Thousands of Ohio and Kentucky teens graduate from high school each year unprepared for college. If they go on, they'll require remedial math or English. The alternative is stunted careers and diminished lifelong earning power.

        Explanations, justifications and blame abound, but bringing student skills up to snuff is a big job. For instance, 41 percent of students at Cincinnati State Technical & Community College must take catch-up classes.

        “Math just went out of my head,” said Collene Driscoll, 21, of St. Bernard who is starting a degree in medical massage at Cincinnati State three years after graduating from Roger Bacon. “And I need to brush up on my writing skills.”

        She's not unusual.

        Nationally, 29 percent of students entering post-secondary education are “academically deficient,” according to a new study by Robert H. McCabe, a senior fellow at the League for Innovation in Community Colleges.

        As a result, he said, taxpayers spend at least $1 billion every year to teach those 1 million students what they should have mastered in elementary and high schools.

        About 500,000 pass their remedial courses, Dr. McCabe said, and, compared with the nation's $103 billion annual bill for higher education, “spending 1 percent to salvage a half million lives is pretty good. ... The cost/benefit is exceptional.”

Many need help

        Among successful remedial students nationally, 90 percent went on to pass college English and 85 percent passed college algebra, said Dr. McCabe, president-emeritus of Miami-Dade Community College.

        Dr. McCabe may be under-estimating how many students require remedial education each year, the National Center for Developmental Education cautioned: it may be 2.2 million, given the lack of clarity in what is remedial and who keeps numbers.

        Closer to home, the Ohio Board of Regents said 23 percent of freshmen at two- and four-year state campuses require catch-up courses in English and 24 percent need them in math.

        The regents pay $24 million a year in direct subsidies — about 2 percent of Ohio's undergraduate budget — to state schools for those remedial students.

        That doesn't include the cost of delayed degrees, tuition students pay for courses that won't count toward graduation or what schools spend to lift them to college-level math and English.

Students tracked

        Kentucky's Council on Postsecondary Education said at least 38 percent of freshmen at four-year public campuses need remedial classes, but it had no cost estimates.

        The new Kentucky Community & Technical College System said 77 percent of its students take at least one remedial class at its two-year community colleges. Technical colleges traditionally have not offered formal catch-up courses.

        That is changing.

        This fall, Northern Kentucky Technical College will offer remedial reading, writing and math courses, academic dean Carole Reed-Mahoney said.

        With foundation support, Dr. McCabe tracked his national sample for nine years and found “they're doing very well.”

        • 16 percent earned bachelor's degrees.

        • 33 percent earned associate's degrees or work-related college certificates.

        • 90 percent of those who left school without degrees or certificates went to work, often using skills from remedial classes.

        • Unemployment and minimum-wage jobs were rare.

        • 2 percent had felony convictions, compared with 8-10 percent expected for adults from similar “at-risk populations” based on age, sex, race and ethnicity.

        A historic context for Tristate remedial education is difficult to assemble. Some schools lack easily accessible records as recent as the mid-'90s because they switched computer systems.

        Ill-prepared students reflect the “mass miseducation of a whole lot of people. ... For some reason, they missed it. This is their second chance and they're doing it right,” said Ron Wright, president of Cincinnati State.

        The debate is where to offer that second chance.

        Paul Ellis, who heads Northern Kentucky University's learning assistance center, said remedial students are more likely to earn a four-year degree if they take catch-up classes at a university.

        Sending them to community colleges also risks creating a two-track system that works against students who start off needing help, Mr. Ellis said.

        Hunter Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education, was more blunt.

        Relying on community colleges for remedial classes “probably will have a damaging effect on minority educational attainment,” he said.

        Don't tell that to Cincinnati State's Dr. Wright.

        Universities cannot focus on remedial students, he said, but “it's the greatest mission in higher education” for community colleges. “We do our magic. ... If you can't make it here, you have serious problems.”

Several causes

        College educators spread the blame for inadequately prepared young adults:

        • When youngsters encounter untalented and frequently uncertified elementary school teachers, it's hard to cope with high school math and English without the basics. • Too many superintendents and high school principals pride themselves on graduation rates, even knowing that graduates are ill-prepared for college.

        • Many high school curricula do not mesh with what colleges expect in first-year math and English.

        • Students don't take college-prep courses, especially math in their senior year.

        • High school English teachers find it easier to focus on literature than on writing skills that require them to grade myriad compositions.

        • Students mature on different intellectual timetables and often choose college after high school when it's too late to take preparatory courses.

        Foremost among the responses are P16 statewide programs, drawing their name from preschool to college graduation 16 years later.

        Ingredients range from improved K-12 teacher education and coordinated high school/college expectations to college-prep as the high school graduation standard and better training for college remedial teachers.

        Another answer is being attempted by Philip Luther, head of the English department at UC's Raymond Walters College, and colleague Marlene Miner.

        They decided that second chances can be too late and are working with Mount Healthy and Deer Park high school students to appreciate and reduce the risks and costs of joining the ill-prepared throngs appearing on college steps.

What Tristate colleges offer

Gov. Rhodes dies
Highs and lows of Rhodes' career
Online classes give busy students an edge
Charters keep more pupils
City law on racial profiling starts to gel
Meters dispense parking coupons
More colleges offering remedial classes
Regional campuses create computer degree
Hotel for pets is no fleabag
Fire hits Newport city garage
Insurers battle cancer proposal
Lecturer calls for action to relieve global warming
Local Digest
McConnell pushes for 'clean coal'
Springfield swim club to reopen by late May
State awaits school feedback
You asked for it