Juan Carlos Calcagno

Remediation in the Community College An Evaluator's Perspective

Remediation is the most common approach to preparing students academically and socially during their early stages of college. However, despite its profound importance and its significant costs, there is very little rigorous research analyzing its effectiveness. The goal of this article is to provide a conceptual framework for the evaluation of remedial education programs. Based on previous literature, we review a list of ingredients for successful interventions, present a number of approaches to remediation that make use of these ingredients, discuss alternative research designs for systematic evaluations, and enumerate basic data requirements.

Does Age of Entrance Affect Community College Completion Probabilities? Evidence From a Discrete-Time Hazard Model

Research has consistently shown that older students—those who enter college for the first time at age 25 or older—are less likely to complete a degree or certificate. The authors estimate a single-risk discrete-time hazard model using transcript data on a cohort of first-time community college students in Florida to compare the educational outcomes of older and traditional-age students. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors’ results suggest that after controlling for cognitive mathematics ability, older students enrolled in Florida community colleges have a higher conditional probability of completing a degree or certificate in the observed event period.

The Effects of Institutional Factors on the Success of Community College Students.

Community colleges are the gateway to higher education for many students who would otherwise have limited access to college, particularly those who are from low-income households or are ethnic minorities, firstgeneration college students, or immigrants. Yet only about one-third of all community college students receives any degree or certificate even eight years after initial college enrollment. And credit accumulation and completion rates are even lower for minority and low-income students. Meanwhile, community college student outcomes, as measures of college effectiveness, are of increasing concern for institutional accountability. The Bush administration and many legislators in Congress would like to hold postsecondary institutions to higher standards of accountability, just as they have done with elementary and secondary schools. Institutional reporting requirements to the Department of Education now include data for graduation rates overall and broken out by gender and race/ethnicity. More than half of all states take into account the performance of public colleges when determining higher education appropriations. The use of completion rates as the primary yardstick for accountability puts pressure on community colleges to improve student outcomes. Yet, community college advocates have resisted the use of completion rates either as an accountability measure or as a normative goal. They argue that many community college students only want to learn new skills or enroll for personal enrichment – goals for which such students may obtain tangible benefits. Further, many factors that may create barriers to student completion are beyond the control of colleges, such as a student’s poor academic preparation. Because community colleges must accept all eligible students seeking to enroll, they often have student populations comprised of individuals who would not be admitted to more selective institutions or who may have many challenges to graduation. For such reasons, standard completion measures such as graduation rates may judge community colleges unfairly. Still, measuring institutional graduation rates can provide useful information about differences among colleges, such as leading researchers to identify policies and practices that might promote student success at those colleges with higher relative rates. For an individual college, analysis of its completion rates can be an important way to measure the effectiveness of its policies and practices relative to other similar institutions. This Brief summarizes a research project, conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and one component of a Ford Foundation-funded study on minority degree attainment at community colleges, which used institution-level data to analyze the effect of community college characteristics on student performance. The study provides an important first step in identifying the institutional factors – characteristics, policies, and programs – that contribute to improved educational outcomes for community college students.

Dual Enrollment Students in Florida and New York City: Postsecondary Outcomes

Dual enrollment programs enable students to take college courses and earn college credit while in high school. Once limited to high-achieving students, these programs are now seen as a means to support the postsecondary preparation of average-achieving students. Moreover, though dual enrollment programs typically have been reserved for academically-focused students, increasing numbers of career and technical education (CTE) programs are making them available to their students. Despite the popularity and growth of dual enrollment programs, there has been little research on their impact on students’ preparation for, and success in, postsecondary education. This Brief summarizes a study conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) that was designed to fill that research gap. Our investigation sought to assess the effectiveness of dual enrollment programs in promoting high school graduation and postsecondary achievement. We examined the influence of dual enrollment program participation on students in the State of Florida and in New York City, compared to students who did not participate, with a specific focus in both locations on CTE students. In Florida, we also considered all student participants. Our study provides evidence suggesting that dual enrollment is an effective strategy for encouraging postsecondary success for all students, including those in CTE programs.

