The Effect of Parents' Level of Education on the Need for Student Remediation in Postsecondary Mathematics
Abstract This article presents the results of a quantitative analysis on potential factors that explain the need for postsecondary mathematics remediation. The primary focus is on the relationship between parents' level of education and the need for remediation. In this article, recent NCES data is analyzed via multiple regression models to determine if factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, high school courses and high school GPA are influential in the need for remediation. It is found that many of the secondary school factors are influential on the need for remediation, but the effect of parental level of education is limited. Key words: remedial mathematics, parent's level of education, NCES data Introduction Mathematics is a hurdle for many students on their way to a college degree. The fact that many students are in need of remedial mathematics education before they can even take a for credit college mathematics course makes this trek even more difficult. Recently, data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (2012) has shown that parents with lower levels of education influence greatly the percentage of students in need of a remedial mathematics course at the postsecondary level. As such, this paper is primarily focused on the effect of parents' level on education on the need for remediation in mathematics. According to Ashford (2011) over 50% of high school graduates are unprepared for college mathematics. This has led many faculty, administrators and policymakers to discuss the reasons for such large numbers of remediation. While the majority of the dialogue ranges from the reported failures in K 12 mathematics education to gender and race, this study looks at the relationship between parental level of education and mathematics remediation. In this article, the phrase "remedial education" is jointly used with "developmental education." Remedial mathematics means the re teaching or re learning of high school mathematics (typically Algebra I and II and Geometry) Developmental mathematics often refers to new material that the student has never seen before but is on the level of what would typically be seen in high school. Even though there is an underlying difference, both of these "mathematics" refer to a class that is not at the level that a particular college assigns to being "college ready material." Usually these remedial courses begin with basic arithmetic skills up to intermediate algebra/geometry. Community colleges and four year institutions will be considered together in the review of the literature though most remediation takes place in the community colleges (Hagedorn, Siadat, Fogel, Nora and Pascarella, 1999) College is sometimes seen as a natural progression from high school, thus the large percentage of 17 19 year old freshmen; though there are some who delay entering college after secondary graduation. Traditional aged students are those students who enter college immediately after high school while non traditional aged students delay postsecondary education. Remediation is far more common among non traditional aged student (Attewell Lavin, Domina and Levey, 2006) This article, however, looks especially at the traditional aged undergraduate. Literature Review Mathematics is a difficult subject for many students. Thus, there is a need for numerous undergraduates (upwards of 70% in California) to take remedial coursework before first time college students are allowed in their first for credit college math course (Melguizo et al, 2008) Several factors can contribute to this need for remediation. The current literature can be roughly divided into four broad categories: (1) socioeconomic status, family income and ethnicity, (2) secondary school and student history, (3) gender and (4) parental influences. While a high volume of the literature on the need for remediation falls into the demographics of gender or race and ethnicity, the number of studies linking parents' socioeconomic status (SES) to the need for postsecondary student mathematics remediation is considerably lower.