Excerpt
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Now, why some community colleges are rethinking their approach to basic courses.
The schools have long been a place where students are required to fill in gaps in their high school educations, but there are important questions about how well it works. And now there's a move to change the way it's done.
Special correspondent John Tulenko from Learning Matters has the story.
JOHN TULENKO: Community colleges, with low tuition and open door admissions, are enrolling record numbers of students, especially minority students and returning adults, all of them with high hopes, says teacher Peter Adams.
PETER ADAMS, Community College of Baltimore County: They're coming here with a great emphasis on making their lives better. A lot of them have worked in fairly low-paying, insecure jobs, and they want a better career.
JOHN TULENKO: But as community colleges across the country have discovered, the vast majority of students arrives unprepared.
PETER ADAMS: And the first thing we say to them is, not so fast there. You're not really in college. You can't take college-level courses. You have got to take these developmental courses.
JOHN TULENKO: Catchup classes that do not count toward certificates and degrees, that's where more than half of all community college students and two-thirds of black and Latino students are placed.
COMMENT: What does that say about the students' high school education? How did they graduate NOT ready? Poorly run high school mills.
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