Many states are redesigning their college remediation policies to increase postsecondary degree completion. In 2012, Tennessee began waiving college math remediation for high school students who completed a computer-based remedial math course (SAILS) during their senior year. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the high school remedial course did not improve students' math achievement any more than the typical senior year math course (although it did allow students to avoid the cost and delay of remedial math in college). Using a difference-in-difference design, we find that completing SAILS boosted enrollment in college-level math among first-year community college students by nearly 30 percentage points, with nearly half of new enrollees passing the college-level course. Such students had, however, only completed 1.5 additional college courses after two years. In 2015, Tennessee community colleges implemented "co-requisite" remediation, allowing students to complete remediation alongside college-level math. Under the co-requisite policy, completing SAILS no longer produced any boost in college credits. Although both alternatives to pre-requisite remediation produced modest gains for students and taxpayers, remediation requirements are not a primary driver of low degree completion rates.
On average, a $1,000 reduction in per-pupil spending reduces average test scores in math and reading by 3 9 percent of a standard deviation and increases the score gap between black and white students by roughly 6 percent Advocates for poor students have used this argument to overturn school-funding formulas that relied on local dollars in favor of state-based funding mechanisms, based on the assumption that state funding would direct more dollars to low-income communities and bring per-pupil spending up to equitable levels School finance data come from the U S Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of School System Finances, which contains financial data for all 13,500 public school districts in the United States Test score data come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” a test given every two years to a representative sample of students across the country
