Publications

This chapter in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research reviews the structure and effectiveness of traditional developmental education and provides a history of first-, second-, and third-wave reforms and research on those approaches.

This ECS/CAPR brief discusses the importance of and challenges surrounding developmental education and suggests ways in which policymakers can address these challenges.

This article examines a study on the effectiveness of remediation for community college students who are identified as having the lowest skills in math using transcript data from a state community college system.

This CAPR working paper provides an overview of the history of college placement testing, with a focus on nonselective colleges. The authors discuss the limitations of placement tests, the consequences of placement errors, and the movement toward changing systems of placement; a typology of approaches to assessment and placement is also described.

Using interview, focus group, and case study data, this paper documents the perceptions and experiences of faculty members in the midst of statewide reform efforts in Virginia and North Carolina to integrate developmental reading and writing courses.

Using site visit data from three community colleges and four high schools, this paper explores how the institutional context of the high schools compared with that of the colleges in ways that may have affected the implementation and efficacy of computer-mediated mathematics.

This journal article examines the impacts of different levels of developmental reading and writing on students’ academic outcomes.

This chapter describes the structure and implementation of a redesign of developmental education in the Virginia Community College System, discusses preliminary descriptive findings from an evaluation of the redesign, and shares lessons for the field.

This practice guide presents six evidence-based recommendations for college and university faculty, administrators, and advisors working to improve the success of students academically underprepared for college.

Using longitudinal student-unit record data linked to wage record data, this paper estimates the labor market returns to developmental credits versus college-level credits in two states.

This report for The Century Foundation's College Completion Series lays out the open questions on how to reform developmental education.

This paper discusses the implementation of modularized developmental mathematics reforms in North Carolina and Virginia, presents student outcomes for two distinct course structures, and considers the opportunities and challenges they present.

This brief examines the corequisite remediation model as it was implemented in Tennessee community colleges in fall 2015 and finds that it is more cost-effective than the prerequisite remediation model the colleges formerly used.

This paper reports findings from a researcher-practitioner partnership that assessed the readiness for postsecondary reading and writing demands of 211 students in developmental reading and English courses in two community colleges.

This article uses qualitative data from a multi-campus study of instructional reform in developmental education to present a typology of questions raised by community college faculty teaching in reformed contexts.

This practitioner packet summarizes CCRC’s research on remedial placement at community colleges and considers how including students’ high school transcript information in the assignment process could improve placement accuracy.

This report provides an overview of the developmental education redesigns in Virginia and North Carolina, presents preliminary findings, and discusses lessons for states, districts, and colleges pursuing developmental education reforms.

This publication presents findings on the costs of remedial placement testing at three colleges, and it provides guidance on how other colleges could undertake similar analyses.

This study examines three developmental acceleration programs—two in English and one in math—and finds that accelerated students were more likely to complete the relevant college-level course within 3 years.

This chapter describes a promising approach to teaching developmental arithmetic and prealgebra and presents findings on a faculty support network that helped instructors adopt new teaching strategies.