For years, colleges have used placement exams to determine whether to deem incoming students "college ready" or assign them to developmental education. Emerging information reveals the tests have little correlation to students' future success, casting doubt on their use even as the high stakes for students of taking remedial courses become clear.…

The purpose of this manuscript is to discuss the utility of the Community College Survey of Men (CCSM[c]), an instrument designed to examine predictors of student success for men in community colleges. The authors highlight initial validation results from a recent pilot of the CCSM[c], with a focus on the non-cognitive outcomes construct employed…

Community colleges are typically assumed to be nonselective, open-access institutions. Yet access to college-level courses at such institutions is far from guaranteed: the vast majority of two-year institutions administer high-stakes exams to entering students that determine their placement into either college-level or remedial education. Despite…

Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

Community colleges play a vital role in higher education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While the market share of these institutions has grown over the past 50 years, students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for strategies that increase…

This paper uses student-level data from a statewide community college system to examine the validity of placement tests and high school information in predicting course grades and college performance. We consider the ACCUPLACER and COMPASS placement tests, using two quantitative and two literacy tests from each battery. We find that placement…

The community colleges in the state of New Jersey went through a process of establishing statewide cut-off scores for English and mathematics placement tests. The colleges wanted to communicate to secondary schools a consistent preparation that would be necessary for enrolling in Freshman Composition and College Algebra at the community college…

The use of established scales in research is beneficial for benchmarking, but problematic when local results are invalid, both for local administrators and for the data pool in which the data become part. Administrators at one southeastern community college, as part of a statewide system's effort to exceed a given threshold on the Community…

For many students entering community colleges, the first stop on campus is to an assessment center. More than half of these students will be placed into developmental education as a result of their scores on reading, writing, and mathematics entry assessments, yet there is little evidence that this improves student outcomes. We examine alternative…

This article presents the results of a factor analysis on the distance education surveys "Is Online Learning Right for Me?" and "What Technical Skills Do I Need?" Both surveys are 15-question, forced response, self-scoring guides that have face validity for individual traits and skills believed to contribute to potential success in an…

Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

The perceived impact of mattering is quite accepted in higher education yet has not been well measured with diverse college students. This article describes the development and validation of the College Mattering Inventory with community college and university students. Results and implications for faculty and student affairs professionals are…

Can community colleges make better use of data to improve student outcomes? That's the fundamental idea behind "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count," a bold initiative launched in 2003 by Lumina Foundation for Education to help community college students succeed--particularly, low-income students and students of color, who have…

Laird studies the relationship between two computerized nursing tests and finds a relationship between the two sets of scores. (Contains 2 tables.)

This study investigated the construct validity of an online version of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) for use with community college students. The MSLQ which is an 81-item, self-report inventory which consists of 2 sections and 15 scales that assesses college students' motivational orientations and learning strategies.…