Participation in Developmental Education for Oklahoma High School Graduates in Oklahoma Public Higher Education
Background
In Senate Bill No. 183 from the 1989 legislative session, Section 13 set up a program designed to evaluate the performance of individual schools and school districts in the state of Oklahoma. This program not only required multiple types of evaluation by the State Department of Education, but also required that the individual schools and districts be notified of these evaluations, and that the general public also be advised as to the “effectiveness” of individual schools or districts. In response to the directive of SB 183, the State Regents provide the following four reports; (1) High School to College-Going Rates for Oklahoma High School Graduates to Oklahoma Colleges; (2) Headcount, Semester Hours, and GPA Report; (3) Mean ACT Scores by Oklahoma High School Site; and (4) Developmental Education (Remediation Rates) for Oklahoma High School Graduates in Oklahoma Public Higher Education (beginning in 1995). In compliance with Senate Bill No. 183, the State Regents will transmit these data to the Office of Accountability.
Student developmental education participation activity is also reported in the Annual Developmental Education Report, which differs from developmental Education participation rates presented as part of the High School Indicators Project. The focus of the Annual Student Developmental Education Report is on all developmental education activity occurring at the colleges and universities. Developmental education participation rates presented as part of the High School Indicators Project only includes students who graduated from Oklahoma high schools. Although graduates from Oklahoma high schools account for most of the freshmen in the State System, there may be small differences between the numbers in each.
Methodology
This data describes recent Oklahoma high school graduates who entered an Oklahoma public college or university as new freshmen in the fall after graduation. Since it is not possible to track individual high school graduates to college, high school graduates are defined as 17-, 18-, or 19-years old who graduated from an Oklahoma high school. These students include full- or part-time freshmen.
This study uses the student-cohort flow system to track students by semester and examines the courses taken throughout the academic year. Students who took more than one remedial course in a subject area were counted only once in that subject. Students who took a remedial course in more than one subject area were counted once in each subject area. For the total count, students were counted only once although they could have taken more than one remedial course; therefore, the total count is an unduplicated headcount of the first-time entering freshmen.
For high schools with five or fewer students, the freshman headcount has been entered, but no additional information has been provided in order to comply with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Of the fall 2012 first-time freshmen (19,098), 39.4% (7,532) enrolled in one or more developmental courses. The unduplicated percent has increased since first being reported for fall 1996 first-time freshmen (37.3), but has decreased 3.1 points from fall 2011 (42.5). The developmental Math rate also decreased from the previous year (38.0) to 35.3%. Developmental English decreased 2.4 points to 16.5%. Science developmental classes remain relatively steady, decreasing only one-tenth of 1% from the previous year. Developmental reading, the only subject area that has increased from the previous year, rose 2.4 points to 9.5%.
Shifts in the percent of developmental education can in part be explained by a change in methodology used to better identify developmental courses. Beginning in 2008, changes in reporting requirements to federal and regional entities necessitated updates to the Unitized Data System (UDS), the statewide data collection process. As a result, new procedures had to be developed to continue to provide quality data to the various education stakeholders. Therefore, comparisons of current findings to prior year reports are limited.
Information for all 2012 high school graduates can be viewed by clicking on the link provided below.