Cal State Takes Step to Cut Remedial Classes : Education: The board says the university system shoulders too much responsibility. Trustees hope the move will encourage high schools to do a better job.

The California State University board of trustees, determined to address the cost and scope of remedial education, took its first cautious step Wednesday toward scaling back courses that some say are vital to the success of thousands of students, particularly minorities.

The board unanimously approved a resolution that calls for the development of “specific, practical action plans” to reduce the number of remedial courses at Cal State.

Trustee Ralph Pesqueira said that by the end of this year, he hopes to implement a plan to phase out certain types of remedial education over the next five years, forcing students to look to community colleges for help.

The San Diego businessman said he wants to target students who have completed college preparatory courses in high school, but still lack the basic skills to do college-level work. Remedial classes for foreign-born or older, returning students would not be phased out, he said.

“We’re not punishing them,” he said of students who need remedial help. “We want to make it so they don’t have to take remedial education--by encouraging (high schools) to do a better job.”

Nearly half of all incoming Cal State freshmen who are tested need remedial classes in English or math before they can enroll in college-level courses, according to a report delivered Tuesday to the board’s committee on educational policy.

But the report found that the 20-campus system spends less than 1% of its $1.4-billion budget to offer those courses.

“One thing is certain,” the report says. “The investment in developmental and remedial education does not represent a sum of money which, if directed elsewhere, could significantly remedy the CSU’s overall financial woes.”

Nevertheless, Pesqueira and other trustees on Tuesday repeated their claims that the Cal State system, which enrolls students from the top third of California’s high school graduates, shoulders too much responsibility for remedial education.

“What is severely strapping our resources is the tremendous increase in (unqualified freshmen) coming from high school,” said trustee William Campbell, an Orange County real estate broker. If Cal State universities continue to accept those students, “the high schools will never face the responsibility,” he said.

Trustee William Hauck, a Sacramento public affairs consultant, agreed. “Fundamentally, we’ve got to ask more of the (kindergarten through grade 12) system,” he said.

The trustees’ comments followed a lengthy report from Cal State administrators on the scope and cost of the existing remedial system. The report found that in the fall of 1993, 47% of entering freshmen who were tested could not do college-level math, and nearly 49% needed help in English. (Freshmen are tested by the Cal State universities if they score below a certain level on college aptitude tests.)

The report emphasized, however, that the number of students needing remedial classes represents a much smaller portion of the entire entering class. In 1993, the report said, slightly more than 18% of all incoming Cal State students--including those transferring from other colleges--needed remedial help in English, while 21% needed math help.

Trustees reacted sharply to the report, which they accused of downplaying the significance of the problem.

Pesqueira called the report “a lot of fluff,” while Campbell accused the authors of having “massaged” the statistics to make them seem less alarming. “Today I have witnessed an academic magic show,” Campbell said sarcastically. “Poof! There’s no more issue!”

Several Cal State administrators stressed that the issue of remedial education--who needs it, why they need it and how they fare once they have gotten it--is extremely complex. Bob Suzuki, president of Cal Poly Pomona, urged the trustees to remember that some of the Cal State system’s best students have received remedial help.

“Many of these students outperform students in general. Their grade-point averages tend to be higher. Their persistence-in-graduation rates tend to be higher,” he said. “I don’t think we can just relegate this to the K-12 schools or the community colleges. It’ll come back to haunt us.”

Blenda J. Wilson, president of Cal State Northridge, agreed.

“I want to caution us not to behave as though our students are not fit for collegiate work because they have a skill area that needs to be remediated,” Wilson said. “We can demonstrate that students who take developmental course work do better than students who don’t.”

Under the approved resolution, recommendations about how to revamp the Cal State remedial education system will be returned to the board by June 30.