Michelle Hodara

The Opposing Forces That Shape Developmental Education: Assessment, Placement, and Progression at CUNY Community Colleges

The developmental education process, as it is typically implemented in colleges across the country, seems straightforward: underprepared students are assessed and placed into an appropriate developmental course sequence designed to prepare them for college-level work; once finished with the sequence, these students presumably then move on to success in college. Analyses of student progression through developmental education reveal, however, that this seemingly straightforward process is rife with complexity and confusion, and results in poor outcomes for the majority of developmental students. Various explanations have been advanced to explain developmental students’ lack of progression, including inadequate test preparation, insufficiently predictive exams, poorly aligned curricula, uninspiring skill-and-drill instruction, and the sheer length of time and financial resources required to finish a long sequence of courses (Edgecombe, 2011a; Grubb, 2010; Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011). Each explanation implies that the developmental system is broken and that one or more specific fixes will mend it. Yet underlying these issues is a deeper and more vexing question: Why is the system broken? Based on a case study of the City University of New York’s six community colleges, this report proposes a new opposing forces framework for understanding the dysfunction of the developmental system. We identify three sets of opposing forces that shape developmental policy and practice: system-wide consistency versus institutional autonomy, efficient versus effective assessment, and promotion of student progression versus enforcement of academic standards. Within each set, both goals are important and worthy, both are championed by key stakeholders in the system, and both have direct impacts on developmental policy. However, while the two goals may not be absolutely irreconcilable, they tend to work in opposition to one another and may create frustration on the part of administrators and faculty, confusion on the part of students, and poor outcomes overall. We begin the report by outlining the opposing forces framework and by discussing how the tensions inherent in the framework are apparent at the national level. We then use CUNY as a case study to describe in detail how each of the three tensions shape developmental policies, practices, and student progression patterns. Finally, we provide suggestions on how colleges nationwide can bring apparently opposing forces into alignment and thus create a system that works to meet all its stakeholders’ goals. Table of

Three Accelerated Developmental Education Programs: Features, Student Outcomes, and Implications

To support the long-term success of underprepared students, many community colleges are experimenting with accelerated developmental education models, which allow students to complete remediation and enroll in college-level math and English within a shorter time frame. This study examines three developmental acceleration programs, including two in English and one in math. Overall, students on accelerated pathways were more likely than a set of matched peers to successfully complete the relevant college-level course within 3 years. However, to help maintain strong student performance within subsequent college-level courses, accelerated pathways may need to incorporate rigorous content, systematic faculty development, and targeted student supports.

An Examination of the Impact of Accelerating Community College Students' Progression Through Developmental Education

In an effort to improve developmental education students’ outcomes, community colleges have been experimenting with acceleration strategies. Models of acceleration allow students to complete their developmental requirements in a shorter amount of time. However, there has been limited empirical research on the effects of accelerating students’ progression through their developmental requirements. We examined the impact of a basic form of acceleration—enrollment in shorter versus longer developmental education sequences—on access to introductory college coursework, performance in that coursework, overall college credit accumulation, and degree attainment at the City University of New York community colleges. In general, we found that accelerating students through developmental education in shorter sequences results in greater access to college-level coursework and long-term success but may have consequences for student performance in college-level coursework.

Improving Developmental Education Assessment and Placement: Lessons From Community Colleges Across the Country

At open-access two-year public colleges, the goal of the traditional assessment and placement process is to match incoming students to the developmental or collegelevel courses for which they have adequate preparation; the process presumably increases underprepared students’ chances of shortand long-term success in college while maintaining the academic quality and rigor of college-level courses. However, the traditional process may be limited in its ability to achieve these aims due to poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards of college readiness. To understand current approaches that seek to improve the process, we conducted a scan of assessment and placement policies and practices at open-access two-year colleges in Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. We describe the variety of approaches that systems and colleges employed to ameliorate poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with the traditional process. Taking a broad view of the extent of these approaches, we find that most colleges we studied adopted a measured approach that addressed a single limitation without attending to other limitations that contribute to the same overall problem of poor course placement accuracy or inconsistent standards. Much less common were comprehensive approaches that attended to multiple limitations of the process; these approaches were likely to result from changes to developmental education as a whole. Drawing from the study’s findings, we also discuss how colleges can overcome barriers to reform in order to implement approaches that hold promise for improved course placement accuracy, more consistent standards of college readiness, and, potentially, greater long-term academic success of community college students.

