Dive Brief:

• A Florida law makes college placement tests and remedial classes optional for recent graduates from a state public high school or active-duty military members.
• Overall, more than half of community college students take at least one remedial class.
• Lawmakers were worried that forcing students into remedial classes discouraged them from completing college-level work and pushed them to drop out, and so they passed this law that puts the decision in the students' hands.

Dive Insight:

Not surprisingly, some educators say the legislature went too far. One community college president expects the failure rate will rise as more students take classes for which they're not ready. One telling quote from a college-level English instructor: "A lot of discussion among English faculty is how to keep standards high. Students ask me what a paragraph is now. What's next? Maybe, what's a sentence?"