Remedial Education As Ideological Battleground: Emerging Remedial Education Policies in the Community College

While remedial education has become an increasingly common aspect of all sectors of postsecondary education, recent ideological debates have resulted in state and system-wide policies that increasingly segregate remediation solely within the community college sector. This trend has profound implications for access to educational opportunity for large segments of the population, particularly the poor and minority students who are most often placed in remedial courses. This article first examines the ideological underpinnings of the current debate regarding the purpose and positioning of remedial education. Next, I utilize qualitative data on three urban community colleges to examine the ways in which the interplay between state- and institutional-level ideology and policy is reflected in individual colleges' remediation practices. The data suggest that community colleges respond quite differently to state-level remediation policies and can play an active role in shaping the implementation of these policies.