Many students enter higher education with poor preparation for college mathematics courses. These students are often placed through high-stakes placement testing into developmental coursework that bear no credit towards graduation, but many students who begin in developmental coursework never succeed in a college-level mathematics course. Recent…

This ex post facto study examined the fall-to-fall persistence and academic success of students in a medium-sized Virginia community college. The variables of age and ethnicity in combination with whether a student's first mathematics course was developmental were used to examine the effects of each. It was found that neither the interaction of…