In education, practitioners are increasingly looking for strategies to bring data and evidence into decisionmaking and to roll out programs in intentional ways that allow for ongoing improvement. This toolkit acts as a guide to improvement strategies for teams of practitioners at colleges, providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to…

Adult proficiency in numeracy in the United States lags that of other developed nations, and the nonselective institutions that dominate the higher education sector struggle to address the learning needs of the sizeable proportion of students who enroll in their institutions and are deemed academically underprepared in mathematics. Research on…

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…

Originally designed for students who test into at least two levels of developmental education in a particular subject area, FastStart is a compressed course program model launched in 2005 at the Community College of Denver (CCD). The program combines multiple semester-length courses into a single intensive semester, while providing case…

The intentions were noble. It was hoped that remediation programs would be an academic bridge from poor high school preparation to college readiness. Sadly, remediation has become instead higher education's "Bridge to Nowhere." This broken remedial bridge is travelled by some 1.7 million beginning students each year, most of whom will…

There is wide agreement that the well-paying jobs of the future will require postsecondary credentials. But for many students attending community college, developmental (or remedial) classes in reading, composition, and/or mathematics--the courses that students often must complete before they can enroll in courses that confer credit toward a…

Exploiting a statewide cutoff point on the placement examination used to assign students to remedial courses in Tennessee, this study employs a regression discontinuity research design to provide causal estimates of the effects on student outcomes of recently redesigned remedial courses at three Tennessee colleges. Moreover, using data on student…

This report is Iowa's response to the four questions that the United States Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), requires of all states and territories receiving federal funding through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Title II, Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA). The overall goal of…

Across the country, a growing number of recent high school graduates are participating in summer bridge programs. These programs provide accelerated and focused learning opportunities in order to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed for college success. The state of Texas has given particular attention to summer programs as a way…

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…

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…

The political history of developmental education in post-secondary education is as revealing as its intellectual history. With a University system-wide Developmental Studies program initiated in 1974, the State of Georgia was a pioneer in remedial education and open access. Unfortunately, the program became linked in Georgia media, and in Georgia…

This annual newsletter contains updates on the latest CCRC research, new publications and details of upcoming presentations at major conferences. The feature article in this issue, "Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students," by Thomas Bailey, summarizes the discussion found in the paper "Challenge and Opportunity: Rethinking…

In the context of a discussion of the role of developmental education in the nation's community colleges, this paper responds to criticisms of developmental education that have been made in recent years. First, the paper considers the role of developmental education in promoting literacy, examines definitions of literacy, highlights results of…

Responds to criticisms commonly leveled against community colleges with respect to their provision of developmental education. Looks at issues related to program costs, departmental responsibility, articulation with secondary schools, teacher preparation, placement and diagnostic test validity. (DMM)