California's community colleges began implementing Assembly Bill 705 (AB 705) in fall 2019, making major assessment and placement reforms that moved students away from remedial prerequisites for English and math and into transfer-level courses. This report examines the progress colleges and students have made in shifting toward transfer-level…

California's community colleges began implementing Assembly Bill 705 (AB 705) in fall 2019, making major assessment and placement reforms that moved students away from remedial prerequisites for English and math and into transfer-level courses. In the full report, the authors examine the progress colleges and students have made in shifting toward…

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…

Until recently, the vast majority of students, entering California community colleges were placed in developmental courses, and relatively few went on to complete transfer-level courses in English and math. Several colleges responded to this longstanding challenge by experimenting with placement and curricular reforms. In 2017, new legislation (AB…

Each year about a quarter million students enroll for the first time in English and math courses in California's community colleges. The vast majority of these students are placed in developmental (or remedial) courses from which relatively few emerge and go on to achieve their educational goals. Indeed, most never complete a transfer-level course…

This report aims to fill the gap in research on English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at California's community colleges and the effectiveness of reforms aimed at improving student success. A number of colleges have implemented curricular reforms in recent years--accelerating coursework, integrating skills courses, and the like. These…

This document is intended to be a companion piece for a report entitled "What Happens When Colleges Broaden Access to Transfer-Level Courses? Evidence from California's Community Colleges." It contains the technical appendices as follows: (1) College Profiles; (2) Additional Insights from our Interviews; (3) Data and Methods; (4) Caveat…

A solid majority of California's future college-age population will come from demographic groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education--including Latinos, African Americans, and those who are low income or the first in their families to go to college. PPIC research has shown that this demographic shift could make it more…

California's AB 705 required community colleges to implement changes that would maximize students' likelihood of starting and completing transfer-level (or degree-appropriate) coursework in English and math/quantitative reasoning within one year. Under the law, colleges must use high school information (e.g., GPA, coursework, and/or grades in…

This document contains the technical appendices for the report "Community College Math in California's New Era of Student Access." Appendices include: (1) Data; (2) Figures and Tables; (3) Qualitative Interview Analysis; (4) Interrupted Time Series Analysis; (5) Corequisite Remediation Analysis; and (6) What happened to students who…

Half of all college students take at least one remedial course as part of their postsecondary experience, despite mixed evidence on the effectiveness of this intervention. Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from a large urban community college system, we extend the research on remediation in three ways. First, we articulate three…

Due in large part to their open access and affordability, community colleges have long played a central role in providing students with immigrant backgrounds who are English language learners (ELLs) with access to postsecondary education. Researchers have noted that English as a second language (ESL) courses have been the primary form of support…

Achieving national goals for increased college completion in a time of scarce resources will require the postsecondary institutions that enroll the majority of undergraduates--community colleges and less-selective public universities--to graduate more students at a lower cost. Davis Jenkins and Olga Rodriguez examine research on how these…