college ready, according to this test, that's Great. It's Math 101 for you. But if you're not, you could be placed somewhere along this sequence of remedial math or English classes, depending upon the severity of the deficits you are deemed to have. At Portland Community College in Oregon, for instance, there are actually six different developmental math courses, including four levels of basic and intermediate algebra. They also offer something called math literacy. Depending upon where you place, some students might need to pass all of these as prerequisites before they can even finally get to Math 101. The thing about these classes is that they don't count for college credit. They're prerequisites.

Jeff Selingo:

I was just going to ask that. They don't count and who pays for them?

Anne Kim:

Well, a student does. You still pay for them just like any other college level course, even though you're actually not technically in college. And up until about 15 years ago, remedial education was actually where the majority of community college students started out. Between 2003 and 2009, which is, believe it or not, the most recent government data available, some 68% of community college students and 58% of students at open access regionals were taking at least one remedial class. More often than not, welcome to college meant welcome to remedial ed.

Calls for Change

Jeff Selingo:

This in between high school and College. Then in 2012, there was this big report that found the outcomes from these remedial classes were actually not really that great. That began spurring cries for change. Can you tell us a little bit about those findings?

Anne Kim:

Yeah, right. Those six levels of remedial math that I mentioned also meant six opportunities for dropping out. That's exactly what this 2012 report found is by a nonprofit called Complete College America. What it discovered was that remedial education, this mechanism that was intended to broaden access to higher education, was doing exactly the opposite. Nearly 4 in 10 community colleges college students never actually finished remediation sequences. And then fewer than one in 10 ended up earning their associates within three years. The numbers were absolutely invisible for minority and low income students in particular. The report found that 85% of black students who are assigned to remediation never finished. 76% of Hispanic students who were remediation never finished. 80% of low income students never finished. The majority of the kids never made it to a college level class, while at the same time they were blowing through financial aid, racking up debt, and people were spending billions of dollars in remedial education that wasn't getting them anywhere.

Michael Horn:

Not a great situation all around. It wasn't just that report. There was actually a lot of research, as I recall, coming out around then, suggesting not that the outcomes were poor, but that there were better ways forward. So specifically, what was the research suggesting would be a better alternative?

Anne Kim:

Right. So even before this 2012 report, there was a suite of research kind of questioning the value of these long remedial sequences. And there was also research questioning why so many students were being put into remedial ed. I mean, a majority of community college students, and in some schools, as many as 80% or more were being put into remedial ed. Like really? Are high schools really that bad? What all this research found was that, number one, the placement tests were often flawed. They misassigned students to remedial ed when they didn't need it. One very highly influential study by the researcher Judith Scott Clayton, for instance, calculated that as many as one in four students were being needlessly assigned to remedial education and wasting both time and money on those classes. In fact, in 2016, ACT ended its Compass placement exam because there was so much criticism about its inaccuracy.Then there was other immediate research examining the particulars about why traditional remediation doesn't work. The first, most obvious reason is the long chain of courses, which led to what reformers called exponential attrition or chained attrition. Say you've got 100 students who start out in that lowest level basic math, but only 80 of them make it to beginning algebra, then only 60 make it to intermediate algebra. Then it's no surprise that by the end of the funnel, there's literally no one left. Completion is a problem anyway. People at community college are often juggling work and family obligations. But the other problem with remedial ed was that the content was problematic too, and was also pushing people out the door. It's super stigmatizing. I spoke to students who told me just how discouraging it was to have a high school diploma and then get stuck in basic math, like addition, subtraction, and secondly, it's really, really dull. One study that I found, these researchers at the community college research center spent a bunch of time attending community college remedial classes in California and they just condemned it as, quote, skills and drills, rote learning, no analytical reasoning, no critical thinking. And the researchers actually set the report that they themselves found the classes painful and imagined them to be, quote, excruciating for the students who are forced to sit through them in order to make it to a college level class.

A Wave of Reform

Michael Horn:

So it's clear, right? People are saying these classes don't work, tests don't work. We should stop even relying on these standardized tests or even giving them in certain cases. So now students who in some cases do have meaningful gaps though are going directly into gen ed classes, presumably that count for credit. Start to help us understand what actually started to change. Change and then how the classes themselves, the experience itself would have to change as, as well for those students maybe who needed something, still needed some supports.

