This article provides an overview of GED holders admitted into the Successful Transition and Retention Track (START) two-year pilot-project. An enhanced college-success course, career and mental-health counseling, and English and mathematics tutoring acclimated GED holders to college. Results suggest that postsecondary educational attainment of…

Objective: Given the current concern across the United States with improving community-college student outcomes, particularly in developmental education, understanding what students encounter inside developmental education classrooms is a necessary first step. Method: Drawing on data from a study of teaching practices inside developmental math…

This article examines two course redesigns undertaken to improve student support, learning, and retention in the basic writing program at Oakland University, a doctoral research university in southeast Michigan, where support for developmental writers has fluctuated dramatically between nurture and neglect over the past fifty years. However,…

Anecdotal observations reveal that most students with strong arithmetic skills will succeed in the Beginning Algebra course even if they have no previous experience with algebra. In trying to quantify this with an initial teacher-created survey of arithmetic skills, it was observed, for three consecutive semesters, that students who scored in the…

This article describes a two-semester study of mixed (native and non-native speaking) writing groups in developmental college writing classes. The teacher assigned and observed writing activities and collected survey and interview data to determine the impact on the students' perceived writing abilities and attitudes toward paired and small group…

Every young person in the United States, whatever his or her background, wants to grow up to be economically self sufficient, to have a stable and productive career. So "college" is the aspiration for nearly 90 percent of high school seniors who say they will pursue some form of postsecondary education after high school, and nearly 66…

In 2007, the president of Shelton State Community College in Alabama announced that with more than 60% of incoming freshmen placing into developmental courses, the college had a moral and ethical obligation to provide top-quality opportunities for underprepared students. He appointed a team to investigate options for improving services and…

The Southern Education Foundation's (SEF) Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) Consortium for Innovation and Change was instituted in 2011 to advance creative and promising initiatives that enhance institutional practice and student outcomes. In keeping with the SEF mission, these innovations specifically address educational barriers that…

The purpose of this study was to determine which academic and affective student factors were significant to student success in a mastery learning program in developmental mathematics and to determine if the mastery learning program led to increased mathematical knowledge retention and success in the subsequent math course. The first phase of the…

The human brain develops rapidly in the first five years of life. High-quality early learning experiences can have a profound and lasting positive effect on young children during these years, setting the stage for success in kindergarten and beyond. This is especially true for young children with high needs who are from low-income families; who…

Nearly 60 percent of incoming community college students are unprepared for college-level work and must take at least one pre-college, "developmental" course, usually in math or English, before enrolling in any credit-bearing classes toward a degree. Within developmental education, students are most likely to need help with mathematics,…

Learning communities, a small cohort of students enrolled together in two or more linked courses, have become a popular intervention to help underprepared students succeed in college. Though learning communities abound in practice, the key structural feature of a learning community--the cohort--may not be fully understood. Authors posit that a…

The number of students attending higher education institutions has increased across the nation over the past few decades. Nearly 46% of students chose to begin postsecondary education or technical training at a community college (American Association of Community Colleges, 2008). Accessibility and lower tuition have contributed to the enrollment…

Each year, the Rennie Center collects a set of key indicators in the Data Dashboard to provide context on the status of education in the Commonwealth. This data is collected from the MA Department of Early Education and Care; MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; MA Department of Higher Education; U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Department…

Enrolling more than 6 million students each fall, community colleges carry out a crucial function in higher education by providing access to college, including baccalaureate opportunities, occupational education, remedial education, and other educational services. At the same time, community colleges face great challenges that have elicited calls…