Two-year colleges provide access and opportunity for students with various academic backgrounds to pursue a post-secondary education. While two-year colleges take pride in admitting any student with a high school diploma or equivalent, in recent years colleges have been under scrutiny for low completion and graduation rates. Particular attention…

Historically, colleges have used standardized testing to determine whether a student is ready for college-level work or requires developmental courses first, but this method has been criticized as inaccurate. To obtain more accurate placements, nearly three-quarters of colleges now use multiple measures assessment (MMA) systems. These systems…

Objective: Developmental education provides postsecondary students requisite skills to take credit-bearing coursework. Yet, racial disparities exist in which students are most likely to be placed into developmental education. The present study investigates how multiple measures of students' mathematics background ameliorate racial disparities in…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…

How should colleges determine whether students are placed into developmental or college-level courses? Each year, colleges place millions of students into developmental math and English courses upon enrollment. To do so, colleges most often use a high-stakes placement test, which numerous research studies have shown to be highly inaccurate in…

Colleges throughout the United States are evaluating the effectiveness of the strategies used to decide whether to place students into college-level or developmental education courses. Developmental, or remedial, courses are designed to develop the reading, writing, or math skills of students deemed underprepared for college-level courses, a…

Lifelong Learning Skills (LLS) provide the foundation for learning and working. They broadly support student thinking, self-management, and social interaction, enabling the pursuit of education and career goals. Collectively, LLS are the means by which students master academic content and translate knowledge into action. There is a growing…

Objective: Given the current concern across the United States with improving community-college student outcomes, particularly in developmental education, understanding what students encounter inside developmental education classrooms is a necessary first step. Method: Drawing on data from a study of teaching practices inside developmental math…

This article presents strategies for using two types of essay-writing rubrics in a developmental English class of students transitioning into college-level writing. One checklist rubric is student-facing, designed to serve as a guide for students throughout the writing process and as a self-assessment tool. The other checklist rubric is…

The purpose of the current study was to develop and validate a measure of motivation for use with basic college writers that would measure self-efficacy, achievement goals, beliefs, and affect. As part of a design research project on curriculum for community college developmental writing classes, 133 students in 11 classes completed the motivation…

Improving college completion is a shared objective of higher education. It is the focus of colleges, foundations, state governments, and the White House. Students have gotten the message--their aspirations are on the rise. But the nation's collective ambition far exceeds today's outcomes. Many students are not attaining their goals. College…

The Fifth Edition of the :Handbook of Research on Teaching" is an essential resource for students and scholars dedicated to the study of teaching and learning. The volume covers a vast array of topics ranging from the history of teaching to technological and literacy issues. In each authoritative chapter, the authors summarize the state of…

The purpose of this brief is to understand the Illinois College and Career Readiness (CCR) Act in light of David Conley's college readiness model. Although not mentioned specifically by the Illinois statute, evaluation results gathered by the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) show alignment between a number of programs…

This paper describes the structure and operation of an evaluation system for the developmental education program at Dalton Junior College (Georgia). All applicants for admission to the college who score below 330 on either section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test are required to take the Comparative Guidance and Placement (CGP) test to determine…

In the Spring of 2011, the City of San Francisco automatically opened college savings accounts for over 1,000 San Francisco Kindergartners. The City also "seeded" every account with an initial deposit of $50. The account openings marked the official launch of San Francisco's Kindergarten to College initiative, or "K2C." This initiative, the first…