Anne Kim:

Yeah. So the problems that were documented with traditional remedial ed made the solutions actually relatively clear. As you said, you got to fix the placement problems, but you've also got to shorten the track and make it more interesting at the same time that you're supporting students in such a way that they can pass Math 101 or English 101. About 15 years ago, when the reform movement really started taking off, there are several reforms that started happening. Number one was placement. People did start ditching the placement exams in favor of using high school GPA or transcripts, what reformers called multiple measures. And research has since found that to be way more predictive performance than a single high stakes standardized test. Then secondly, people began experimenting with accelerating remediation, like you said, putting students directly into gen Ed, for instance. But there are other models like summer programs, boot camps, condensed one semester. Classes of the four semesters of remediation maybe became one. Then there was an English professor at the Community College of Baltimore County named Peter Adams who hit upon this idea of co-requisite education. That I think is what you're alluding to, Michael. Under this model, remedial students still get to enroll in a college level class that they're allegedly not ready for according to standardized test, but they're also enrolled in a companion class, the co-requisite that provides them with the support they need to get them through. Just-in-time support is what that's called. The results from this particular model were really good. Adams, for instance, doubled the pass rate in English 101 for his developmental students, even though they went directly into English 101. That's according to 2012 evaluation by the Community College Research Center. It was a rigorous evaluation based on that states on the leading edge of developmental education reform started adopting co-requisites and took it to scale. Now this model is the default model. In places like Tennessee, Texas, California, Louisiana and Georgia. The benefits of coreq are pretty apparent. You've got that direct enrollment, so you've shortened the track. The students are directly in a college class, so you no longer have that stigma of being labeled remedial. The support in the correct was tailored to the students and relevant to the coursework. Peter Adams, in fact, told me that the problem with remedial education was that you're learning remedial stuff in the abstract that doesn't necessarily help get you through English 101, but the co-requisite was tailored to what you're actually doing that day, that class. So you're much more likely to succeed and also be much more engaged in English 101 if you were getting that support that you needed.

Progress Stalls

Jeff Selingo:

But then as your paper lays out a lot of these changes you were just talking about, there's all this energy. It seems about 10 years ago, and then a lot of things stopped. What happened and where are we now?

Anne Kim:

Right, so it's in the beginning of any reform movement that's shiny and new. There's a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of money with these big name foundations. Gates, Lumina, Ford, they're all investing hundreds of millions of dollars in reform. A lot of states began passing legislation requiring reform, or in some cases mandating co-requisite education, or in some cases what's called math pathways, which we haven't talked about. But it's moving away from requiring algebra and instead allowing students to take quantitative reasoning or statistics that are more tailored to the actual major. You really don't need algebra, by the way, unless you're going to learn calculus, which means that you're in STEM and only about a fifth of college students are in STEM majors. But then again, also with any reform movement, momentum is hard to sustain. And what was once shiny and new becomes yesterday's news. Reform stalled. You've got about 12 states still that have no policies either statewide or system wide on fixing dev ed. And there was a 2020 study that was done by an educational consultancy called Tyton Partners. And what they found was that 40% of colleges and universities that it surveyed had not reformed the dev ed courses at all. And even among the colleges that said they were, quote, at scale with co-requisites or other reforms, there was still a lot of reliance on traditional remediation. So just one quick example at this one community college in Oregon that I talked to class of community college co-requisite math is taught side by side with traditional remediation. Students choose one or the other because only one of the three faculty members on the math staff had decided to adopt that model. So reform is very uneven, even, you know, state to state and even school. to school

Jeff Selingo:

Even in states where there is a reform.

Anne Kim:

Right, right.

Recommendations for a Reform Rebound

Jeff Selingo:

So, Anne, what are your recommendations to kind of get this moving again? What's the moment that we need?

Anne Kim:

So, you know, to answer that question, we can talk a little bit about some of the reasons why remedial courses haven't been reformed in so many parts of the country. You know, number one reason, of course, is inertia, because change is so hard. And beyond that, I point to like a handful of things. First, lack of resources, all that foundation momentum dried up after a decade or so. That means less money for professional development, creating curricula, or managing the scheduling changes that come with trying to do co-requisites. For instance, there's another problem with, not problem but the tradition of faculty autonomy and local control in Oregon, where they have grant money and technical support and all of that, only 10 of the 17 community colleges in the state have adopted reform, despite lots of support for that, for adopting reform. Then you had places where you had policy change top down, like legislation, and that's engendered backlash. That happened in Connecticut and places like North Carolina where the states arguably even moved backward on reform. There's practical reason, which is the dependence on revenue from traditional dev ed. Remedial education is a cash cow for a lot of schools, especially if the majority of your entering class is taking remedial ed. And they're also often taught by cheaper adjunct faculty. So many schools are concerned about replacing that revenue and then having to use more expensive faculty to teach the classes. And then it turns out the co-requisites are not a silver bullet. It actually doesn't work for everybody. And there are practical problems for making co-requisites work in a lot of contexts. One very quick example, North Carolina, for instance, there are a lot of tiny rural colleges that were having trouble scheduling co-requisites to match with people's schedules. They also have this significant military population. And it turns out that VA benefits don't cover dev ed classes that happen online and in one branch active duty can't take more than one class at a time. So it's impossible to take a coreq plus the math class. So it's barriers like that that have kind of really slowed down reform to fix it. Of course, it's the opposite of that. You need money, you need data, you need patience, and then you need innovation because the original models in Reform 1.0 are turning out not to be perfect.

