Giving Compass' Take:

• Education Dive reports that some college institutions are revising or altogether replacing remedial developmental classes because of recent research and graduation percentages. 

• What is a better approach to help struggling students succeed and learn the course material? 

• Here's how to help students avoid the remedial education trap. 

Well-intentioned remedial education courses, and the testing that too often imprecisely places students in them, may be doing more harm than good.

That's according to a surge of research and exploratory initiatives that suggest colleges could replace them with a mix of assessment methods and alternative supports to move students ahead while catching them up.

"Developmental education was designed to help students, but it didn't really work," said Christopher Mullin, director of Strong Start to Finish, a college access advocacy group that works with institutions to improve remedial education. "Now there is a lot of energy out there to find a better alternative."

The research is extensive and straightforward. Although about half of first-year students are found to require remedial classes in either math, English or both, the assessments colleges use to make that decision vary widely and don't always reflect students' potential success with college-level coursework.

Read the full article about remedial education by James Paterson at Education Dive.