Defining Basic Skills: It's Harder Than You Think!
In Spring 2005, we asked those present at a plenary session breakout to give the definitions they have of various terms: basic skills, remedial, developmental, pre-collegiate, college level, and transfer. It was amazing the differences there were. We also presented the definitions used by UC and CSU. We then thought that we would take the responses back, look them over, and arrive at some consensus. How nave we were! That difficulty became the focus of our presentation at this fall plenary session.