TO THE EDITOR:
I am writing to offer some observations on your Oct. 26 article that questions the preparation of North Carolina’s high school graduates based on higher education remediation rates. The article states that enrollment in remedial courses at universities and community colleges has skyrocketed, but that is not the case at North Carolina’s public universities.
Remedial enrollment at our state’s public universities actually has dropped since the mid-1990s. For freshmen who graduated high school the previous year, the remediation rate was 14.6 percent from 1993 to 1994, according to university system data. From 2009 to 2010, the remediation rate was 8.3 percent, down from 9.4 percent from 2008 to 2009. These numbers represent great improvement for students enrolling in a four-year institution.
Remediation rates have increased in our open-admissions community colleges. One reason for that increase may be that in a job market featuring 10 percent-plus unemployment, more students are enrolling who in the past may have headed straight to the workforce. Others may need developmental courses to change career paths.
We in public education would love to see reduced need for remediation in our institutions of higher learning, and we continue to work that end. But there is also a need to develop our workforce and provide educational opportunities to all of our citizens. That role historically has been embraced by our state’s community college system, even if it requires some remediation to help our citizens reach their full potential.
June Atkinson
State Superintendent
Department of Public Instruction
