Higher education advocates call for restructuring of remedial education nationwide

Uri Treisman, director of UT's Dana Center, said institutions in states nationwide are revamping their remedial offerings. The problem, he said, is that the changes those institutions are making can't be broadened to the state level. State policymakers need to begin to look at how to craft policy that would allow for new ideas about remedial education to take hold.

“It's time for us to make this change,” he said.

Oklahoma higher education officials have made restructuring the state's remediation programs a major priority in recent years, and those efforts appear to be paying off.

During the 2010-11 academic year, Oklahoma saw a drop over the previous year in first-time freshmen enrolling in remediation courses.

That drop was sharpest among students coming directly from high school — 35.7 percent of those students enrolled in remediation courses in 2010, down from 40.3 percent in 2009.

Officials have said that drop is at least partially the result of a range of efforts on the state level to keep students out of those courses to begin with, including the Oklahoma Educational Planning and Assessment System.

The system provides students and parents with reports that show how the student is doing in specific areas, based on how he or she performed on tests. The reports allow students and parents to identify areas where the student needs to improve, so he or she can focus on those topics.