Making Sense of Disparities in Mathematics Remediation: What is the Role of Student Retention?

Recent research on mathematics remediation in community colleges indicates that there are large differences in the rate of successful remediation between students of differing levels of initial math deficiency. One might presume that these “skill gaps” in successful remediation are a result of differing rates of student retention. That is, presumably poorer math skills are associated with a shorter duration of college attendance (lower persistence) and, in turn, a shorter duration of college attendance is associated with a lower likelihood of successful remediation. However, the limited prior evidence does not appear to support this explanation for the “skill gaps” in successful remediation. In an effort to make sense of this incongruity, I executed a detailed analysis of the relationship between level of math deficiency at college entry, persistence, and successful remediation in math. In contrast to the conclusions of prior work, I find that differences in persistence contribute strongly to the “skill gaps” in successful remediation, although this contribution is masked by the fact that the relationship between persistence and the likelihood successful remediation is neither proportional nor equal across levels of initial math deficiency, both of which were implicit analytical assumptions of prior work on this topic.