Developmental education reform has shown promising evidence toward improving short-term outcomes, yet questions remain about whether these early gains contribute momentum toward mid-term and longer-term postsecondary success. In 2014, Florida implemented one of the nation's most comprehensive developmental education reforms. Many students became…

In 2015, Tennessee community colleges initiated a wave of national reform that reimagined academic support and accelerated student success. Through innovations in the delivery of targeted learning support, such as the corequisite support model, students are more likely to achieve key milestones of success in their first year of college. Now, after…

Since the 2000s, states have experimented with reforms to improve success among underprepared students traditionally assigned to developmental education (DE). Florida's reform under Senate Bill 1720 has been among the most comprehensive and wide-reaching. Recent public high school graduates and military personnel became exempt from DE, but nearly…

Since the 2000s, states have experimented with reforms to improve success among underprepared students traditionally assigned to developmental education (DE). Florida's reform under Senate Bill 1720 has been among the most comprehensive and wide-reaching. Recent public high school graduates and military personnel became exempt from DE, but nearly…

Objective: In 2014, Florida implemented Senate Bill 1720 (SB 1720), which drastically reshaped developmental education practices across the 28 public state colleges. Under the reform, around two-thirds of students became exempt from developmental education. Yet, many students were still required to take the placement test. If they scored below…

This report is focused on both introducing corequisite support to institutional leaders looking for new approaches to addressing remediation and offering new insights that can deepen practice for those who are already at work implementing the model. Following previous reports on the corequisite model, "No Room for Doubt" outlines a…

Postsecondary institutions and systems across the nation have demonstrated remarkable progress since the first "Core Principles for Transforming Remediation Within a Comprehensive Student Success Strategy" was published in 2015 (see ED561279). Building on this progress, the Summary Details Education Commission of the States (ECS) has…

The recent focus on improving college completion rates has resulted in the paring down--or complete removal--of semester-long developmental education courses. Considering the magnitude these policies have on placement, teaching, and learning outcomes, this study examined faculty observations (N=420) about students' current and longitudinal college…

Having garnered national attention, high failure rates in developmental education present a significant barrier to state and national policymakers' goals of increasing the percentage of adults who earn a college credential. However, a majority of the research fails to consider why students place into developmental education. This piece examines a…

Less than 25 percent of college students who take any developmental education courses earn a credential within eight years. Over the past three years, the six states in the Developmental Education Initiative have developed and enacted unprecedented changes in policy and practice in an effort to reverse these dismal outcomes. "Ahead of the…

The Learning Communities Demonstration is a national research project that is testing the effectiveness of learning communities in six community colleges across the United States: Merced College in California; The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Baltimore, Maryland; Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida; Houston…

Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation…

Developmental education is designed to provide students with weak academic skills the opportunity to strengthen those skills enough to prepare them for college-level coursework. The concept is simple enough--students who arrive unprepared for college are provided instruction to bring them up to an adequate level. In practice, developmental…

In 2009, the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) launched an evaluation of eight developmental summer bridge programs in Texas to assess whether these programs reduce the need for developmental coursework and improve student outcomes in college. The evaluation uses an experimental design to measure the effects of these programs on…

This was a mixed methods study that examined the developmental education program at an urban public Maryland community college. The data were collected from interviews with a former English Chair, a former Math Chair, and the Director of Institutional Research. Each was selected because of his and her expertise. Data were also collected from one…