Improving the Targeting of Treatment: Evidence from College Remediation

Judith Scott-Clayton, Peter M. Crosta and Clive R. Belfield

No 18457, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: At an annual cost of roughly $7 billion nationally, remedial coursework is one of the single largest interventions intended to improve outcomes for underprepared college students. But like a costly medical treatment with non-trivial side effects, the value of remediation overall depends upon whether those most likely to benefit can be identified in advance. Our analysis uses administrative data and a rich predictive model to examine the accuracy of remedial screening tests, either instead of or in addition to using high school transcript data to determine remedial assignment. We find that roughly one in four test-takers in math and one in three test-takers in English are severely mis-assigned under current test-based policies, with mis-assignments to remediation much more common than mis-assignments to college-level coursework. We find that using high school transcript information--either instead of or in addition to test scores--could significantly reduce the prevalence of assignment errors. Further, we find that the choice of screening device has significant implications for the racial and gender composition of both remedial and college-level courses. Finally, we find that if institutions took account of students' high school performance, they could remediate substantially fewer students without lowering success rates in college-level courses.

JEL-codes: H75 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-10
Note: ED
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Improving the Targeting of Treatment Evidence From College Remediation Judith Scott-Clayton Peter M. Crosta Teachers College, Columbia University Clive R. Belfield The City University of New York Published online before print January 28, 2014, doi: 10.3102/0162373713517935 EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION AND POLICY ANALYSIS September 2014 vol. 36 no. 3 371-393

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