In this study, we examined the structural validity of the Secondary Transition Fidelity Assessment (STFA), a measure of secondary schools' use of programs and practices demonstrated by research to lead to meaningful college and career outcomes for all students, including students at risk for or with disabilities, and students from diverse…

College- and career-readiness skills can easily get lost if you don't have a clear school-wide plan for teaching them. While curriculum in schools is primarily meant to ready students for college and career skills, ensuring those skills actually transfer is another story. Andrew Miller lays out a system for teaching and assessing key…

Twenty-six states or systems have authorized the use of innovative developmental education instructional methods and interventions. This resource provides data on the use of instructional methods, and which ones are used or allowed per state. [View the full "50-State Comparison: Developmental Education Policies" here:…

Developmental education assessment and placement policies guide how students may demonstrate college readiness and are placed into college-level courses. States and postsecondary systems use a variety of measures to determine a student's college readiness. Often, policies require that students submit scores from a national, standardized test. Some…

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 study focused on a redesigned reading program that integrated project-based activities through the contextualization of reading and information literacy strategies using library databases. Students completing the new reading curriculum were compared to students who had completed a traditional reading curriculum to assess for differences in…

Traditional methods of teaching differentiation calculus usually involve lectures. Nevertheless, this process impedes students' thorough comprehension of concepts and their practical application by promoting dependence on memorisation and procedural learning. Numerous studies have also denoted that teaching experiments and technology can enhance…

Adult proficiency in numeracy in the United States lags that of other developed nations, and the nonselective institutions that dominate the higher education sector struggle to address the learning needs of the sizeable proportion of students who enroll in their institutions and are deemed academically underprepared in mathematics. Research on…

Increasing numbers of high schools are offering senior-year transition curricula in math and English to better prepare graduating students for college. These transition curricula are typically full-year, high school credit-bearing courses taken by students at risk of being placed into developmental (also known as remedial) courses upon enrollment…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) was created in 2009 to support schools' implementation of rigorous college and career ready standards for English language arts (ELA). Combining evidence-based principles of professional development with a systematic design process, LDC helps teachers to embed literacy skill development throughout their…

Conducted in an urban alternative education program for adolescents ages 17-21, this study provides an overview of a professional development program that sought to support teachers in developing unit plans that incorporated backwards design principles and culturally relevant and sustaining instruction. The authors offer a qualitative thematic…

Helping students transition from high school to college typically involves creating online transition programs in high school, which could lead to higher retention rates in college. The course developers that create online transition programs for high school-aged students understand that online learning methods are an excellent way to reach more…

The 10th anniversary of Common Core's launch offers the opportunity to take stock of the impact these nearly national standards have had on student learning, as well as their future prospects. In this article, Morgan Polikoff shares his view that the standards movement in general, and Common Core in particular, have achieved all they are going to…

In US-based postsecondary education, first-year students commonly have their compositional ability consequentially assessed on the basis of standardized tests. As a result, students who score above certain thresholds on ACT, SAT, or AP exams often are placed into honors or remedial courses; receive credit remissions; and/or test out of general…

In the United States today, more jobs than ever before require at least some postsecondary education. Yet too many young adults are either not enrolling or not succeeding in college. This scenario exists across many different types of communities, but schools in rural areas, particularly those with large populations of low-income students, face…