Researchers, organizations, companies, non-profits, practitioners, and to some extent, the public, are clamoring for massive reform in developmental coursework in higher education (American Association of Community Colleges, 2018; Edgecombe et al., 2014; Complete College America, 2012). One such reform is the push for integrated reading and…

With the continuing national emphases on acceleration and completion, an integrated reading and writing course (a combined developmental reading and developmental writing course, with all levels compressed into a single course) is one way to move students more quickly and efficiently through the developmental sequence while still maintaining…

An increasing number of students are enrolling in colleges underprepared for the demands of college-level coursework. There is a need for innovative approaches for developmental reading instruction to improve long-term academic and career success. The purpose of this study was to investigate adult developmental reading students' attitudes…

This project examined the effects of a state-wide curricular shift in developmental education course offerings on student success in college-level courses at public community colleges in Texas. Specifically, it evaluated the efficacy of accelerated developmental integrated reading and writing (INRW) courses compared to non-accelerated, separate…

Though developmental education has long been part of American post-secondary education, reliable evidence of its benefits, especially for ethnic minorities in reading, is lacking (Swail, Cabrera, Lee, & Williams, 2005). Developmental education has costs, however, in added tuition, time-to-completion, and discouragement (Bailey, 2009). Since…

This longitudinal study examines community college students' evolving perceptions on the value of developmental education. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, students described what they perceived of the advantages of beginning their college careers in developmental reading and writing classes. These advantages included becoming more…

California's community colleges are in the midst of numerous reforms to improve developmental (also known as remedial or basic skills) education. Developmental education is supposed to help prepare students for college work, but it has long been an obstacle to student success: most students in developmental courses never go on to complete a…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of developmental math, English, and reading courses by evaluating the success of students in the corresponding college-level math, English, and reading course. This study analyzed select student characteristics (sex, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status) or student developmental education status as predictors…

Community colleges play an important role in providing first and second generation immigrants access to higher education and the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential. However, immigrant students may face obstacles in pursuit of a postsecondary degree, particularly second language challenges that can inhibit their success in college-level…

Two experiments were conducted with developmental education students to investigate the impact of a contextualized intervention focusing on written summarization and other reading and writing skills. In experiment 1 (n = 322), greater gain was found for intervention than comparison participants on three summarization measures: proportion of main…

Discusses the selection and training of student tutors for college reading programs, the supervision of tutors, and studies of the effectiveness of college-level peer tutoring programs. (GT)

This Brief summarizes a study that addresses the impact of remedial and developmental courses on students with a range of levels of preparedness. Using longitudinal data from Tennessee, the authors estimate the effects of placement into varying levels of mathematics, reading, and writing courses for students attending public two- and four-year…

To evaluate the effectiveness of the Borg-Warner System 80 in seven Washington, D. C., schools, interviews, pupil progress records, questionnaires, and observational data were gathered on 103 students and their teachers. Two Borg-Warner programmed series, "Learning Letter Names" and "Reading Words in Context," were used in…

Project IRIS (Improving Reading Instruction School-Wide) is one school district's effort to improve reading instruction. The project's first three years have produced median reading gains of one year or more per student per year. Although the most important aspect of Project IRIS is school-wide commitment to improving reading instruction, other…

The first major objective of this paper is to describe in some detail the research that documents the proposition that even extremely disadvantaged 5-year-olds can be taught to read in kindergarten, and that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence of negative side effects from such teaching. The paper also describes an effective academic…