Background: This multiple case study explores the self-determination needs of academically underprepared students. The context for our study was a sweeping redesign of developmental education (DE) in Florida's community colleges, state-level legislation Senate Bill 1720 (SB 1720), which made DE optional for many students. Purpose of Study: The…

The City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest urban public university system in the United States with approximately 100,000 students enrolled in associate degree programs. Similar to trends nationwide, many associate degree students come to CUNY underprepared for college-level classes and are assigned to take remedial or developmental…

Remedial education, also known as developmental education, college preparation courses, or skills courses, are usually offered by two-year and four-year colleges and universities in the United States to students deemed underprepared for college-level coursework. In sharp contrast with the prevalent offering of remedial courses in post-secondary…

Higher education is facing a challenge with as many as 60% of entering students at community colleges testing into one or more developmental level classes each year (Bailey & Cho, 2010, p. 46). This is a crisis that impacts economics, graduation rates, and student morale. The study of students' perceptions of themselves and their educational…

The United States must raise the graduation rates of community college students if it is to increase economic opportunity for individuals and improve the competitiveness of its workforce. Yet too many students arrive on campus academically underprepared and get placed into developmental (or remedial) courses where they fail to progress. For this…

A web-based activity and testing system (WATS) has features such as adaptive problem sets, videos, and data-driven tools for instructors to monitor and scaffold student learning. Central to WATS adoption and use are questions about the implementation process: What constitutes "good" implementation and how far from "good" is…

This interpretive phenomenological study supported by reflective lifeworld research (Dahlberg, Dahlberg & Nystrom, 2008), explores the lived experiences of six community college English composition teachers. This study asks the following question: "How do community college teachers who have taught both developmental and credit level…

The C4 Scholar program (Cross-Curricular Career Community) is a multi-semester, interdisciplinary learning community program at a comprehensive Midwestern university for underprepared students entering with three developmental placements in English composition, mathematics, and reading. The program, which includes course acceleration and…

Counterstory, an analytical tool of Critical Race Theory, was used in this dissertation to foreground the voices of four young Black men completing a non-credit bearing developmental or remedial mathematics (DevRemMath) course at Suburban Community College (SCC). This study presents young Black men's first-person perspectives about the conditions…

This study examined if a faculty-run Reading and Writing Lab at a small, private university in the Midwest helped traditionally underserved college freshmen taking developmental English classes increase their levels of self-perceived comprehension and confidence. Students who typically need to take developmental English classes include English as…

In a traditional math classroom, a math teacher demonstrates procedures to solve a math problem from a math lesson on board. Students follow the same procedures using the same concepts to solve their homework or drill assignments. This method of math instruction is continued day after day (Ferguson, 2006). This route memorization of procedures…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's Dual Language Bilingual Program. Included…

Erin Severs believes that meeting the needs of underprepared students and supporting the faculty who do this work can only continue to be more central to the success of higher education in this country. With more and more students testing into developmental courses, and an unfortunately low completion rate for these students (25% complete a degree…

The main purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of developmental mathematics courses at a suburban community college. A review of current literature provided a number of appropriate and commonly used measures of effectiveness, such as size and scope of the program, as well as completion rates and success rates of students in the…

Of the 17 African American students that started in one-level below developmental English, only 1 (6%) ended up completing a 200-level English course in a three-year time period. A quick analysis of similar three-year cohorts at this college shows similar numbers, indicating that this is not an anomaly. African American students are not succeeding…