This chapter explores early impacts from the Florida College system's bold experiment in making placement testing and developmental education optional for most students.

This chapter considers the case of placement tests, examining students who enter community college gateway math and English courses.

This chapter identifies some of the challenges surrounding data collection and analysis regarding development students, including testing and identifying academic needs, placement determination, and measuring student outcomes.

Greater attention to the college and career readiness problem by state leaders and policymakers could drastically boost the numbers and percentages of students who graduate from high school ready for college and career study. This chapter traces the author's work in developing California State University's Early Assessment Program, an initiative…

Mississippi Delta Community College (MDCC), one of the oldest community colleges in the country, is located in Sunflower County, Mississippi, which was home to both the infamous White Citizens Council and civil rights heroine Fannie Lou Hamer. It serves one of the poorest areas of the country; the unemployment rate in the district is higher than…

Describes Central Piedmont Community College's (North Carolina) tracking system for underprepared college students. Explains the system's components and characteristics, including pre-enrollment college visits, skills assessment, orientation, placement, formal and informal contacts between instructors and support services staff, and end-of-quarter…

Examines the history of the mathematics placement testing program used at the University of Houston Downtown Campus to screen entering students at registration. Discusses the remedial algebra courses required of students who do not pass the exam and analyzes the effectiveness of the program in reducing failure and attrition rates. (JP)

Provides an overview of the construction of a longitudinal tracking system that can be used to address questions of institutional effectiveness. Considers the efficacy and logistics of using data from assessment with longitudinal data to permit long-term tracking of students. (DMM)

Community college placement officers should reorganize their roles so that they can help the colleges to interface with the business/industry community and to restructure instructional programs so that the career development needs of students can be more effectively met. (Author/JDS)

Greatly increased emphasis on field experience/cooperative education programs is being proposed at a time when the assimilative capacity of work organizations to absorb the learners in those programs is under question. Research on assimilative capacity and availability of positions for learners at various stages, federal financial support for…

Discusses ways to motivate students to participate in and take assessment efforts seriously. Indicates that a strong institutional commitment to testing, administrative support of assessment, integration of testing into the curriculum, student and faculty participation in testing operations, and reporting test results are major factors in…

Provides an overview of current issues related to student assessment. Focuses on the ability of library instruction and library research skills to help students develop critical thinking skills. Presents selected comments from respondents to a survey regarding the current status of libraries in student assessment. (DMM)

Examines the following aspects of the relationship between assessment and student success: the developing relationship between assessment and instruction; a model comprehensive assessment and placement delivery system; a critical path for assessment and placement; campus studies; and student flow from assessment through instruction. (DMM)

Discusses considerations in developing assessment and placement programs: which students should be tested, why admission tests and high school grades are inappropriate for placement, how testing should be carried out, which tests should be used, and how tests should be interpreted. (DMM)

This collection of essays discusses some of the general concerns and issues related to tracking the flow of community college students through higher education. The chapters in the volume include: (1) "Tracking Systems and Student Flow," by Trudy H. Bers; (2) "Beyond the College: State Policy Impact on Student Tracking…