Summary of Legislation, Regulations, and Reports Concerning Basic Skills Instruction in the Comminuty Colleges

Basic skills instruction is not new to higher education or to the California Community Colleges. For a variety of reasons, private and public institutions of higher learning have always had significant numbers of first year students who failed, dropped out or simply from college due to their inability to meet course requirements. In 1874, Harvard first offered freshman English at the request of faculty members dissatisfied with students' preparation in formal writing. In 1907 over half the students who matriculated at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia failed to meet entrance requirements. And from 1930 to 1939, colleges and universities began establishing remedial reading clinics, including New York University, Harvard University and University of Minnesota. (Maxwell, Improving Student Learning Skills, 1979, Jossey-Bass)