We estimate the cost effectiveness of corequisite English developmental education at community colleges compared with a traditional prerequisite pathway. Our context is a previously published randomized controlled trial that estimated the effects of three different approaches to English corequisites implemented in five Texas community colleges.…

Success Centers are a component of community colleges that prepare students who need additional foundational coursework to proceed to college-level credit classes (Housel, 2020). In this study, the perceptions of Success Center Directors concerning their programs were explored through the lens of adult learning theory as advanced by Knowles and…

The Post-Traditional Remedial Learner in higher education is a student constituency that has historically been "Hidden in Plain Sight" and strikingly absent from substantive discussions that foreground their lived experiences, relevance, and success in post-secondary education. Though physically present on campus and numerically…

Developmental education has existed as a thread of American higher education since the founding of Harvard College in 1636, when tutors provided supplemental Latin programming for underprepared students. In recent years, developmental education is most prominent at community colleges: ninety-eight percent of the colleges offer some form of…

This report is the culmination of a six-part series designed to provide greater insight into remediation at Maryland postsecondary institutions. Parts 1 through 4 of the research series on remediation at Maryland colleges and universities have evaluated a number of issues. Beginning with defining what remediation is and why it matters (Part 1,…

Remedial courses have been part of the college landscape in the United States since at least the 1800s when nearly 250,000 students were placed into remedial courses. Traditionally, students who enrolled in remedial courses were placed into that course solely based on one test score. Students who enrolled in traditional remedial courses were more…

For far too long in California, remedial courses in California Community Colleges meant costly barriers to student success. Fortunately, recent legislation -- Assembly Bill 705 signed into law in 2017 -- requires these colleges to eliminate remedial courses and instead use research-backed strategies like corequisite support to help students…

This article provides the first causal evidence of a system-wide corequisite reform in Tennessee, which mainstreams underprepared students into college-level courses with concurrent support. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-regression-discontinuity designs, we find that, for those on the margin of college level, students placed…

In this article, researchers from the Community College Research Center reflect on what they have learned from their study of Guided Pathways reforms at over 100 colleges nationally since the publication in 2015 of "Redesigning America's Community Colleges." They examine five areas of practice: (1) program design; (2) new student…

In 2015, Tennessee community colleges initiated a wave of national reform that reimagined academic support and accelerated student success. Through innovations in the delivery of targeted learning support, such as the corequisite support model, students are more likely to achieve key milestones of success in their first year of college. Now, after…

This nonexperimental, longitudinal panel study was designed to test the predictive capacity of a grit intervention within a first-year seminar course that targeted academically underprepared students at a Mississippi community college. Extant pre- and post-grit scores for developmental students enrolled in the first-year seminar were analyzed for…

Students who are not academically integrated into their English courses are more likely to depart from college. Academic integration begins with placement testing, and many institutions rely on a single-score standardized placement exam to determine a student's English level. The exam is an inaccurate measurement of a student's skill level and…

In a corequisite approach to developmental education, students enroll in a college-level course paired concurrently with a support course designed to address student learning needs in a given subject. This report, sponsored by Strong Start to Finish, examines early college outcomes of students placed into corequisite reading courses at the 13…

Students continue to struggle in mathematics and are delegated to developmental mathematics courses. Developmental mathematics students struggle to complete this gateway course. However, it was not known the lived experience of developmental mathematics students and the role of motivation in completion of the course. The purpose of this…

College and career readiness is a focal area within the United States for student achievement within the context of global competitiveness. Despite recent efforts to focus on the college and career readiness of America's students, national data has proven that many students are not prepared for college and need remedial intervention upon entrance…