A new approach to helping college students who struggle with math is showing early signs of success in Louisiana.
For decades, students who weren’t ready for college-level courses were asked to take a noncredit remedial course.
In 2022, the state’s higher education board decided to eliminate remedial classes and have students tackle college-level material right away with extra academic support. This has led to higher pass rates, according to the board.
More than 50% of students who would have previously been placed in a remedial class passed a college-level math course last year, up from just 11% under the old model, said Tristan Denley with the Louisiana Board of Regents.
Denley said in the past, only a fraction of those students even attempted the college-level course.
“One in 10 of them actually successfully made it through to take the math class that they needed to graduate,” said Denley. “I don't need to persuade you we needed to do something about that.”
The new approach—known as corequisite education—has non-college-ready students enroll in a credit-bearing course and also a support course that's designed to get them up to speed.
“It enables them to get the support they need,” said Denley, who led the state’s rollout of the program.
In a typical year, more than half of incoming students at community colleges across the country aren't ready to take college-level math or English courses based on their standardized test scores. That number is even higher for Black and Latino students.
Roughly 20,000 students took an introductory math class at a Louisiana public college or university last year. 9,000 of them would have previously been assigned to a remedial class, but they instead were able to take the course along with a corequisite.
Their pass rate was 52%, compared to 30% the year prior, when rollout of the program was underway, but still needs to scale.
Like Louisiana, other state’s have watched their pass rates grow since making the switch. Corequisites are now popular among public colleges and universities across the country and schools in several states have phased out remedial classes completely.
But researchers caution corequisites aren’t a silver bullet and need to be paired with other interventions.
Rita Karam, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, said while studies show the new approach has a strong impact on students passing an entry-level course, the benefit beyond, including on graduation rates, is less clear.
“There's one study that showed there are longer-term impacts,” Karam said. “But other studies have not shown that. Things have not been consistent in terms of the research.”
She said schools have cleared a first hurdle in helping more students pass classes they enter college unprepared to take, but there are many other barriers.
“It's not that they are unaware of these things and they are in the process of addressing them,” Karam said. “But there's a lot of reasons why students might not persist or complete their program.”
Denley said in an email that Louisiana’s corequisite program is part of a broader set of strategies for teachers that use “motivation science” to increase engagement among students. He’s helped pilot similar projects in Tennessee and Georgia, which he said increased overall graduation rates.
“The strategies they’ve given us have been amazing,” Julie Sullivan, a math teacher at River Parishes Community College said at this week’s board meeting where Denley provided an update.
“I had one of the best success rates I’ve ever had as a math teacher,” she said.
State education officials hope to replicate the math program’s success with English next. Only 12% of students who arrived at Louisiana schools unprepared for college-level English made it through the course during the 2020-21 school year.
This year, the Board of Regents is implementing a corequisite program for English at all 29 public universities in the state.
Aubri Juhasz contributed reporting.
