By Ashleigh Costello
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – A startling new statistic says nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates who enrolled at City University community colleges last year were forced to take remedial courses.

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Officials say 79.3 percent, or roughly 10,700 city high school graduates, had to relearn the basics of reading, writing and math before they could begin college-level courses. That number is up from 71.4 percent in 2007, reports the New York Post.

Remedial classes can cost up to $1,000 per course and do not count toward college credit, leaving many students frustrated and penniless.

“The basics that I’m receiving now should have been taught in high school,” said Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment High School graduate Feona Wilson. “It’s more money coming out of your pocket.”

In order to provide additional support to students, City University has launched a special program called CUNY Start. It provides low-cost immersion classes to struggling college students.

“They get lost sometimes in the classroom and in CUNY Start we give them a lot more one-on-one attention, small group work. It helps them achieve more in a short amount of time and so they’re able to get on with their credit classes,” said Sherry Mason, who teaches a writing class as part of the program.

Nicholas Gonzalez, a graduate of Brooklyn’s New Utrecht High School, said he would have never been able to succeed in college credit classes without the extra support of CUNY Start.

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“I was nervous about how hard it was going to be, how much of a change it was going to be from high school,” Gonzalez said. “I knew I needed to take remedial. If I started right away with credit classes it wasn’t going to be so well, so it’s better off starting somewhere.”

Department of Education officials said the overall remediation rates for city high school graduates at all CUNY colleges – including four-year schools – actually dropped to 55.8 percent last year, reports the Post.

Officials said the primary reason the rates have risen at the community colleges was because CUNY raised its standards for math in both 2011 and 2012.

Still, education officials admit there is a lot of room for improvement.

“I don’t want anyone to go to remediation,” said Josh Thomases, deputy academic chief at the DOE.