Double Jeopardy: Testing the Effects of Multiple Basic Skill Deficiencies on Successful Remediation

Prior research has established that the depth and breadth of remedial need in basic skills (math and English) exhibited by a student at college entry are strongly and negatively associated with the likelihood of achieving college-level competency in those subjects (i.e., successful remediation). This well-documented finding is built upon a body of work employing either simple bivariate analyses or regression analyses that assume additive effects. Yet, there are reasons to suspect that multiple basic skill deficiencies, rather than exhibiting additive effects alone, may exhibit a negative multiplicative interaction effect on the likelihood of successful remediation. In this research, I test the hypothesis that the negative effect of math deficiency increases in magnitude with decreasing English competency. Although the data support this hypothesis, I find that this interaction does not have substantive importance in the face of the powerful direct effect of math deficiency on the likelihood of successful remediation in math. Direct all correspondence to the author at the Department of Sociology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, 48202 (peter.bahr@wayne.edu). I am indebted to Tim Brown, Willard Hom, Myrna Huffman, Tom Nobert, Mary Kay Patton, and Patrick Perry of the Chancellor’s Office of California Community Colleges for their assistance with the data employed in this study, and to Dr. John C. Smart and the anonymous referees of Research in Higher Education for their recommendations concerning improving this work.