A Remediation Model

Cal State Northridge deserves credit for taking a bad situation and making it better.

Faced with incoming freshmen who are not prepared to do college-level work--and with a Cal State University policy that gives the new students only a year to demonstrate proficiency or significant progress in basic math and English--CSUN is trying to fix the problem at the source. CSUN professors have been going out to high schools to help public school teachers prepare more effective lessons, and CSUN students are helping tutor local high school students. Their efforts have made CSUN a model for other CSU campuses.

They need a model. Systemwide, 55% of last fall’s incoming CSU freshmen needed remedial math classes and 47% needed remedial English. What makes the figures even more startling is CSU Chancellor Charles Reed’s assertion that they do not represent the poorest performing students but the ones in the top one-third of their classes, with B averages and college aspirations. What does this say about grade inflation? And more alarmingly, what does it say about the remaining students, whose poor performance may discourage them from even considering college?

The need to remedy these deficiencies before high school students become college students--and before elementary school students become high school students--underscores the importance of CSUN’s role in teacher training, which is the long-term solution to ensuring better prepared students. Here, too, CSUN is a model for the CSU system, which trains 60% of the state’s teachers. CSUN has put its teacher preparation program under a yearlong review and is seeking input from public school teachers and administrators, parents and community and school reform leaders on what needs to be changed to make students successful.

Too many people just wring their hands when it comes to the problem of public schools. CSUN is doing something about it.