The current situation. Really !!! Tell me it isnât true!!! Remedial ed rate high in Alabama colleges.  This article appeared in the Dothan Eagle yesterday morning. It is a sample of the current state of literacy in America. Posted in News on Monday, July 15, 2013 5:27 pm. The Dothan Eagle Making sure Alabama students enter college prepared for the course work theyâll encounter there is a problem for the state, and has been for a long time.  According to Alabama Commission on Higher Education data, nearly a third of first-year college students end up taking remedial reading or math classes. (Bolding mine). A sizable percentage must take both. Greg Fitch has been the executive director of the Alabama Commission on higher education for nearly seven years, and in that time, the remediation rate hasnât budged much. Fitch said the rate has remained fairly constant, at between 32 and 35 percent. Fitch said differences between K-12 and college curriculum, changing high school curriculum and various other issues contributed to the large number of students in need of remediation. Locally, at Troy University, about 3,450 of the schoolâs 23,000 students had to take remedial math at some point last year, according to information released by the universityâs office of university relations.Fitch said that the issue of remediation is troubling for colleges because they must invest dollars and staff in providing remedial classes for students. Thatâs money that could be invested in other needs. For students, the need for remediation ends up costing them money, as it results in them spending more time in college, adding to their overall bill and also causing them to exhaust Pell and other grants before theyâre done with school.  Students in remediation may become frustrated with the need to take courses over again and leave school early, robbing the workforce of trained workers. âYouâre essentially paying for it three times,â Fitch said. Fitch said getting K-12 curriculum aligned with whatâs being taught in colleges and universities and providing teachers with adequate training to teach these skills would help mitigate the remediation problem. The Alabama Department of Education is moving to address the remediation issue. State Superintendent of Education Tommy Bice said in a press statement that the system is working to align graduation requirements with the expectations of colleges and to use student assessments that track skills required by colleges. By more closely align whatâs being taught in high school with whatâs expected in college, public K-12 schools can help their students make a smoother transition to post-secondary education. The data below shows how many recent graduates from local high schools attending their first year in college in Fall 2012 took remedial math and/or reading classes. Ashford High School               47% Cottonwood High School        46% Dothan High School                 50% Houston County High School   57% Northview High School            39% Rehobeth High School            50% Wicksburg High School           37% Abbeville High School            34% Headland High School           43% Geneva County High School    74% Geneva High School                41% Samson High School                32% Slocomb High School              27% Ariton School                          50% Carroll High School                 41% Dale County High School         56% Daleville High School               31% G. W. Long High School         40% Elba High School                     45% Enterprise High School           33% Kinston School                  50% New Brockton High School     57% Zion Chapel High School         25% So after a dozen years and at least 2 levels of remediation at elementary and secondary school, a third of students are still not taught to read sufficiently well to benefit from further education and/or training. Ridiculous when you consider that we solved the problem over 40 years ago, but refuse to implement the solution. Well, at least public school systems have refused the solution. A number of us, mostly now in private practice, have used the research to build the solutions that catch students at risk up to their peers at double quick time. The Maloney Method has been doing so for 35 years now. Recently I helped a 21 year-old student who placed t the 1st percentile in reading to learn to handle the college level textbooks for his electrical apprenticeship course. He passed all six required courses. The entire process took 16 weeks, during 12 weeks of which he worked full-time. The waste of money, time, human capital and the well-being of the country is described in this article. The option is described in the case study above. Anyone interested?
