The number of students needing remedial education when they attend college may be a bit discouraging to the state of Colorado. According to the Department of Education’s report on remedial education, 40 percent of students attending college in the 2011-2012 school year needed to take remedial courses.

“The remediation rate for students who graduated in 2011 was 40 percent, considerably higher than the rate reported for the class of 2010 (31 percent),” Lieutenant Governor Joseph Garcia said. “This difference does not reflect a change in student performance, but rather a change in methods, leading to a more complete picture of that performance.”

In previous years, the report was made up of assessment scores compiled from high school reports, rather than colleges and universities. Additionally, the old reports were made up of students who went out of state for college.

In the state of Colorado, 9,862 out of 24,659 students attending either a two-year or four-year college needed to take remedial courses in the 2011 high school graduating classes. Test scores determined 7,853 of those students while 2,009 students were determined by the remedial classes that they enrolled in.

Of the students who need to take remedial courses, like math, English and writing, 42.4 percent are women, while 37.3 percent are men.

CMU’s remedial rate is one of the highest, with approximately 804 out of 1509 2011-2012 freshmen needing to take remedial classes, which is 53.3 percent of students who graduated high school in 2011. This amount also includes students attending WCCC and the Montrose branch.

In the state of Colorado, the Community College of Denver has the highest rate of students who needed remediation with 1169 out 1343 students, 88 percent of their student population. The lowest rate is University of Colorado-Boulder with only 20 out of 2,831 2011-2012 freshmen needing some sort of remedial attention.

“Remediation is rightly a serious concern for educators, policymakers, parents and students,” Garcia said. “Nonetheless, the responses to improving academic outcomes are just as important as the incidence of remedial needs. Colorado is widely considered a national exemplar in remedial education reform and has seen many recent significant changes designed to improve college readiness. The initial results are promising, but there is no doubt that much work is still needed in this area if our state is to maintain its role as a national leader in ensuring the postsecondary success of all Coloradans.”

CMU is supposedly discontinuing offering remedial courses to students. Student Delaney Harper was able to explain a little more about the matter.

“They cancelled 030,” Harper said. “They cancelled 060. This is the last semester that it is being taught, which sucks because that teacher previously mentioned quit. And they are going to try to combine those two courses, I guess, and put them in the beginning of 090.”

Though these studies have been able to calculate the need for remedial courses in Colorado colleges, the report does not explain the cause or how Colorado plans on rectifying this issue.

ebloom@mavs.coloradomesa.edu