In response to concerns about the additional costs and time-to-degree associated with traditional developmental education programs, several states and postsecondary systems have implemented corequisite reform where academically underprepared students take both a developmental education course and college-level course in the same subject area…

Two-year colleges provide access and opportunity for students with various academic backgrounds to pursue a post-secondary education. While two-year colleges take pride in admitting any student with a high school diploma or equivalent, in recent years colleges have been under scrutiny for low completion and graduation rates. Particular attention…

State community college systems and their two-year colleges have spent the 2010s reexamining and redesigning decades-old developmental education tracks to ensure students get what they need--and only what they need--with an eye toward moving them more quickly into college-level courses and, eventually, the degree or certificate they want.…

Using a qualitative survey research design, researchers solicited faculty input on challenges and common instructional practices applied in teaching online developmental education courses. Online was defined as 80% or more of the instruction of a course being delivered online. Participants of the study were faculty teaching developmental education…

As part of a study (Armstrong, Stahl, & Kantner, 2015a, 2015b, 2016) of curricular alignment between developmental reading (DR) and introductory-level general education (GE) at one community college, we asked faculty participants about the DR coursework at their own institution. Throughout data analysis, we became interested in how non-DR…

State policymakers in the United States have in recent years experimented with new initiatives to change the procedures used by public institutions to assess and assign academically underprepared students to non-credit developmental education (or remedial) courses. This study explores whether the most recent developmental education reform in…

This article examines transdisciplinarity in developmental education and Basic Writing in the context of externally-driven developmental education reforms. We report on a pilot study survey of 143 developmental educators regarding their professional identity, engagement, and resilience. Respondents identified professional roles and interactions…

Objective: Developmental education provides postsecondary students requisite skills to take credit-bearing coursework. Yet, racial disparities exist in which students are most likely to be placed into developmental education. The present study investigates how multiple measures of students' mathematics background ameliorate racial disparities in…

Objective: We investigate whether performance funding--an increasingly prevalent state policy that allocates appropriations based on outcomes that prioritize retention and completion--places minority-serving institutions (MSIs) at a financial disadvantage due to these institutions serving a greater proportion of historically underrepresented…

The purpose of this study was to determine faculty members' self-reported use and implementation of good practices in their developmental mathematics classrooms. Participants in this study were full-time or part-time (adjunct) mathematics instructors that taught developmental mathematics courses at two-year colleges. Participants completed a…

Post-secondary education enrollment and completion disparities exist for Minnesota's Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) and lower-income students. One outcome measure demonstrating the impact of system-fed disparities in K-12 education is a student's level of readiness for college-level courses following high school graduation. Given…

Developmental mathematics has been under the radar within higher education for some time. The reality is that there are many proven best practices in developmental math. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles that prevent student success. Moreover, the high rates of attrition and failure have led state legislators and college administrators to…

Postsecondary education enrollment and completion disparities exist for Minnesota's Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) and lower-income students. One outcome measure demonstrating the impact of systemic disparities in K-12 education is a student's level of readiness for college-level courses following high school graduation. Given…

Each year, millions of students enroll in open-access two-year colleges with the hope of earning skills, training, and most importantly, a degree that will allow them to pursue their goals, including transferring to a four-year institution. Developmental, or remedial, education has been found to present multiple barriers to two-year student…

How should colleges determine whether students are placed into developmental or college-level courses? Each year, colleges place millions of students into developmental math and English courses upon enrollment. To do so, colleges most often use a high-stakes placement test, which numerous research studies have shown to be highly inaccurate in…