Background/Context: Accelerated instructional strategies for developmental education have been promoted as a way to help underprepared students to progress more quickly through college-level coursework. Yet, what remains unknown is whether certain accelerated strategies are more effective than others and whether this initial acceleration may lead…

Developmental interventions for reading and writing often take place at community colleges during the winter or summer. These brief, intersession workshops are examples of compressed acceleration, as they give students the opportunity to exit developmental coursework and enroll in credit bearing courses the following semester. As college readiness…

We examine the impact of remedial and developmental courses on college students with varying levels of academic preparedness, thus focusing on a wider range of students than previous studies. Using a regression discontinuity design, we provide causal estimates of the effects of placement in different levels of remedial courses on short-,…

Community college developmental math students (N = 657) from three math levels were asked to place five whole numbers on a line that had only endpoints 0 and 20 marked. How the students placed the numbers revealed the same three stages of behavior that Steffe and Cobb (1988) documented in determining young children's number sense. 23% of the…

Developmental mathematics pass rates at Delaware Technical Community College (DTCC) have remained the same or decreased for a number of years despite two different math curriculum redesigns. They hover around 50 percent or below at each campus, even after the implementation of a second redesign this past Fall 2016 semester. The first redesign…

As part of a study (Armstrong, Stahl, & Kantner, 2015a, 2015b, 2016) of curricular alignment between developmental reading (DR) and introductory-level general education (GE) at one community college, we asked faculty participants about the DR coursework at their own institution. Throughout data analysis, we became interested in how non-DR…

This study focused on a redesigned reading program that integrated project-based activities through the contextualization of reading and information literacy strategies using library databases. Students completing the new reading curriculum were compared to students who had completed a traditional reading curriculum to assess for differences in…

Helping students complete developmental course sequences and graduate from college is one of the biggest challenges facing community college leaders and educators. The majority of entering students need one or more developmental courses yet most of these students never finish the developmental sequence. Colleges are continuously developing new…

Many community college students start college in developmental education and leave before enrolling in college-level coursework or making much progress toward a degree; thus, developmental education courses represent the primary education these students receive. Using student-unit record data from two large community college systems linked to wage…

Objective: We investigate whether performance funding--an increasingly prevalent state policy that allocates appropriations based on outcomes that prioritize retention and completion--places minority-serving institutions (MSIs) at a financial disadvantage due to these institutions serving a greater proportion of historically underrepresented…

Developmental mathematics has been under the radar within higher education for some time. The reality is that there are many proven best practices in developmental math. Unfortunately, there are many obstacles that prevent student success. Moreover, the high rates of attrition and failure have led state legislators and college administrators to…

Many developmental mathematics programs at community colleges in recent years have undergone a process of redesign in an attempt increase the historical poor rate of student successful completion of required developmental coursework. Various curriculum and instructional design models that incorporate methods of avoiding and accelerating the…

Attrition for entry-level, non-traditional college students taking developmental reading courses is a concern for higher education institutions. Students need to complete basic developmental reading courses in order to progress in their vocational or collegiate studies. This phenomenological study followed a social constructivist approach to…

Currently, many community colleges are struggling with poor student success rates in developmental math. Therefore, this qualitative study focused on employing best practices in developmental mathematics at an urban community college in Dayton, Ohio. Guiding the study were the following research questions: What are the best practices utilized by a…

This research study examined the 2006 cohort of First-Time-in-College students from all 23 community colleges in Virginia. The goal was to examine fall-to-fall persistence and success in the first college-level mathematics course. Predictor variables used were developmental status, age, gender, and race and ethnicity of the student. Interaction…