In response to California Assembly Bill 3 requiring community colleges to evaluate the success rate of remedial students, Oxnard College (OC) conducted a study of the academic performance and persistence of entering students who were advised to take a remedial reading course, comparing students who subsequently enrolled in the recommended course with those who did not. The study sample included 192 first-time students who attended OC in fall 1989 and whose entry-test reading scores were below college-level. Eighteen students elected to enroll in the recommended course of whom 14 completed the course. Study findings included the following: (1) age distributions for the two groups were similar; (2) 70% of advice followers who completed the recommended course also completed all other units attempted in fall 1989, versus 61% of non-advice followers, but this difference was not found to be statistically significant even at a 5% level of confidence; (3) anomalous to the course completion data, 40% of the non-advice followers persisted on to the subsequent semester versus 21% of course completers; (4) all four students who enrolled in but did not complete the recommended course were male, while 54% of the course completers were female; and (5) the majority (52%) of non-advice followers were male. The study recommended that first time OC students receive counseling before enrolling and that a plan be developed to facilitate the success and persistence of remedial students at the college. (PAA)