Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many students entering postsecondary institutions are not ready to enroll in college-level courses and are placed in remedial courses. Recent data from the US Department of Education indicate that about half of all first-year students and 70% of community college students take at least one remedial course during their college careers (Chen, 2016). These are designed to help students develop the skills they will need to succeed in college-level courses and thus help them persist through graduation (Bettinger & Long, 2009). However, as these remedial courses are not counted toward college credits, they add cost and time for students. Several studies have estimated the causal effects of remediation courses on academic outcomes using quasi-experimental designs, but they report mixed results.

One intervention that remains under-researched as an approach to preparing high school students for college-level courses is a statewide graduation requirement that specifies courses students must pass to graduate. For example, the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) requires all high school students to pass a set of curricular requirements, beginning with the graduating class of 2011. Recently, many states have increased the minimum number of math and/or English credits required to graduate from high school. However, the extent to which mandated course-taking strengthens students’ skills remains unclear.

Using rich high school and college transcript and administrative data that link Michigan students’ high school course-taking to later remedial course-taking in in-state colleges/universities, this paper investigates: (RQ1) What are the effects of the mandated course-taking policy on remediation placement and do they vary by subgroup, especially for low-income and minority students? and (RQ2) Were students who are induced by the policy to take Algebra II more likely to pass remedial math or enroll in college-level math courses in college?

Although over 40 states have changed their graduation requirements, little is known about the policy effects on postsecondary outcomes and why not all students benefit from completing mandatory courses. This study will contribute to the literature on mandatory course-taking and postsecondary remediation enrollment in two ways. First, it will provide empirical evidence on whether mandatory course-taking helped prepare students to take college courses and increased the probability of college persistence and completion. Second, using high school transcripts, the study will present empirical evidence on whether students who took mandatory math courses but would not have in pre-policy performed better in remedial- and/or college-level math courses. Math is the focus as it is the subject in which remediation is most often needed, with participation rates about twice those in English, reading, and writing (Valentine et al., 2017).

I find significant and quantitatively large positive impacts of mandatory course-taking policy on college readiness. The policy decreased the probability of taking remedial courses in both 4-year and 2-year colleges among students from advantaged backgrounds. I also find positive effects on 2-year college remediation placement for minority and disadvantaged students. The policy also improved the GPA for students who took remedial courses.