Legislation to limit remedial classes heads to Newsom’s desk

Legislation that would limit the ability of community colleges to enroll students in remedial classes passed the Senate on Thursday and now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

Assembly Bill 1705 builds off Assembly Bill 705, the 2017 legislation that says colleges must enroll students in courses that are transferrable to the University of California and California State University and not remedial classes, unless they are deemed “highly unlikely to succeed” in the transfer-level courses.

The new law would create stricter rules, making sure that when colleges are determining where to enroll students, they rely on data like a student’s high school grades. The law also says colleges can’t make a student repeat a course they’ve already taken in high school.

Supporters of the bill say it’s necessary because, although many more students are now enrolling directly in transfer courses than before AB 705 was law, there are still dozens of colleges offering remedial classes. The law is opposed, however, by the Faculty Association of California Colleges, which maintains that there are some cases when a remedial class is the better option for some students.