The purpose of this study was to implement a redesign of developmental education at Delaware Technical Community College and to evaluate its effectiveness in improving overall First Time Ever in College (FTEIC) student success through gateway English and math completion, fall-to-fall persistence, and narrowing or closing of opportunity gaps…

American colleges are redesigning the ways in which they offer remedial courses, including mainstreaming students into college-level courses and making greater use of learning-technology to tailor the curriculum to students' specific academic needs. Exploiting a statewide cutoff on a remediation placement exam along with data on student outcomes…

This study compared the postsecondary outcomes of students who enrolled in remedial (sometimes called "developmental") courses in college and their peers who did not. The analysis examined the relationship between postsecondary remediation and the odds of achieving 3 postsecondary outcomes and explored how these relationships varied…

Jobs for the Future (JFF) is leading an effort to explore how competency-based education (CBE) can be adapted to meet the needs of underprepared adult learners, in order to help members of this large and economically vulnerable group earn college credentials and advance in the U.S. workforce. With support from the ECMC Foundation, JFF is reaching…

For over a year, COVID-19 has disrupted all our lives, including our education system and the future for many Coloradans. Recovery from the pandemic is in sight, but Colorado's industries more than ever will depend upon postsecondary education to help produce the workforce needed in a changed environment and altered economy. It is vital to promote…

Competency-based education (CBE) is widely viewed as an innovative alternative to traditional higher education, yet most programs serve only a narrow slice of the postsecondary population. Few are intended for adults who need to boost basic skills in order to succeed in college coursework. However, if designed with the needs of a broader range of…

This report was prepared by The Colorado Department of Higher Education (DHE) pursuant to 23-1-113.3 C.R.S. The information in this report is presented to inform the ongoing dialogue regarding preparation for college and the effects of developmental education in Colorado. This report documents data gathered by the Colorado Department of Higher…

In March, 2016, the state of New Mexico established a Remediation Task Force to examine remediation reform efforts across the state's higher education institutions. On March 11, the Task Force met for the "New Mexico Corequisite Remediation at Scale Policy Institute" in order to learn about the results of the latest national reform…

This article contributes to the empirical literature on remediation in community colleges by using policy variation across North Carolina's community colleges to examine how remediation affects various outcomes for traditional-age college students. We find that being required to take a remedial course (as we define it in this article) either in…

More than half of students in community colleges need remedial education. Colleges spend over a $1 billion each year to provide instruction to students who are academically behind or struggling to demonstrate necessary academic skills, yet only a quarter of students are completing these developmental courses. The reasons why so many students do…

There is a growing view that students who enroll in developmental courses are less successful in completing their programs than non-developmental students. Nevertheless, even though developmental students as a group ultimately might not be as academically successful as non-developmental students, many of them might still derive benefit from taking…

This report describes the differences in early and long-term college outcomes for Oklahoma ACT-tested students between those who were monitored early with ACT Explore® and ACT Plan® and those who did not take these two assessments prior to taking the ACT® Test. Findings support that early monitoring of college and career readiness with ACT Explore…

Should remediation in higher education be ended? A recent report from Complete College America says exactly that. The authors call for all public institutions of higher education in the United States to stop offering it and instead ensure that students who need extra help take co-requisite requirements, such as extra tutoring. Their…

Despite the need, persistence in remediation hovers at 50% (NCES, 2002) while nearly one third of community college enrollees arrive under-prepared (Hess, 2009). Persistence is correlated with academic preparation (Nash & Kallenbach, 2009), and barriers to persistence include a number of demographic barriers (Education, 2006; Labaree, 2006).…

Developmental education has been cited as one of the most difficult issues facing community colleges. Despite the controversy and changes to educational policy regarding developmental education, there is a notable dearth of rigorous research measuring the causal effect of remediation on community college student outcomes. The present study uses…