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…

Objective: Quantway is a Carnegie Math Pathways initiative, which redesigns the content, pedagogy, and structure of traditional developmental mathematics courses to simultaneously tackle traditional barriers to student success and support a broad range of developmental students in achieving their mathematics potential. Specifically, Quantway is a…

This call to action is based on a simple but important premise: The nation cannot allow college placement policies, processes, and instruments to undermine promising efforts to increase student success in mathematics and increase attainment of STEM credentials. Efforts to redesign math pathways hold great promise for improving the teaching and…

With open door admission policies, lower tuition rates, and convenient locations, community colleges are enrolling more and more academically unprepared students who are placing into developmental mathematics courses. Many of these community colleges need to assess their developmental education programs, instructors, courses, and students to…

This research study compared the effects of the intrusive form of developmental academic advising (IDAA) and the influence of additional academic support services on the mean cumulative Grade Point Averages (GPAs) of 4 randomly assembled groups of academically at-risk college students during 2 separate semesters. Academically at-risk students are…

Developmental writers have long been viewed as marginalized, and one course delivery method which might disrupt this marginalization is computer-assisted personalized system of instruction (CAPSI), which has proven successful in many disciplines. However, research on CAPSI writing courses is minimal, and there have been no published articles about…

In a study designed to analyze faculty and student perceptions of the value of digital writing in the first year composition classroom, 21 first-year college students and a nationwide sample of 50 college composition teachers participated in conceptualizing digital multimodal composition and defining the benchmarks for first-year college digital…

The study's main objective was to provide a detailed description of math Assessment and Placement (A&P) policies in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD). The study was focused on math because a larger proportion of students place into remedial math than remedial reading or English (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010; Parsad, Lewis,…

This brief summarizes efforts to reform developmental education at Zane State College and the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Focused on accelerating student success and progress, the two schools pursued distinctive approaches to reform that aligned with their institutional missions and student populations. Recognizing that the…

In this paper, we assess the effect of higher entry and exit standards at a community college in New York City. A complex set of university and college-wide policy modifications led to an increase in placement test cut-scores as well as increased requirements to complete remediation. The implementation of this policy change allows us to utilize…

The national trend of requiring all college students to engage with tertiary-level mathematics has created the need to rethink how students can be supported at this level. Current trends in higher education show a decreased reliance on remedial developmental education courses and expanded reliance on learning centers. It is important to look at…

The need for developmental education is ever present in higher education as more students annually enter college underprepared for entry level college coursework. Underpreparedness is a pervasive concern in higher education. Community colleges in particular are the primary means of shepherding developmental education. Academic underpreparedness is…

Since Breneman and Haarlow (1998) first estimated the national cost of developmental education to be approximately $1 billion dollars, the developmental education landscape has shifted in numerous ways. This paper provides an update to their estimate in light of both these changes and improved data that disaggregates the cost to community colleges…

Dissatisfaction with student success has caused a crisis in developmental education. Critics from both inside and outside the field question whether remedial courses really prepare students for future college work or even if they are properly part of the college mission. In this article, we review research and present information that suggests…

Arkansas Department of Higher Education data show that approximately 75% of Arkansas community college students are required to take at least one developmental education class (Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2012, p.7.2). This is significantly higher than the approximately 30% average (Provasnik & Planty, 2008, p.11) of…