Fail a remedial class, go directly to community college and repeat it
Suzanne Yada
Issue date: 9/2/09 Section: News
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If students don't pass, they must retake them at a community college, he said, rekindling a debate on whether basic skills classes should be offered at all beyond community college.
Eskadmas Haile, an undeclared freshman starting his first semester at SJSU, said he is taking his basic skills course in English and wants to pass so he can stay on campus.
"In community college, once you get in and something pulls you down, you stop going," he said. "Here, your main focus is on school."
Executive Order 665, a decade-old document issued to all universities in the California State University system, states that students who do not pass basic math and English tests must take remediation courses within a determined amount of time - usually one year.
It also states that students can't continue to take other classes without passing the basic skills courses first.
Lydia Lo, a sophomore piano performance major, said she is taking remedial English for the third time.
She said English is her third language and that she spoke Cantonese and Mandarin in her native country, Hong Kong.
"I do really good in class. I get A-pluses," Lo said. "But just the one final - I can't pass."
She said despite her 3.6 GPA and good standing at school, her test results always fall short. She needs to pass in order to continue her piano studies at SJSU, she said.
The California State University system is undergoing a $584 million budget deficit, and SJSU is facing a $42 million shortfall, Whitmore said. The remedial course cuts are a result, he said.
"There are people who suggested these students shouldn't enroll (at a CSU)," said Jim Blackburn, director of enrollment management services in the CSU chancellor's office. "That would drastically cut the size of freshman classes and the size of our budgets."
Blackburn also said that barring admission would go against The California Master Plan for Higher Education, which states that the top 30 percent of high school graduates are automatically eligible for CSU admission.
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Teresa Hanson
posted 2/18/10 @ 10:10 AM PST
The problem is not the occasional international student whose native language is not English. The problem is with our K-12 public schools whose focus is on teaching children everything except reading, writing, and arithmetic. (Continued…)
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