Florida's developmental education reform has benefitted most students directly impacted by the reform and has helped to reduce existing achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and academic preparation in short-term outcomes like college course-taking and credit accumulation. Even though the reform was not specifically…

Educators have increasingly implemented remedial education in elementary and secondary schools throughout Taiwan as a systemic approach toward closing achievement gaps. However, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and those in remote areas have shown little improvement in academic achievement. This issue raises the question of how…

Few studies have examined the impact of mastery learning on mastery goal structures or even on students' motivation more generally. In this study, we examined one middle school that implemented a schoolwide mastery learning system, conducting interviews with a sample of administrators (n = 3), teachers (n = 4), and students (n = 9) to determine…

Linked learning communities in postsecondary education are programs defined by having social and curricular linkages that provide undergraduate students with intentional integration of the themes and concepts that they are learning. The theory behind these programs is that active learning in a community-based setting can improve academic outcomes…

In 2007, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) funded 22 colleges to establish developmental summer bridge programs. Aimed at providing an alternative to traditional developmental education, these programs involve intensive remedial instruction in math, reading, and/or writing and college preparation content for students entering…

The Learning Communities Demonstration is a national research project that is testing the effectiveness of learning communities in six community colleges across the United States: Merced College in California; The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Baltimore, Maryland; Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida; Houston…

In 2009, the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) launched an evaluation of eight developmental summer bridge programs in Texas to assess whether these programs reduce the need for developmental coursework and improve student outcomes in college. The evaluation uses an experimental design to measure the effects of these programs on…

The surge of high-stakes testing and accountability has been felt in Texas and all across the country. Every state is demanding to some degree or another that administrators and teachers increase their workload, alter their teaching, rearrange the curriculum, adjust professional development, and implement improvement programs in order to raise…

Responding to mandates from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to eliminate "remedial" or "developmental" courses from state-funded, four-year institutions, the University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM) Department of English developed a college-level pre-first-year writing program for entering students identified as…

NovaNet is an individualized, computer-based instruction program that is used in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), North Carolina, for high school course credit, remediation, and enrichment. NovaNet was first used in WCPSS in 1996, and in 1999 WCPSS received a 3-year federal grant to expand the use of NovaNET to all high schools. In…

The paper describes an academic support program at Mercy College of Northwest Ohio. The Project Assuring Student Success (PASS) Program is multi-faceted and comprehensive, designed to help students find success in their academic endeavors. The first phase of this program was the development and implementation of the Student Success Center. Some of…

This manual details the fundamental steps necessary to create a successful tutoring program. It is based on the experiences of the Anderson (South Carolina) School District One (ASDO) in their tutoring project initiated in 1989-90. The school district intended to increase homework completion, raise test scores, improve attendance, and generate…

This digest discusses two specific computer-aided instruction systems used in two-year colleges in the United States and Canada, and addresses critical points regarding system implementation in remedial education programs. As developed in the Nova Scotia Community College System in Canada, the INVEST computer system provides literacy-based…

This paper emphasizes the importance of faculty attention to instructional improvement practices and curriculum development for underprepared college freshmen. Instead of downgrading course content instructors must devise college level instruction that has the following characteristics: (1) interdisciplinary content; (2) student focus; and (3)…

This is a 2001 report on the enrollment and progress for basic skills students in Washington State's community and technical colleges. Report highlights include: (1) 15% of all state-support instruction is in basic skills; (2) 53% of basic skills instruction is in English second language (ESL) programs; and (3) adult basic education (ABE) and…