Responding to Criticisms of Remedial Ed

Michael Horn:

Wow. So I just hear those barriers of business model regulation. And then the third one obviously gets into something that has recently emerged that maybe makes this picture a little bit cloudier. You mentioned that the co reqs don't always work. And since you issued your report. Right. More research has come out that suggests this more nuanced picture. Perhaps in Tennessee, as you mentioned, community colleges dropped remedial classes and that did seem to spark students earning more credits as the research would have suggested would occur. But what's interesting is that graduation rates didn't necessarily increase at Tennessee's community colleges. And the researchers from the University of Delaware, if I, if I've read the research correctly, said that in essence, the students who are close to the cutoff on tests for previously going into remedial courses, you know, say they got a 19 out of 36 right on the ACT. They did better going straight into the credit bearing courses. But for students who were far below that level, so in the bottom decile, meaning they scored a 13 or lower on the ACT, they dropped out in greater numbers, were less likely to earn a short term certificate. So, and if I understand it, the data suggests something similar in places like California that have also dropped remedial classes. So as a result, people have argued individuals that are performing at the lowest levels, they aren't maybe ready for something beyond a remedial class. They have real gaps at credit bearing courses, even with all the supports, aren't designed to support and maybe we shouldn't have this one size fits all policy on eliminating remedial pathways or not. Would love to get your take because you're much closer to this than we are.

Anne Kim:

Yeah, I actually heard that argument quite a bit while I was researching this report. And one community college system that I talked to also pointed out the effects of the pandemic. Students are coming in at even lower levels of preparedness than they were used to. They had adopted a co-requisite model, but some of the faculty were pushing back and saying these kids are too far behind. One semester of co-req is not enough. Couple responses to that. First, I would point out that the University of Delaware study also found that correct students were still 20 percentage points more likely to pass Gateway math and nearly 23 percentage points more likely to pass Gateway English compared to traditional remedial students. So that's an improvement. And I think that's the real baseline. Cor-eq isn't perfect, but it's way better than traditional prerequisite remediation. And I'm not sure that anybody, even the critics of coreq are saying that we need to go to keep the old model rather than try to figure out ways to come up with new models that address some of the shortcomings of co-requisites. Some schools actually are even successfully using a prerequisite model, although it's not at all like traditional remedial ed. One example I'd point to is the CUNY system. They have a program called CUNY Start. It's a one semester intensive remediation for students who do score in that lowest quartile on reading, math and writing. They do this in the summer before they actually enroll in CUNY. And then these students are automatically placed into a companion program called CUNY ASAP, which provides them support throughout their college experience. That means free subway cards, they get a book stipend, they get tutoring, they get career counseling. I think this program really encapsulates probably the biggest lesson of developmental education reform, which is that it's necessary, but it's not sufficient if the end goal is achieving college completion. Getting someone through their first college classes and then ending support isn't going to get high need students to the finish line, which is, I think, what that study found. On the other hand, you're still not going to get to completion if you don't fix remedial ed. I take the point that it's not perfect, but I think that developmental education reform still remains that fundamental first chapter toward a whole school transformation that will make it more likely that even the lowest performing students are able to complete, provided that they can support all along their college experience and not just at the beginning.

Michael Horn:

Super helpful. So the answer then is let's not return to what was. Let's build on what we've moved to and get better at differentiating what students need, what supports and make sure we get it to them so that they're actually earning credits. Making progress makes a lot of sense. Anne , thank you so much for joining us on Future U and walking us through all of this.

Anne Kim:

Thank you very much for having me.

Michael Horn:

You bet. And for all you tuning in. We'll be right back.

