We explore institutional change and organizational learning in higher education in the context of a large-scale reform of developmental education in Florida. We use statewide survey data to examine administrators' perceptions of the use and effectiveness of accountability metrics, methods to identify solutions to improve student outcomes, and…

The goals of placement reform and the elimination of developmental education at community colleges were to decrease the misplacement of students and to provide students with quicker access to college-level courses to improve retention and student success rates. However, the new placement reforms may be preventing some nontraditional students from…

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…

Amidst the growing diverse student population, community colleges are enrolling an increasing number of adult immigrant-background students. However, recent research trends tend to focus on students who enter community colleges from the U.S. K-12 system (Generation 1.5 learners), leaving a significant gap in the research and a lack of cohesion in…

The Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) is beginning its tenth year rewarding students who strive to excel in high school and continue their education in degree and certificate programs in Alaska. This report covers the high school, postsecondary, Alaska residency, and workforce outcomes of the APS program between 2011 - Fall 2019. [For…

This chapter discusses the importance of scrutinizing the outcomes of developmental education reforms across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and level of developmental need.

Coherent mental models for successful comprehension require inferences that establish semantic "bridges" between discourse constituents and "elaborations" that incorporate relevant background knowledge. While it is established that individual differences in the extent to which postsecondary students engage in these processes…

Postsecondary education enrollment and completion disparities exist for Minnesota's Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) and lower-income students. One outcome measure demonstrating the impact of systemic disparities in K-12 education is a student's level of readiness for college-level courses following high school graduation. Given…

Many students enter higher education with poor preparation for college mathematics courses. These students are often placed through high-stakes placement testing into developmental coursework that bear no credit towards graduation, but many students who begin in developmental coursework never succeed in a college-level mathematics course. Recent…

Universities have been forced to confront the increasing placement of students into developmental courses and the subsequent lack of success students encounter. In an effort to better understand how students' attitudes and dispositions towards mathematics impact this trend, we explored the differences in nine characteristics between students in…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…

This study explores the impact of a first-semester learning community (LC) program on the experiences of developmental students in community college. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, students shared four central benefits of beginning their college careers in an LC program, including: (1) access to a supportive social and…

This study explored the transition to university as experienced by first-year students of English studies. The first year has been identified by existing research as a critical time for new students in terms of their persistence and success on their degree programme. However, there is a need for further research in the current UK higher education…

Developmental Education is the gateway to higher education for the thousands of students who desire to attend college but lack the prerequisite academic skills to be successful. In recent years, DE has been cast into unfavorable light by national policy organizations composed of wealthy entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and the result has. been a…

Florida passed legislation in 2013 that exempted many students from developmental education, and required colleges to implement new instructional modalities for optional developmental education courses. This paper uses an economic model of remediation to examine how changes in college course taking before and after the reform altered costs to…