Making the Transition to Four-Year Institutions: Academic Preparation and Transfer

In this study, we examine the role of academic preparation in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions. We address two specific questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can positive experiences in community colleges diminish the role of inadequate academic preparation? The results, which are based on analyses of Florida’s unit record data of first-time community college students, indicate that a substantial proportion of students who enter community colleges academically unprepared do indeed transfer to four-year institutions. Moreover, successful completion of intermediate outcomes — such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate degree — enhances students’ probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation is limited: successful completion of even the most demanding intermediate outcomes does not alleviate the negative consequences of entering higher education unprepared. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Institutional Responses to State Merit Aid Programs: The Case of Florida Community Colleges

This study estimates the effects of a state merit aid program on community colleges by using the introduction of the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship program as a natural experiment. It examines the effects of the program in terms of institutional aid, tuition pricing, and as a resorting mechanism for high ability students. The results suggest that community colleges do not increase students’ charges to capture additional revenues, nor do they substitute state aid for institutional aid. Contrary to what was expected, institutions apparently use the scholarship program as an ―ability marker‖ to provide additional financial aid to high ability students. Although we find no statistical evidence that the community college system is losing high ability students, there is strong support for heterogeneity in the program effect across institutions that depends on measures of the level of competition within each college’s educational marketplace.

Beyond Student Right-to-Know Data: Factors That Can Explain Community College Graduation Rates

Policymakers, educators, and researchers recognize the importance of community colleges as open door institutions that provide a wide range of students with access to college. At the same time, competing demands for the state funds that would support community colleges have resulted in reduced public allocations and higher student tuition fees. Understandably, therefore, both state policymakers and parents are increasingly focused on the returns to their public or private investments in education, and the outcomes of community college attendance are now under greater scrutiny. To facilitate the evaluation of the colleges, there are now available data, through the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act (1990), which amended the Higher Education Act, on every college’s graduation rate for fall semester cohorts of first-time, fulltime (FTFT) students in degree programs. This information is known as the Student Right-to-Know (SRK) data. A related public concern is how the outcomes of community college students can be improved. Therefore, attempts are now being made to clarify the way that specific students define success and to identify the college policies and practices that can promote success for all students. For some community college students, college completion, defined as earning a degree or certificate, is the appropriate measure of success. For other students, success is demonstrated by transferring to a baccalaureate institution. Still others are satisfied with completing courses that increase their knowledge or skill level in a particular area even though their educational experience is not considered successful as defined by traditional educational outcomes. Because of this range of outcomes for their students, some community colleges argue that focusing on the completion rate of a college is misleading, because many students do not have graduation as an objective. Further, many students face insurmountable barriers to success in college, such as family and work responsibilities and deficient academic preparation, which are beyond the control of the college. Nevertheless, data on goals and expectations do indicate that community college students are ambitious and that a majority of students who state that they want to complete a degree fail to do so (Bailey, Jenkins, & Leinbach, 2005). Moreover, high aspirations make economic sense since earning only a few credits without completing a certificate or degree has few income returns (Bailey, Kienzl, & Marcotte, 2004). Given the importance of completions, this Brief reports on research conducted by the Community College Research Center designed to strengthen the public’s ability to assess and compare community college performance by measuring the effect of certain institutional characteristics on graduation rates. The research consisted of the development of models, based on SRK graduation rate data, which can identify the institutional characteristics that might influence those rates and then measure the effect of those characteristics on the rates. The ultimate goal of the research is to help community college’s improve the educational outcomes of their students.

Minority Enrollments at Public Universities of Diverse Selectivity Levels Under Different Admission Regimes: The Case of Texas

This study describes how minority enrollment probabilities respond to changes in admission policies from affirmative-action to merit-only programs and then to percentage plans when the demographic composition of the potential pool of applicants is also shifting. It takes advantage of admission policy changes that occurred in the state of Texas with the Hopwood and HB588 decisions and of a unique administrative dataset that includes applications, admissions, and enrollments for three public universities of different selectivity levels. The findings suggest that the elimination of affirmative action and the introduction of the Top 10% plan had differential effects on minority enrollment probabilities as well as on application behavior depending on the selectivity level of the postsecondary institution. In particular, Hopwood is related to shifts in minority enrollments from selective institutions to less selective ones as the cascading hypothesis predicts. And although the Top 10% plan seems to have helped increased minority enrollment probabilities at the selective college as the upgrading hypothesis predicts, once the increases in minority shares among high-school graduates are taken into account, we find that the Top 10% plan can no longer be related to improvements in minority representation at selective universities.

Balancing Work, Family and School: Enrollment Pathways and Outcomes of Older Community College Students Compared to Traditional Age Students

This paper presents findings from a new study of the experiences and outcomes of older community college students - those who enter college for the first time at age 25 or later. We estimate a discrete-time hazard model using transcript data on a cohort of first-time community college students in Florida to compare the effect of enrollment pathways on educational outcomes of older students with those of traditional age students. Results suggest that reaching milestones such as fall-to-fall retention, obtaining 20 credits or completing 50% of the program is a more important positive factor affecting graduation probabilities for younger students than it is for older students. We also find that although remediation decreases the odds of graduating in any given term, older students who enroll in remediation are less negatively impacted than younger ones who do.