Jeff Selingo:

This episode is being brought to you by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Today's college students are more than just students. They are workers, parents, caregivers and neighbors and colleges and Universities need to change to meet their changing needs. Learn more about the Foundation's efforts to transform institutions to be more student centered at usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

A New System with More Options

Michael Horn:

Welcome back to Future U and great conversation with Anne. I learned a lot, Jeff, and I think her points largely speak for themselves. So I want to do something else with this back half, if you will, and start with what I think is a really provocative question, but one that, you know, some journalists have actually asked me recently. And so I want to get your take. And here's the context for the question. Yes, remedial ed was serving a bunch of students who were academically ready for college level work and they shouldn't have been in those non credit bearing courses in the first first place where they were racking up money for colleges and universities. Now that number though was only one in four, one of four students who were going into remedial courses but shouldn't have been. So now we've got technology and other means to make, you know, these 101 classes that do count for credit far more personalized to help some students with their academic gaps catch up in the course of their credit bearing work. That's my opinion of like what we should be seeing. I'm not sure most colleges know how to do that well, but it's there in any event. And then either way, as this newer research suggests, which we referenced at the end of the conversation with Anne , there are still a bunch of other students who just are not ready for these 101 courses. Like they, they are not working for them. So remedial ed not working. But neither is this. They're graduating at even lower numbers writ large. And we heard that, you know from Anne that returning them to remedial education isn't a good idea. She had some other good ideas. But I guess the overarching question I have for you is this, should these students that K12 schools have clearly and so severely failed, in my view, should they be in college at all? Is this the right pathway for them? Or would the better thing be to help them find other pathways into meaningful work and maybe a degree down the line?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, Michael, we just did this episode not too long ago called the Student Ready College where we sort of agree that we do need to get rid of this term term college ready. And so I think, you know, this is a complex subject and I think we should kind of admit that up front remedial education had flaws. But the core issue is how best do we serve these students with significant academic gaps, you know, There are many successful professionals out there who had academic challenges, we all know of them. But they succeeded through alternative routes, apprenticeships, certificates, even alternative routes through four year colleges. Right. We know all, we know all those people. And the goal really I think should be how do we match, better match students with paths that fit their current readiness and goals. And the problem I think is when we're graduating higher numbers of students out of high school, we're encouraging more students to go to four year colleges. It seems like we just send everybody down that same path and we're not really matching them up with their goals and their current readiness. And I think there's a couple of things that we could do here. One is we really need to focus more on career technical education programs. And that's happening. It's not, it's not even enough around the country. Both you and I were at the College of Western Idaho earlier this year where we spent some time in this beautiful career technical education center that's housed in a former Sam's Club. And we saw welding and car repair and auto body repair and Mechatronics and all these other areas of career technical education. And we saw students who were clearly wanted to be there. And by the way, the outcomes were unbelievable. They were getting jobs and eventually getting six figures in many of these jobs. Second, we need to have more of a learn and earn model that combines work and study. So whether that's co ops or internships, but even this idea of the Guild model where students are actually going on to work and they're working for companies that are going to support them in getting either certificates or degrees later on so that, you know, students could figure out what they want to do. And so then when they do perhaps even take remedial education, they kind of know the purpose of it. We need to really. Third, really need to focus on kind of progressive credentials that stack towards degrees. I'm thinking of a story that I did years ago at Des Moines Area Community College when the Maytag plant there closed and moved to Mexico. And the federal government of course came in with all this money to send students to two year colleges and the completion rate was terrible. Meanwhile, the state put all of their money beyond shorter credentials, credentials that not only got students jobs more quickly, but that they felt like, well, I'm doing this for a reason. I'm going to, I'm going to learn this skill. It might take two weeks, it might take two months, but I'm going to learn a skill that's actually going to get me a job. Where instead of being in both remedial courses or just regular courses for two years and not sure you're going to get a job at the other, at the other side. And again, you really start with what you like there. And then finally, even at four year colleges, just improved academic support systems. You know, I just recently finished a white paper which we could put in the, in the show notes about how we really need to move on to a new level of student success. We did a show last year which will also re-up around Student Success 2.0. I don't think a lot of people have gotten this message that we need to think about a new generation of students who have different needs. And that includes, you know, not dusting off the playbook for student success or dusting off the remedial education playbook from a decade ago, we need to think differently about it. This is not. These are not the students of 2010. Heck, these aren't the students of even 2015. And I feel like that colleges just keep going back to the old way of doing things, whether it's remedial ed or whether it's student success. And instead I think we need to build a new system for 2025.