Reforming Mathematics Classroom Pedagogy: Evidence-Based Findings and Recommendations for the Developmental Math Classroom

For developmental education students, rates of developmental math course completion and persistence into required college-level math courses are particularly low. This literature review examines the evidence base on one potential means for improving the course completion and learning outcomes of developmental mathematics students: reforming mathematics classroom pedagogy. Each study examined for this review was classified into one of six sets according to the main instructional approach focused on in the study. The six sets are: student collaboration, metacognition, problem representation, application, understanding student thinking, and computer-based learning. Because most of the studies across the sets did not employ rigorous methods, the evidence regarding the impact of these instructional practices on student outcomes is inconclusive. An analysis of the studies that did employ rigorous designs suggests that structured forms of student collaboration and instructional approaches that focus on problem representation may improve math learning and understanding. This paper concludes by making a number of methodological recommendations, proposing several needed areas of research related to developmental math pedagogy, and suggesting instructional practices that may improve the outcomes of developmental math students.

The Opposing Forces That Shape Developmental Education

Nationwide, community colleges struggle with how to improve the poor outcomes of students referred to developmental education. Based on a case study of an urban community college system, this paper sets forth an opposing forces framework to help diagnose the underlying issues that may thwart colleges’ efforts to improve developmental outcomes. We identify three sets of opposing forces: system-wide consistency versus institutional autonomy; efficient versus effective assessment; and promotion of student progression versus enforcement of academic standards. Within each set, both goals are important and worthy, but they also tend to work in opposition to one another, creating confusion, frustration, and other barriers to meaningful reform. We describe how each of the three tensions shape developmental policy and practice. We also provide suggestions on potential reforms that could bring these apparently opposing forces into alignment and, thus, create a developmental education system that works to meet all its stakeholders’ goals.

The Effects of English as a Second Language Courses on Language Minority Community College Students.

English as a second language (ESL) courses seek to address a primary barrier to college success for language minority students: second language issues that can inhibit their success in college-level coursework. But, there is a limited understanding of the effects of ESL on college student outcomes. Using a rich, longitudinal data set that includes 10 years of transcript data on community college students at an urban college system, I use a difference-in-differences approach to identify the impact of ESL compared with developmental writing. I find that the longer sequence length in ESL compared with developmental writing decelerates language minority students’ progression through college, but findings vary for first generation, second generation, and generation 1.5 students, highlighting the heterogeneous effects of ESL.

Tracking Student Progression Through the Core Curriculum

Tracking student progression through the core curriculum can help community colleges understand the performance of students who plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Many community college students intend to transfer to four-year colleges. Nationally, about 70 percent of community college students report pursuing Associate of Arts (A.A.) or Associate of Science (A.S.) degrees. These degrees are also called general education or transfer degrees because they are usually designed for students intending to transfer to a four-year college and pursue a bachelor’s degree.1 Students in transfer-oriented degree programs are primarily liberal arts and humanities majors or academic, non-applied STEM majors.2 These programs often require that students complete a general education “core curriculum.” Tracking student progression through this core curriculum is therefore an important means for community colleges to better understand the performance of large numbers of students who plan to go on to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Exploring Credit Mobility and Major-Specific Pathways: A Policy Analysis and Student Perspective on Community College to University Transfer

Objective: Problems with credit mobility, or the transfer of credits from a sending to a receiving institution, may be one reason why community college transfer students have low rates of bachelor’s degree completion. This study investigates different policy approaches to credit mobility and how college staff and students experience transfer at the campus level. Method: The study utilizes data from policy documents and legislative statutes, phone interviews with higher education system officials, and college staff across 10 states, and interview data with students and staff collected during site visits to 2- and 4-year colleges in Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. Results: We categorized credit mobility policies across a continuum, from system-wide transfer initiatives to local-level institution-to-institution approaches. We refer to these different policy systems as 2 + 2, credit equivalency, and institution-driven. Across the systems, policies may not be working as intended because many transfer students do not select a major and destination institution early enough in their community college career to avoid credit loss. Moreover, institutions may lack capacity to provide personalized support to students interested in transfer early in their career. Contributions: We provide a new framework to understand different policy approaches to ensuring transfer students’ credits transfer and apply to their major, and offer research, policy, and practice considerations to improve credit mobility across different policy systems.

Frequently Asked Questions About CCRC’s Assessment Validity Studies

In March 2012, CCRC released two studies examining how well two widely used assessment tests—COMPASS and ACCUPLACER—predict the subsequent performance of entering students in their college-level courses. The studies, Do High-Stakes Placement Exams Predict College Success? and Predicting Success in College: The Importance of Placement Tests and High School Transcripts, can be found at http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu.