Student retention has remained, over many decades, a strong area of concern in postsecondary education, for good reason. Retaining students is a key factor in an institution's maintenance of its stability and reputation, and it helps students and society to avoid the all-too-common consequences associated with a lack of education, including underemployment and poverty. Remedial and developmental education offerings are an important response to student attrition. Remedial and developmental education is one response to attrition recently adopted within the School of Language and Liberal Arts at Fanshawe College, in the form of a Writing Program. An examination of the literature on retention strategy, best practices, and remediation's place within the area of retention hold promise to guide future action in this area. This article presents the author's conclusions that focus on remedial/developmental education within the framework of retention efforts. These conclusions differ from those of the remediation critics. In addition to surveying the literature linking remediation and retention, the author also examines the theoretical framework behind much of the research on retention and catalogues some of the best principles and practices documented in these interrelated fields.