How Do We Remediate Remediation?

Overall, we tend to look in the wrong place for how to fix remedial education.  The real problem does not lie with remedial education itself.  Remedial instruction is doomed from the start because it is part of a larger problem.  A brief exercise in critical thinking is illustrative.  Students do not receive the instruction in our K-12 system that will align their exit skills with the entrance skills required by higher education.  This leads many to the conclusion that there is a problem with the K-12 system and its teachers.  However, the situation begs the question of why high school exit skills do not align with college entrance skills.

The answer to this question is deceptively simple.  Teachers in our K-12 schools are prepared in teacher training programs at our institutions of higher education.  Higher education influences everything in the K-12 system from course content, to expected student outcomes, to teacher behavior, to, oh, yes, expected levels of proficiency in areas like writing and math.  In short, higher education has the ability to establish K-12 proficiency levels that will meet the expectations of freshman instructors.

This solution could be addressed state by state, since education is largely governed at the state level.  It might even be addressed at a broader level by using existing state reciprocity agreements as a channel for coordinating efforts to align postsecondary teacher preparation programs. The problem here becomes one of politics rather than education.  States are unlikely to agree on uniform “standards” of student performance.  This is because standardization of student outcomes has somehow become antithetical to education in America.  Standardization, we are told, results in “teaching to the test,” which is a bad thing.  As an aside, states also see any standardization as a usurpation of their authority to control education.  But that’s another matter.

Let me pose the following.  If “the test” in question, whatever its composition, results in students succeeding at the college level, how is that bad?  It seems to me that the real issue is not avoiding teaching to the test, but rather creating a K-12 curriculum that develops the knowledge and skills that the test measures.  If such a curriculum existed, there would be no need to artificially tailor lessons to expected outcomes; expected outcomes would be achieved in the normal course of study for students.  Such an approach could even eliminate the need for exit testing, as proficiency could be demonstrated through successful performance in coursework that would be aligned with entrance proficiency at the college level.

Of course all of this sounds simple.   And if it weren’t for the politics involved, as well as the sluggishness of the education infrastructure itself, it would be.  As is often the case, the simple is also the naïve.