Correcting a Broken Business Model

Michael Horn:

Wow. Okay, so I love where you took all of that. Jeff. Reframed my provocative question and gave a more positive, actionable set of steps that can come out of it around pathways, choice and, and then rethinking the student success playbook, as you said. One last thought, staying on sort of the provocative angle of this. One of the key reasons for the practice of remedial education and the lack of progress in eliminating it has been the traditional college business model which Anne talked about. Why Is it? Because these programs are cash cows, presumably cash cows for students who wouldn't persist. So hey, let's take your money and run. So to sing. Right? This is the same business model, by the way, that leads many colleges to not accept transfer credits from other schools and count them toward the major. You and I have talked about this plenty on the show and my view, I think, is that we're going to need a new system of higher ed focused on competency or mastery rather than the credit hour to really overthrow that old one. But I guess I take all this, and you referenced Duet and the Student Ready College earlier. And I sort of contrast that traditional business model with say Duet in Southern New Hampshire University's model mastery or competency based, really student ready. And I think that's a business and academic model that's friendly to students and we need much more of that. And I guess that's why I get excited about, you know, and sometimes overeager, perhaps about disrupting large parts of what I see as a broken business model that's leading many colleges and universities to failure. But perhaps the subsetting of that model would be really good news for students.So I'm not saying no college, right. I'm just saying not the traditional college college model. And I, I'd love you to course correct me here as, as well and say where I'm wrong.

Jeff Selingo:

I don't think you're actually wrong, Michael. I think that there are actually many colleges right now. The thing I worry about is that many colleges right now are desperate for bodies and revenue. So I do worry that that's not going to lead to innovation around remedial ed in particular because they're just going to want to get anybody in the door that they can. So let's, but let's think about some new models potentially. You know, one is, and I talk about this in my new book, there's this theory out there about the finite game and the infinite game. And sometimes I feel like we think of the finite game too much. And we think of college. Well, it's four years. We think of high school as four years or two years of college. And we're not thinking about the long term. And the thing about remedial ed is that even though if it's done well, it actually sets up students for their long term success, not just in terms of retention and graduation rate at that college, but it sets them up for long term success in life. And so I often think about why we're rushing this. Right. I understand that there are opportunity costs, but are there models that we can build whether it's in high school or between high school and college? You know, it's still my contention, for example, that the senior year of high school is a lot of wasted time. And so can we build in more remedial work? And again, it doesn't always have to be done in person. A lot of this can be done online and in other methods. But the fact that we have to feel like we have to wait until the student gets to college to deliver remedial education. I wish that we could rethink that and perhaps even delay college a little bit to kind of get this right. Because I think the, the infinite game of life is, is much more important than the finite game of getting to college graduation. Second, we talked a lot about dual enrollment. Perhaps we should focus less. Colleges should focus less on dual enrollment and getting these high school students into these dual enrolled classes and instead making sure, you know, doing a kind of basic blocking and tackling and making sure that they can do the work, the college level work. And so maybe focus a little bit more on remedial ed and less on dual enrollment in terms of your mission. The other thing I don't think we know yet is where this is all going. We still have an entire generation of students, as we know, who are going to be coming through K through 12 and high school from the pandemic. Right. I always want to remind our listeners, my daughter who's going to graduate in 2030 from high school was in second grade in, during the pandemic. This is going to be with us for a while and I still don't think, and I think it potentially could get worse before it gets better because there's basic concepts I see in math that my fourth grader who is the class of 2028, didn't quite get. And so I think that our needs are going to be only become greater around remedial ed. And we really need to be prepared, prepared for this now and definitely, by the way, later on in this, in this decade. And so I think that, you know, let's, let's think about these things before we start to say, okay, well, forget about remedial ed. You know, I think that we really need to think about redesigning these, these things rather than say, oh, we're just going to get these students in, we'll figure out how to get them through and on their way to graduation.

Michael Horn:

Great set of points, Jeff. And I think it's a great place to leave the conversation, which was a great one with Anne . Love everything from the history to what they found to the progress, the stalling reasons for it and then pathways forward. You've just pointed out a few more and frankly, some things that we need to be thinking more about given the coming generation of students out of K12 schools into college impacted by COVID in ways that I think, frankly we're still getting our arms around. So we'll leave it there. Huge thanks to the Gates foundation for exclusively sponsoring this episode. Huge thanks to Anne Kim for joining us. And as always, our thanks to you, our listeners.We'll see you next time on Future U.