By: Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: 3 min.
The past ten years have seen education stakeholders attempt various ways to reform or reduce
the need for remedial or developmental education. Dual enrollment and co-requisite coursework are two such approaches, which are necessary because of the discouraging student outcomes associated with remedial
coursework. Remedial education costs students time and money to learn skills to which they had previous exposure in middle and high school in order to be ready for credit-bearing coursework.
Rhode Island’s approach to combating remediation involves helping to ensure students are better prepared for credit-bearing postsecondary coursework before they graduate high school. In 2018, the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE)
established The Readiness Project through the PrepareRI initiative to “facilitate collaboration between K-12 and postsecondary educational institutions in Rhode Island to increase students’ readiness for college” by strengthening “key academic skills
students need to be successful in their next step.”
There are four Readiness Courses that students across the state can take to help bolster their skills:
These were developed in partnership with WestEd’s Carnegie Math Pathways and Reading Apprenticeship, as well as representatives from Rhode Island’s public postsecondary institutions, the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), Rhode Island College (RIC),
and the University of Rhode Island (URI). Continued collaboration between RIDE, WestEd, CCRI, RIC, and URI ensures that students can use their completion of the College-level Readiness courses to place into credit-bearing college courses and avoid
costly remediation in college.
Students can enroll in these courses in one of two ways. The courses can be offered in-school as an elective course, or students can enroll in them via RIDE’s All Course Network (ACN), “an online,
statewide course catalog that lets students take free courses at colleges, schools, or online at no cost to themselves, their parents, or their schools.”
Early evaluations of the Readiness Courses have been positive. Students enrolled in the College Math Readiness course grew the equivalent of 50 SAT points from beginning to end of the course on average. Students who began with below average skills grew
the equivalent of 100 SAT points. Students enrolled in the 8th Grade Math Readiness course grew 15 percentage points on WestEd’s embedded assessment and average scores increased from 65% to 80% proficiency. For the reading courses, “teachers reported
statistically significant increases in students’ scores on writing samples using WestEd’s rubrics of conceptual knowledge, metacognitive strategies, and reader identity.”
There is excitement and support for this approach to building academic readiness: RIDE was recently awarded a $1 million Balancing the Equation: A Grand Challenge for Algebra I grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the High School Math course in Providence Public Schools for the 2022-2023
school year. RIDE and the Gates Foundation’s evaluation partner, American Institutes for Research (AIR), will conduct a randomized control trial to evaluate course efficacy in seven Providence Public School District (PPSD) middle schools with the
goal of developing best practices for statewide implementation of curriculum.
The Readiness Courses are just one of the resources available through PrepareRI’s Readiness Project. Other useful bookmarks include:
This college guide for 6-12th grade students and their families and educators, which “provides tips and resources for preparing for
college and completing the application process.”
The RISE tool, which “can help middle and high school students plan for their future by linking high school pathways, career and technical programs and early college course options to majors
at RIC, CCRI and URI and eventually to future careers.”
Other states, districts, and education stakeholders interested in replicating the High School and College Readiness courses can contact Allison Peters at allison.peters@ride.ri.gov.
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