CareerTech Provides Results of Remediation Report

The Oklahoma State Board of Career and Technology Education today at its board meeting heard results of the department’s annual report on remediation for technology center students enrolled at public colleges in Oklahoma. This is the second year the department used the same methodology as the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE) Annual Remediation Report.

“The purpose of this report is to determine the level at which our technology center students are prepared to attend college,” said Phil Berkenbile, director of CareerTech. “We hope this will help establish baseline performance levels and help us improve our programs so that students will transition more smoothly to higher education.”

The methodology has changed from last year to include twelfth-grade and adult technology center students who complete full-time programs and only records of first-time entering technology center students attending college in the fall. These changes will assist the department in assessing the effectiveness of academic preparation and intervention strategies and provide data that is more comparable to the remediation studies prepared by OSRHE for all students.

Of the 1,366 2002-03 technology center students who belonged in the Fall 2003 cohort, 691 (50.6 percent) enrolled in remedial courses sometime in 2003-04 as compared to 37.4 percent for all college students from the Fall 2003. Those needing remediation included 23 who attended a comprehensive university, 135 who attended a regional university and 533 who attended a two-year college.

The majority of technology center students attending college in the Fall 2003 (69.8 percent or 954 students) attended two-year colleges. These students had a remediation rate of 55.9 percent compared to 50.9 percent for all Fall 2003 students at two-year colleges.

“The good news is that over time, from 1992-94 to 2002-03 the remediation rate for technology center students has dropped from 59.8 percent to 50.9 percent,” said Berkenbile.

“Even better news is that the remediation rate of adult students participating in technology center programs while enrolled in college dropped at an even greater rate,” he said.

During the period from 1993-94 through 2002-03, the remediation rate of concurrently enrolled technology center students fell from 19 to 9.3 percent while the number of students increased from 79 to 599. This rate is comparable to that of those students attending the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Sate University, whose entrance requirements are the state’s highest among public institutions.

In addition, evidence is beginning to show that technology center students who participate in cooperative agreements, in which they earn college credit for technology center courses, have remediation rates of less than 5 percent.

“Our findings suggest that technology center students who concurrently enroll as first-time freshmen while completing technology center programs are very successful,” Berkenbile said. “Considering these impressive results, we want to continue to work with the state regents to develop effective cooperative alliance agreements. We also want parents and students to know these students not only are earning college credit toward a degree but doing it with a high rate of success.”

posted April 28, 2005

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