Placement Tests, Remedial Classes and Why Everything is Terrible

Often times, when a student wants to go to a community college, they have to take a placement test. That test is very important. The question is, should the test be so important? And if we got rid of it, what would we replace it with?

This is an exercise in problem solving, not an argumentative essay pushing a position. I rarely don’t have a concrete opinion on a problem. However, in this case, I’m frustrated by my inability to come to a personal conclusion about it.

Let me paint you the picture. A person who wants to go to community college pays a small fee and, boom, they are now a student. This student needs to be placed in the proper class. This “placement” is based off a number of different things. It could be your SAT scores, your ACT scores, your transcripts from a previous school, or a score from a placement test. This is serious business because, once your placement is done, you’re done. You can’t get re-placed. You can take the placement test once, twice, three times, even four times, depending on your situation and the person you talk to. Eventually, though, that test score you got from the placement test will be the deciding factor of what classes you’ll be able to take.

So, let’s say a student gets an “X” on his or her sentence structure test. That student needs an “XXX”…