Publications

This paper examines whether Tinto's integration framework—commonly used to examine student persistence in the four-year sector—is applicable to two-year institutions.

In CCRC's 2010 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey reviews CCRC's accomplishments since its founding in 1996.

This report describes how this Achieving the Dream college collaborated with the University of Texas at El Paso and 12 local independent school districts in the El Paso area to develop and bring to scale an improved process for helping high school students prepare for entry into college.

Part of the collected volume Colleges 2020, published by a U.K. think tank, this chapter provides an international comparison to British further education by discussing U.S. community colleges.

Prepared for a Human Resources Development Group Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), this paper discusses a range of issues relevant to the community college mission of helping prepare a skilled workforce for jobs offering reasonable wages.

This paper examines how performance funding systems in two states with long-lasting systems have changed over time and what political and social conditions explain the changes.

Based on analysis of nationally representative AP exam data taken from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this article examines whether incentives provided to students, teachers, and schools help students enroll and succeed in AP exams.

This paper makes the case for the training hour as the basic unit of measurement for noncredit workforce education programs and proposes a taxonomy of community college noncredit activities.

CCRC examined student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass gatekeeper courses.

This report discusses findings and implications of a study commissioned by the College Board to inform the development of the Voluntary Framework of Accountability for Community Colleges.

This article examines various commonalities and divergences between the English further education system and its nearest U.S. equivalent, the community college system.

This guide for district administrators, teachers, and counselors aims to help schools and districts develop practices to increase access to higher education and details the research evidence informing its recommendations.

This NCPR working paper reports findings from a study that used a detailed dataset and a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of remediation on the educational outcomes of nearly 100,000 college students in Florida.

Drawing on a national review of state policies and case studies of 20 community colleges, this article examines trends in noncredit courses connected with workforce instruction and contract training.

This article elaborates on the increased importance of community colleges in training, retraining, and providing higher education in the recent economic downturn.

To investigate the unstable institutionalization of performance funding in higher education, this paper examines the cessation of performance funding programs in Illinois, Washington, and Florida.

This paper presents findings from a study on the outcomes of students participating in Washington State's I-BEST program, which combines basic skills instruction with career-technical instruction.

This report provides detailed findings on state policies and community college practice from CCRC's study of community college noncredit workforce education.

In CCRC's 2009 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey discusses CCRC research that tracked the enrollment and progression of community college students into and through remediation, and outlines directions for reform.

This report describes the progress made by the 13 Pennsylvania and Washington State community colleges that comprise Round 3 of the Achieving the Dream initiative after planning and one year of implementation.

This paper examines evidence on the effectiveness of developmental education and outlines a broad reform agenda for helping students with weak academic skills.

Based on a survey of faculty and administrators at 41 Achieving the Dream colleges, this study examines what specific data college faculty and administrators use in their jobs and the extent to which they use data analysis to design and improve the impact of college programs and services.

This report presents findings from an independent qualitative review of Washington State's Student Achievement Initiative, which rewards colleges for improvements in student outcomes.

In this journal article, the authors examine how student success courses help students develop relationships that provide support and useful information long after the class is over.

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.

This paper describes how researchers used data on student characteristics and educational outcomes from several federal government sources to explore the legitimacy of the various ways that college effectiveness can be assessed by using measures of student success.

This article explores the ways that information networks are related to student persistence in the community college and how institutional structures can encourage such networks.

This study uses rigorous quantitative methods to examine the impact of dual enrollment participation on students in Florida and New York City.

This article describes lessons learned by states that are using student unit record data to improve outcomes for community college students and how states can strengthen their use of data.

This report is intended to inform educators, policymakers, administrators, and researchers about current policies and practices that shape dual enrollment in California.

This article details three key challenges that community colleges face: underprepared students, financial stress, and high dropout rates.

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.

In this paper, the author argues for a new paradigm in federal workforce education policy, one that privileges capacity-building over compliance.

This paper presents a typology of the institutional partnerships in which community colleges engage so that policymakers can develop fiscal and regulatory policy to support such activities.

This paper contains a summary of the National Community College Symposium, at which experts met to articulate a community college research agenda.

Based on analyses of unit record data of first-time community college students in the state of Florida, this paper examines the role of academic preparation in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions.

In CCRC's 2008 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey reviews CCRC's research on dual enrollment and discusses findings that suggest participation in dual enrollment and career-technical dual enrollment is associated with a range of positive postsecondary outcomes.

This guide aims to help community colleges and state agencies analyze the labor market outcomes of their programs and identify opportunities for improving students' employment outcomes.

This paper reviews the research literature on the effectiveness of financial aid, with special attention to its implications for policy.

This article provides a theoretical rationale for policymakers' support for programs that allow high school students to take college-level classes for credit.

This summary is intended to help decision-makers understand why research on the effectiveness of dual enrollment programs is important and how policymakers can support research activities.

This report discusses findings and recommendations from a study of the New York City Virtual Enterprises International program, in which students create and run virtual businesses.

This essay describes the characteristics of community college students and discusses the role of the community college in increasing access to higher education by traditionally underserved students.

This paper analyzes how effective ATE regional centers, which work with community colleges and businesses in a single region to improve technical education, have been in meeting their goals.

This report describes how Miami Dade College is using a variety of data to make better-informed choices about the operation of student programs and services.

This working paper provides a conceptual framework for the rigorous evaluation of remedial education interventions.

This guide is intended to help researchers in colleges and state agencies use longitudinal student unit record data to create simple and meaningful statistics on student achievement.

This study examines the ways that student support services in community colleges inadvertently perpetuate and legitimate disadvantage.

CCRC researcher Melinda Mechur Karp reviews After Admission: From College Access to College Success.

This book chapter reviews three dominant strategies to create academic linkages between high school and college—remediation, dual enrollment, and the high school/college alignment movement.