A new law, Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin), is driving dramatic changes to how the California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. In fall 2019, AB 705 began requiring the colleges to use students' high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricting colleges from denying students access to transferable…

Structural practices used by community colleges to assess, place, and teach students are undergoing transformation. Many recent changes have been shaped by the idea that barriers to success, combined with traditional policies, work against helping students pass through the developmental writing pathway. This article's purpose was to investigate…

The acceleration of developmental mathematics instruction is a current trend in the field of developmental education. This report on a survey of practitioners reveals the challenges in teaching accelerated models of developmental mathematics courses and garners recommendations for improving the practice. Responses were elicited from faculty…

Postsecondary institutions and systems across the nation have demonstrated remarkable progress since the first "Core Principles for Transforming Remediation Within a Comprehensive Student Success Strategy" was published in 2015 (see ED561279). Building on this progress, the Summary Details Education Commission of the States (ECS) has…

Every year, millions of new college students come academically underprepared. They lack the necessary skills to perform at the college level. Postsecondary institutions address this problem with extensive remedial programs (Chen, 2016). One of these remedial programs is reading. In several postsecondary institutions, students are required to pass…

The central roles of science in the field of remedial and special education are to (a) identify basic laws of nature and (b) apply those laws in the design of practices that achieve socially valued outcomes. The scientific process is designed to allow demonstration of specific (typically positive) outcomes, and to assist in the attribution of…

The traditional mathematics pre-requisite model creates obstacles for pre-service educators by increasing the number of semesters to graduation. Extended time results in additional financial burdens for students in developmental courses along with increased risk of student drop out. Education majors, with little or no room for electives in their…

Guttman Community College (GCC), a newly-established, urban community college, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), enrolls a largely traditional student body which is also predominantly minority. Students enter the college with an average high-school grade-point average of 75% (C average), and are required to enroll in three first-year…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a Chinese phonetic script, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao (ZYFH), influences low achievers in learning Chinese. In this quasi experimental design, 21 students were assigned to the experimental group, while the other 31 students were distributed to the control group. Two interventions were implemented throughout…

Failures of developmental mathematics education are no secret. As a response to improve the success of students enrolled in these courses, different redesign efforts have been implemented across the country. This study reports on one redesign effort that began in Fall 2012. The new design consisted of mastery learning in computer-based…

In a higher education career that has spanned over four decades Hunter Boylan has served as a gang control worker, a TRIO Program Director, a community college and university instructor, a learning center director, and an academic advisor and counselor, just to name a few of his roles. He is the author of 7 books and over 100 articles, book…

A new law, Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin), is driving dramatic changes in how California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. Beginning in fall 2019, AB 705 requires the colleges to use students' high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricts colleges from denying students access to transferable,…

Students who are in developmental education (DE), like students with disabilities and other students receiving learning supports, are often identified as such a priori, which means the students have already lost control over a certain amount of information about their identities. A student may feel marginalized by the attitudes that others have on…

This study examined whether a correlation was present between demographic variables and academic success at a two-year institution in Alabama. Developmental status, gender, and race were compared with pass/fail status in the first college-level math class and graduation status. Results indicated that the developmental math classes were effective…

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-,…