This past week has been a busy one. I had the opportunity of attending the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Forum on Improving College Success In Tight Fiscal Times. That is a long title for a big concern to many states right now. Our focus in this forum was to discuss ways to improve college graduation rates and to address the high numbers of high school students who have to be remediated in college. We heard presentations and discussions from folks like Tom Sugar from Complete College America, Demi Michelau from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Ken Sauer from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and many more distinguished speakers, including our own Representative Johnnie Roebuck who presented data from Arkansas as well as recommendations from the Taskforce on Higher Education Remediation, Retention and Graduation Rates that Representative Roebuck has chaired over the last two years. In Arkansas, 79% of our students graduate from high school, better than the average of only 68%. With the accountability and policy measures that have been put in place over the last several legislative sessions, we continue to make progress in every level of education in Arkansas; but we still have lots more to do. In our state four-year public institutions we graduate 19% of students in four years, 34% in five years and only 39% in six years. We must find ways to improve our college completion rate and reduce the time it takes to get a degree …