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Remedial Education at Higher Education Institutions in Fall 1995
NCES 97584
October 1996

Changes in Remedial Education Since 1983-84 and 1989

Some of the items on this survey were also included in two previous surveys on remedial education in higher education institutions conducted through the Fast Response Survey System in 1983-84 and 1989. Selected items that were asked in the same or similar manner on the three surveys were compared to examine what changes may have occurred in the intervening 12 years. The 1983-84 survey asked for the "Number of separate courses (Do not count courses repeated in more than one semester or multiple sections of the same course more than once)" for academic year 1983-84, including summer courses. The 1989 survey asked "What was the number of remedial/developmental courses with different catalog numbers in fall 1989? (Do not count multiple sections of the same course.)" The 1995 survey was worded very similarly to the 1989 survey: "What was the number of remedial courses with different catalog numbers in fall 1995? (Do not count multiple sections of the same course.)"

The percentage of institutions offering any remedial reading, writing, or mathematics courses varied over the years from 82 percent in academic year 1983-84 to 74 percent in fall 1989, to 78 percent in fall 1995 (Table 15).7 Only the difference between 1983-84 and 1989 was statistically significant. The percentage of institutions offering remedial writing and mathematics courses showed a similar pattern, with only the difference between 1983-84 and fall 1989 for writing courses statistically significant. Thus, for any remedial courses, remedial writing courses, and remedial mathematics courses, there were no significant changes between 1983-84 and fall 1995 in the percentage of institutions offering such courses. The percentage of institutions offering remedial reading courses showed a significant decrease from 1983-84 to both fall 1989 and fall 1995.


7 For 1983-84 and 1989, standard errors were available only on selected items. To determine the standard errors for the remaining items, the ratios of the known standard errors from the 1989 survey to the corresponding standard errors from the 1995 survey were computed. Then the average of the ratios based on standard errors for all institutions was calculated to obtain a conversion factor. The standard errors for 1989 were obtained by multiplying the corresponding 1995 standard error by this conversion factor. For the 1983-84 survey, the conversion factor was obtained by multiplying the 1989 conversion factor by the square root of the ratio of the 1989 to 1983-84 sample sizes. This approach was used for 1983-84 because there were almost no standard errors from which to develop the appropriate conversion factor.