Publications

This practitioner packet summarizes CCRC findings on online course outcomes and presents insights and recommendations for administrators and instructors seeking to improve online student performance.

Based on findings from a three-year study of Washington State’s Student Achievement Initiative, this policy brief offers lessons for state leaders seeking to design effective higher education performance funding systems.

In response to a journal article questioning CCRC’s claims about the effectiveness of developmental education, this essay discusses methodological concerns and other issues that may be a source of confusion.

This NCPR working paper outlines the development of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the CCSS-aligned assessments and argues that they can be used to support the mission of community colleges.

Using administrative data from the Virginia Community College System, this paper examines the associations between student success course enrollment and short-term student outcomes.

The first in CCRC's analytics series, this publication examines characteristics of students who drop out of college after only one semester.

This report discusses the development of FastStart, its program features, and student perspectives, and it presents findings from a quantitative analysis of the FastStart math program.

This report makes a series of policy recommendations for strengthening dual enrollment in Tennessee to ensure that the program contributes to Tennessee's college completion goals.

The Developmental Education Initiative provided funding to 15 colleges to implement or scale up developmental reform strategies. This report examines the implementation of these strategies.

This article discusses political forces that shaped performance funding policies in eight states: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, California, and Nevada.

This chapter reviews the literature on online learning in community colleges, focusing online course-taking patterns, performance in online versus face-to-face courses, and factors affecting online course performance.

This issue of Inside Out explores how developmental education reforms can create opportunities for faculty to engage in professional learning related to instruction.

This report assesses how and to what extent the Student Achievement Initiative has encouraged two-year public colleges in Washington State to take steps to improve student achievement.

This report describes the progress of six colleges in implementing Achieving the Dream’s “culture of evidence” principles for institutional improvement and charts trends in student outcomes over time.

This NCPR working paper documents the implementation of capstone courses in English and mathematics at more than 20 high schools across Virginia.

This report seeks to understand those aspects of the Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program that best support student learning, progression, and completion.

This paper presents the findings from a follow-up quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County’s Accelerated Learning Program (ALP).

Thomas Bailey and Clive Belfield consider the role of community colleges, with particular attention to the benefits to workers (as measured by earnings) of certificates and degrees by field of study.

This paper offers methods for identifying introductory courses that are obstacles to college completion, and the relative extent of the obstacle each poses.

This paper describes a range of approaches to improving poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with traditional assessment and placement practices at community colleges.