NSHE Board of Regents Transforms Remedial Education, Mandates ‘Corequisite Support’
Nevada’s public higher education institutions are transforming the way students receive remediation, doing away with traditional remedial classes and instead offering just-in-time tutoring and academic support ensuring that every student who enters the system is enrolled in college-level courses.
The Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) Board of Regents on Thursday approved a plan to require “Corequisite Support” for students who currently place in traditional remedial math and English classes at NSHE’s degree-granting institutions.
“By redesigning first-year math and English classes, adding additional instruction time to these college-level courses, and requiring mandatory tutoring for students who need the support, we have seen very promising data across the nation that students are more successful,” Chancellor Thom Reilly said. “This approach allows students to ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ by completing the college-level work while also receiving needed remedial support designed to ensure greater success.”
In Nevada and across the nation, traditional remediation has been shown not to work. Reilly explained that too many students who start non-college credit remediation courses are unsuccessful in completing their gateway course. Students, often from underserved and critical populations, also face psychological challenges and long pathways to gateway course completion.
“If we are to close the achievement gap for underserved and critical populations, we need to start with transforming remediation,” Reilly said.
National data from states including Colorado, Tennessee, California, Texas, West Virginia, and Florida among others, have shown much higher student success outcomes in corequisite support courses. This is true across all levels of academic preparedness. Even for students entering at the lowest remedial courses, their success rates are dramatically higher in corequisite support courses versus traditional remedial pathways, Reilly explained.
“We’ve seen success of this approach at the University of Nevada, Reno and Nevada State College, as well as nationwide support for corequisite remediation,” Reilly said.
