{"id":9482,"date":"2012-06-13T17:49:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=9482"},"modified":"2012-06-13T17:57:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:57:40","slug":"have-to-retake-algebra-i-bad-placement-tests-may-be-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2012\/06\/13\/have-to-retake-algebra-i-bad-placement-tests-may-be-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"Have To Retake Algebra I? Bad Placement Tests May Be To Blame"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Robert S. Donovan<\/p>

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On Monday the Nashua Telegraph<\/a> published an article with some scary numbers: 78% of freshmen at Nashua Community College coming from Nashua public high schools require remedial coursework.\u00a0 This is higher than the national community college remediation rate, which is close to 60% — and it doesn\u2019t include those students who frequently require remediation because they’ve been out of school for a long time.\u00a0 \u00a0The Telegraph describes \u00a0efforts<\/a> of district and college administrators to address the problem of college\u00a0unpreparedness, mostly focusing on the quality of high school instruction.<\/p>\n

While college unpreparedness is surely a legitimate concern, studies from the Community College Research Center<\/a>\u00a0(CCRC) show that high rates of remediation may have more to do with poor placement testing than poorly prepared students.\u00a0 CCRC studies show that high school grades and GPAs more accurately predict college readiness than placement tests alone.\u00a0 Large-scale simulations of placement testing revealed that \u201ca quarter to a third of students assigned to remedial classes based on standardized test scores could have passed college-level classes with a grade of B or better.\u201d<\/p>\n

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