Many colleges are exploring alternative college readiness assessment models to increase student enrollment and success in entry-level, or gateway, college courses and to more accurately identify students who would benefit from developmental instruction. Informed self-placement (ISP), an emerging method that is currently being studied by the Center…

Large numbers of students entering community colleges are deemed not academically prepared for college-level math. These students have historically been assigned to one or more non-credit-bearing courses for remedial, often called developmental, math instruction before they can take college-level courses. Research has found that most students…

In this supplement, the cost to implement and operate the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) program across the participating colleges is presented separated into primary cost categories based on program components describing what portion of spending went to training, teacher time in class, teacher time outside of class, advisement,…

At community colleges and open-enrollment universities, most first-year students take placement exams in English and mathematics to determine whether they are ready for college-level courses. But large-scale studies have indicated that these test scores misplace substantial numbers of students--in other words, for many students, the test score…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…