Guidelines to help colleges develop standards of satisfactory academic progress to maintain federal financial aid eligibility are presented. Guidelines concerning policies and procedures regarding academic integrity and athletic eligibility are also provided. Suggestions concerning academic standards for federal aid recipients include: issuing a…

Assessment of the College-Level Academic Skills Test Project (CLAST) at Florida colleges and universities is discussed. Included is an overview of the role of placement testing for entering freshmen and the questions that should be answered regarding the effectiveness of current entry testing and course placement practices. Information is included…

The assignment of grades to students is discussed, and a grading process is recommended. The process begins with the separation of minimal and developmental objectives. Minimal objectives represent course outcomes that all students are expected to achieve; developmental objectives are more complex goals toward which students strive, but which few…

The Conference on English and Mathematics brought together 100 faculty members from the California Community Colleges and the California State University to address such topics as curricular standards; admission, placement, and exit testing; improvement of transition from upper- to lower-division study; and the integration of English and…

An overview is provided of problems and potential solutions associated with high dropout rates at community colleges. The first sections look at the extent and nature of the dropout problem, highlighting some of the causes of student discontinance, the costs to the individual and society, and the paradox of open access and student retention in…

In 1987-88, the Commission on Athletics' Research Committee of the California Association of Community Colleges undertook a study of the effects of the requirement that college athletes maintain a 2.0 grade point average (GPA), the status of women's sports, the use of part-time coaches, and the types of courses used to satisfy transfer…

The California Roundtable (CRT) played a critical role in the shaping and passage of California's Senate Bill 813 (SB 813), the State's major education reform legislation enacted in July 1983. This working paper analyzes the content of the legislation, assesses its likely impact on student performance, and recommends steps the CRT (a consortium of…

New developments in testing in the United Kingdom (UK) since 1965 are described. Standardized testing at the local level declined dramatically with the widespread introduction of comprehensive secondary education. However, in the late 1970's widespread local testing programs were re-introduced for the purposes of monitoring student progress,…

The central problem in educational improvement at the state and local level is the tension between school-level autonomy and systemwide uniformity; educational change is limited by three special conditions: (1) inertial autonomy, (2) essential uniformity of public schools, and (3) the fact that effective schools have characteristics that cannot be…

The open admissions policy at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the effect of fiscal crisis in New York are considered. One of the important changes that occurred after the fiscal crisis in 1975 was that entry to CUNY's senior colleges became more difficult. Another change was the implementation in 1977 of a more stringent and precisely…

Restatements of the educational standards and the science competencies established by the New Mexico State Board of Education are provided in this document. Identified as basic and process skills, these checkpoint competencies are tied directly to the exit competencies for science. It is suggested that the checkpoint competencies be used as a…

The primary directives considered in the restructuring of the College of Education at the University of Minnesota were: (1) the replacement of undergaduate teacher preparation programs with graduate curricula; (2) a strengthened liberal education and subject area specialization within the baccalaureate degree; and (3) commitment to increased…

A survey of testing practices at two-year colleges was conducted by the American College Testing Program (ACT) and the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges (AACJC) to gather information about the use of tests in admissions, placement, and program completion. A questionnaire was distributed to 1,303 two-year institutions,…

This is the final report of an annual Mississippi study, conducted for the first time in February of 1984, which provides baseline data for measuring improvement of school practices in key arenas. Its primary goals were to identify the extent to which children master one level of course work before being advanced to the next level, to determine…

Cuyahoga Community College (CCC), Western Campus, has developed an admissions/counseling cooperative program to assist underprepared, probationary, or academically dismissed students to effect positive changes in their educational record and personal lives. The program includes the following components: (1) computer monitoring of students' grades…