In education, practitioners are increasingly looking for strategies to bring data and evidence into decisionmaking and to roll out programs in intentional ways that allow for ongoing improvement. This toolkit acts as a guide to improvement strategies for teams of practitioners at colleges, providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to…

This case study tracks the application of project-based learning (PBL) during four separate college terms at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. Each term follows a different learning community of first-term college students enrolled in a program of developmental education (DE), reading, writing, math, and college survival and success…

This paper reflects upon the nature of a target-setting and mentoring scheme in an 11-16 school in England, through a series of retrospective interviews with students who continued into further education. It considers the extent to which the initiative impacted both upon students' formal academic achievement at 16+ and upon the subsequent…

This paper presents the U.S. Department of Education's Fiscal Year (FY) "2010 Annual Performance Report" (APR). This report provides detailed information on: (1) the status of strategic goals, and (2) the outcomes of the strategic performance measures identified in the Department's "FY 2007-2012 Strategic Plan" and updated previously in the "FY…

Remedial or developmental courses are the most common policy instruments used to assist underprepared postsecondary students who are not ready for college-level coursework. However, despite its important role in higher education and its substantial costs, there is little rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of college remediation on the outcomes…

The prevalence of underprepared students attending colleges, the need to define literacy requirements of courses, the implications of research on literacy in the design of remedial programs, and the need for systematic evaluation of such programs are considered. Literacy is broadly defined as a language competence that is used to achieve both…

Jersey City State College (New Jersey) developed a local evaluation model to assess all salient aspects of the institution's basic skills program. The college's Academic Foundations Program was implemented to address the needs of urban educationally disadvantaged students. It includes faculty and staff development and research, freshman course…

Learning improvement programs for underprepared postsecondary students are reviewed, and a Decision Guide for Effective Programs, which summarizes knowledge needed for decision making, is presented. Research data are analyzed to identify features of learning improvement programs associated with improved grade point average and retention.…

The implementation and evaluation of a project at Xavier University of Louisiana that was designed to increase performance and academic persistence in entry-level mathematics and science courses are described. The University's CAUSE Project was a cooperative effort by the departments of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Strategies of…