Two-year colleges provide access and opportunity for students with various academic backgrounds to pursue a post-secondary education. While two-year colleges take pride in admitting any student with a high school diploma or equivalent, in recent years colleges have been under scrutiny for low completion and graduation rates. Particular attention…

Developmental education has been in the hot seat for several decades with its critics calling for reform and its practitioners asserting its effectiveness given time. Wedged in the middle of this highly debated topic are the students who place into developmental education; students who should have a voice in the debate. This practitioner action…

Although nearly half of community college students require some type of remediation, less than one-third of the students who start in developmental education graduate within eight years (Park, Tandberg, Hu, & Hankerson, 2016). As such, there is great uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of developmental education (Ari et al., 2016; Bailey…

In this dissertation, acceleration in developmental mathematics at Utah Valley University through compression of a 4-course sequence into a 2-course sequence was examined to determine the extent to which sequence length predicted student success outcomes, including completion of, pass/fail grades in, and re-enrollment into subsequent developmental…

In May 2013, the governor of Florida signed into law Senate Bill 1720, which fundamentally changed how institutions of higher education manage remedial programs. Institutions seemed to be responding to the high demand for education by channeling large percentages of incoming first-year students to remedial classes based on assessment test scores,…

Remedial education, also known as developmental education, college preparation courses, or skills courses, are usually offered by two-year and four-year colleges and universities in the United States to students deemed underprepared for college-level coursework. In sharp contrast with the prevalent offering of remedial courses in post-secondary…

The Florida Legislature passed a bill that changed the placement methods for some incoming students to the Florida State College System in 2013. This analysis of state policy looks at Senate Bill 1720 as the treatment in an interrupted time-series trend study at one state college in Florida. This research attempts to answer three questions: (1)…

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the essence of developmental education faculty experiences with the placement of students in their classrooms as a result of the Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA). The interviews from this study were used to give developmental education faculty a voice and insight into…

Community colleges have become the focal point of America's efforts to build a more qualified workforce and gain a competitive edge in the technologically-based global market. While the demand for a highly educated citizenry and workforce has increased, many students enter community colleges underprepared for college-level course work,…

Research has consistently shown that community college students lack the necessary skills to achieve successful academic performance and are highly likely to drop out of their studies prior to degree attainment. Community colleges have introduced developmental courses to prepare students for their transition into college-level courses.…

Using self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) as the theoretical framework, this study explored how high-school GPA and motivation contributed to academic performance and persistence among students enrolled in developmental-education courses during the fall of 2016 at a two-year technical college in the Midwest. A non-random purposive…

Research indicates that African-American non-traditional female students often experience academic difficulties when they have a placement in developmental education programs and courses at community colleges. As a result, African-American non-traditional female students often drop these courses, leave college, and do not persist to degree…

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…

Developmental mathematics is one of the most challenging leaks in the mathematics K-20 pipeline. Few students enter two-year colleges prepared to successfully engage in college-level mathematics classes. Many of students who place into developmental mathematics are low-income, underprepared, students of color, and many are not equipped with the…

The researcher for this evaluative study investigated the efficacy and impact of the iStartSmart college success course by examining the first-term retention, fall-to-fall persistence, and three-year completion rates of community college students who enrolled in the one- or three-credit course at a community college in Arizona and the rates of…