Basic skills courses are designed to teach students certain basic academic competencies they have not mastered. However, very little research has examined the quality of instruction inside basic skills classes. This paper presents preliminary findings from observations in 13 California community colleges. The clearest finding is that…

In this article, we employ a cultural historical theoretical framework to extend understandings of how widespread 2-year college placement policies concerning English remediation potentially locate and retain U.S.-educated Latino adolescents at the margins of higher education through well-intentioned yet deficit-driven postsecondary cultural…

A solution to the problem of preparing non-college ready students has been to offer developmental/remedial courses in community colleges. Studies have shown that students who begin and persist in these courses do just as well, if not better, than non-developmental education students. The majority of studies, however, have not examined the…

The City University of New York (CUNY) developed and implemented two evidence-based, educational initiatives at its community colleges. Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), on six campuses, helped 55 percent of students who enter with one or two developmental needs earn an associate degree within three years. This compares with 20…

The use of a narrative in educational contexts has been found to increase learners' experience of flow or absorption in a task. This increased experience of flow can in turn result in increased retention and learning outcomes. However, narrative can also be polarizing particularly in the male-dominated realm of video game play due to gender…

This study investigates how two groups of bilingual algebra students reasoned about rate, slope, and linear functions during peer discussions. This investigation brings together and advances research that investigates issues at the intersection of collaborative learning, algebraic reasoning, and the use of mathematical discourse practices. A…

This report provides information on the retention, graduation, and transfer rates of first-time, full-time students at Maryland community colleges from 1999-2009. The report examines retention and graduation data for students two, three, and four years after matriculation into a community college. Retention, graduation, and transfer rates are…

Electronic portfolios have become increasingly popular. The value of a portfolio, though, depends on how, when, and why students create, submit, and have their portfolios evaluated. In the following paper, we describe how we redesigned a program's assessment and evaluation plan around the use of electronic portfolios and a system of gates focusing…

In this paper we analyze longitudinal data from a nationally representative panel of college entrants to test and compare several theoretical explanations of college degree attainment and noncompletion. So far, relatively little emphasis has been placed on determining the relative and combined predictive power of competing explanations or…

Exploiting a statewide cutoff point on the placement examination used to assign students to remedial courses in Tennessee, this study employs a regression discontinuity research design to provide causal estimates of the effects on student outcomes of recently redesigned remedial courses at three Tennessee colleges. Moreover, using data on student…

Community colleges are the primary providers of remedial/developmental education. The cost, an ongoing values debate and varied institutional ideologies have led to a standard array of programs and services whose administration and efficacy vary from institution to institution. While leadership can be exercised at all levels of an institution, the…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine if student background variables (age, gender, race, academic preparation); student status (part/full-time student), and student circumstances (commuting distance, independent/dependent financial student status) could predict fall-to-spring attrition (2006-2007) in a sample of 542 first-time,…

A neo-culture of extra-curricular coaching prior to sitting the terminal exam was once the privileged domain of public education systems in the Eastern world, but this is no longer the case. This multi-phase study based on a grounded theory approach considered a diversity of physics learning experiences of students and alumni from two urban…

Although there has been much discussion about improving college student writing with college-level courses, little is known about how accounting programs, in particular, are addressing the writing proficiency challenge. This study surveys the 852 accounting programs in the United States to identify the frequency and types of accounting writing…

In this Brief the authors first report on evidence about the effectiveness (or, unfortunately, in too many cases, the ineffectiveness) of remediation and then provide information about the progression of students through the developmental sequence. They discuss problems associated with the crucial assessments and make a brief statement about…