The Effects of High School Remediation on Long-Run Educational Attainment

Umut Özek

Every year, millions of high school students take remedial courses. In Florida alone, nearly a quarter of high schoolers took a remedial English course during the 2022-23 school year. Remedial courses offer additional instructional time, often with smaller class sizes and differentiated support from qualified teachers, to help struggling students improve in the subject area. Yet despite how common these courses are, we still know very little about how they actually affect students’ chances of success in college.

Do remedial courses in high school improve college outcomes for students?

This study finds that while remedial courses do slightly improve high school test scores, they also have many negative longer-term outcomes. Students placed in remedial classes are significantly less likely to take advanced courses, participate in electives, enroll in college, and ultimately earn a college degree compared to their peers not placed in remediation. These negative impacts seem to stem largely from reduced opportunities to take challenging coursework, rather than from increased discipline or attendance problems.

THE STUDY

This study examines the impact of remedial English courses in Florida high schools, which are required, in addition to the regular ELA course, for students who score below the proficient level in the statewide English language arts (ELA) test. Using a regression discontinuity design, the study compares students who scored just below the state’s ELA test cutoff (and were therefore required to take remediation) with those who scored just above (and didn’t need to). Because these groups are nearly identical except for whether they took remedial courses, the design isolates the impact of remediation itself, allowing researchers to make a causal claim about its effects. The analysis follows 4 cohorts of 9th graders between 2008-09 and 2011-12 school years and 3 cohorts of 10th graders between 2009-10 and 2011-12 to see how remediation affects not just high school test scores, but also long-term outcomes like college enrollment, college persistence, and degree attainment.

KEY FINDINGS

Positive outcomes of remediation:

1. Taking a remedial ELA course in 10th grade increased reading scores and the likelihood of passing the state’s required proficiency test on the first try. Reading scores increased by about 6.5% of a standard deviation. The chances of passing the state’s required proficiency test on the first try increased by nearly 4 percentage points (which is about 30% higher than the average rate for students just below the cutoff).

   Negative outcomes of remediation:

2. Students who were placed in remedial classes in 9th or 10th grade were significantly less likely to enroll in selective colleges, persist beyond the second year, and complete two- or four-year degrees compared to similar students who were not placed in remediation. Taking a remedial high school course reduces…
   • 4-year college enrollment by 4.2 to 5.3 percentage points (corresponds to 7 percent of the comparison group average)
   • Enrollment in “very competitive” colleges by 4.4 to 5.3 percentage points (or by 17 percent of the comparison group average)
   • Persistence beyond the second year of college by 5.6 to 7 percentage points (or by 12 percent of the comparison group average)
   • Attainment of a 2-year degree by 4.9 to 5.9 percentage points (by 22 percent of the comparison group average)
   • Attainment of any college degree by 5.1 to 6.2 percentage points (17 percent of the comparison group average)

3. These negative impacts are largely driven by reduced likelihood of taking advanced coursework. Students assigned to a remediation course were about 7 percentage points less likely to take a college-credit-bearing AP or IB course.

   Nearly half of the negative effect of remediation can be explained by what Özek calls the “tracking effect.” Being placed in a remedial schedule steers students away from advanced coursework in both the remediation subject (e.g., ELA) and other core subjects. It limits the pathways to advanced classes in the future, creating a negative “academic track” for students that extends beyond the remediation period.

4. Students in remedial classes were much less likely to participate in elective courses (like CTE, World Language, Arts, and Drama) compared to similar students who weren’t in remedial classes.

   Students in remediation spent an extra 300 minutes per week in ELA classes, but they lost about 250 minutes of elective coursework, meaning the extra instructional time for the remediation course almost directly replaces time that students would have otherwise spent in electives. 

5. Higher-performing students saw greater negative impacts from remedial placement than lower-performing students.

   For example, the study estimates that being placed in remedial classes lowers the likelihood of taking college-level courses in high school by about 2% for lower-performing students, compared to a much larger decrease, around 9%, for higher-performing students. This implies that the threshold for remediation is a very important consideration for this type of policy. 

6. Taking a high school remedial course may be more harmful than taking one in middle school, possibly because older students have less time to catch up academically. Earlier studies in Florida found positive (or null) effects of the same policy in middle school, in contrast with this study's negative effects in high school. This difference may be because high school students have less time to catch up or because remediation limits their access to advanced courses, which hurts college readiness and attainment. Attendance and discipline data from this study suggest that the stigma of being labeled “low-performing” is likely less of a factor.

POLICY AND PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

1. District and state leaders should consider ways to provide access to more advanced courses (especially in non-remediation subjects) during the year of remediation, or extend the school day so remedial classes don’t crowd out electives and other higher-level courses.
2. Since the negative effects of high school remediation seem to be greater for higher-performing students, policymakers should carefully consider where to set the threshold for requiring remediation, balancing the benefits of support for those who need it most with the risks of limiting opportunities for higher-achieving students. Districts might consider using multiple measures to determine remediation needs and ensure that remediation is not a default option for borderline students. Additionally, while prior research in Chicago (Cortes, Goodman, and Nomi, 2015) found positive impacts of double-dose algebra on college outcomes for lower-performing, economically disadvantaged students, this study finds negative impacts of remedial ELA courses on college outcomes. The key difference is the student population: this study’s sample had higher baseline performance and fewer economically disadvantaged students than the Chicago sample. This further suggests that remedial courses may help lower-performing students but harm higher-achieving students by displacing more advanced coursework.

FULL WORKING PAPER

This report is based on the EdWorkingPaper “The Effects of High School Remediation on Long-Run Educational Attainment,” published in June 2025. The full research paper can be found here: https://edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1204