For millions of students at American colleges, freshman year starts off with an unpleasant surprise: despite graduating high school, students find themselves assigned to remedial classes in math or English, which they must pay for and pass before being allowed into college-level courses. Policymakers looking to increase postsecondary enrollment…

Many states are redesigning their college remediation policies to increase postsecondary degree completion. In 2012, Tennessee began waiving college math remediation for high school students who completed a computer-based remedial math course (SAILS) during their senior year. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the high school…