Publications
Challenge and Opportunity: Rethinking the Role and Function of Developmental Education in Community College
This paper examines evidence on the effectiveness of developmental education and outlines a broad reform agenda for helping students with weak academic skills.
Bridges to Opportunity for Underprepared Adults: A State Policy Guide for Community College Leaders
This guide offers strategies for providing adults with education and training to help them access opportunities for social mobility and secure jobs that pay wages sufficient to support a family.
Shifting Gears: Community Colleges and Adult Basic Education
This paper explores some of the barriers adult basic education students face in obtaining postsecondary credentials, and how changes in federal policy can improve ABE outcomes.
Remediation in the Community College: An Evaluator's Perspective
This working paper provides a conceptual framework for the rigorous evaluation of remedial education interventions.
Promising Practices for Community College Developmental Education
This report, written for the Connecticut Community College System, summarizes key findings on effective developmental education practice.
Can Community Colleges Protect Both Access and Standards? The Problem of Remediation
This article details the qualitative case study that investigated state and institutional practices for remediation in 15 community colleges selected for region, size, and urbanicity.
Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students: Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice From a Statewide Longitudinal Tracking Study
This report presents findings from a first-of-its kind study on the experience and outcomes of low-skill adults in community colleges.
Pedagogical Alignment and Curricular Consistency: The Challenges for Developmental Education
This chapter discusses the challenge of aligning four necessary elements—instructor approach, student needs, curricular content, and instructional support—in the developmental classroom.
Paths to Persistence: An Analysis of Research on Program Effectiveness at Community Colleges
This report presents a critical analysis of the state of the research on the effectiveness of specific practices in increasing persistence and completion at community colleges.
Institutional Decision Making for Increasing Academic Preparedness in Community Colleges
This publication identifies current organizational and instructional approaches to developmental education in community colleges and recommends a process by which colleges can make institutionally appropriate decisions to improve developmental education outcomes.
Remediation Beyond Developmental Education: The Use of Learning Assistance Centers to Increase Academic Preparedness in Community Colleges
This journal article details a case study on 15 community colleges across the United States and includes findings revealing important means of increasing students' academic preparedness for postsecondary study.
The Role of Community Colleges in State Adult Education Systems: A National Analysis
This report looks at the structure of literacy and adult education in the United States, with a focus on the role of community colleges.
Trends in Community College Assessment and Placement Approaches: Implications for Educational Policy
This paper reports on findings from a qualitative study that examined students' academic preparedness and assessment and placement policies in 15 U.S. community colleges.
Literacy Education After High School
This article provides information on two major settings for literacy education for adults: adult basic education and community college remedial programs.
The Academic Writing of Community College Remedial Students: Text and Learner Variables
This journal article discusses the performance of community college remedial writing students on a task that required them to compose an informational report from sources.
The Location of Developmental Education in Community Colleges: A Discussion of the Merits of Mainstreaming vs. Centralization
This article discusses mainstreaming and centralization, two ways in which community colleges organize developmental education.
Repetition and the Informational Writing of Developmental Students
This journal article discusses a study that investigated the effects of task repetition on the writing skills of upper level developmental reading students.
Promising Approaches for Remediation
The journal article describes CCRC's case study research on remediation, which shows that there is more to remediation than traditional developmental education programs.
From Black Box to Pandora's Box: Evaluating Remedial/Developmental Education
This report offers insight into how research evaluating the effectiveness of remedial education can be improved to shed light on how these programs can be improved.