The fact that many students arrive on college campuses unprepared to do college-level work is well known. Both two- and four-year institutions are affected, though there has been a conscious policy choice in recent years to shift the primary teaching responsibility for developmental (or remedial) education to community colleges. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education indicate that 42 percent of freshmen at community colleges enroll in at least one developmental reading, writing, or mathematics course — courses designed to bring students' basic skills to college-level standards. The fact that so many students require developmental coursework would not be so troubling if they eventually acquired the skills they needed and went on to earn certificates or degrees. Unfortunately, the U. S. Department of Education’s National Educational Longitudinal Study shows that only 28 percent of developmental students in two-year colleges earn a degree or certificate within eight and one-half years of entry, compared with 43 percent of nondevelopmental students. Finding ways to help developmental students persist in college and receive a degree is critical to substantially increasing graduation rates and subsequent success in the labor market.
MDRC is evaluating a number of programs in community colleges that are focused on helping developmental education students stay in school and earn a credential. As part of MDRC’s Opening Doors demonstration, Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, tested a learning communities program. Learning communities — in which groups of students take two or more linked courses together — are a common strategy to help at-risk students stay in school. Kingsborough’s program placed freshmen in groups of up to 25 who took three classes together during their first semester, including one developmental English class. MDRC found that the program improved students’ college experience, helped them move through developmental English requirements, and increased the average number of credits earned, but there was mixed evidence about whether the program increased persistence.
Building on these promising early results from Kingsborough, the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) — of which MDRC is a partner — launched the Learning Communities Demonstration, and is now testing variations of this strategy focused on different subjects and with different levels of curricular integration at six colleges across the country. A report released in March 2010 describes the strategies and challenges in expanding learning community programs to serve greater numbers of academically underprepared students while working to improve program quality.
MDRC is also evaluating Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, aimed at students who have faced the greatest barriers to academic success. Many of the participating colleges have piloted various developmental education reforms with promising results. For example, South Texas College, located in McAllen, Texas, experimented with an approach called the Beacon Mentoring Program, which targeted students in lower-level math courses that have high rates of failure, including some developmental classes. Although the program did not improve math class pass rates or persistence in college overall, MDRC found that it did have some positive effects for developmental students. MDRC also conducted a qualitative study to capture the voices of minority males at four Achieving the Dream schools taking developmental math courses.
Building on Achieving the Dream, the Gates Foundation-funded Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) supports the efforts of 15 community colleges to implement developmental education strategies in four areas: modifications to institutional policy and practices to support better outcomes for developmental education students; acceleration of students’ progress through, or avoidance of the need for, developmental education; improved academic and support services for developmental education students; and revised developmental education curricula and teaching methods. MDRC is evaluating DEI with the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
MDRC is also conducting a random assignment evaluation of the City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). The program was developed as part of Mayor Bloomberg's Center for Economic Opportunity in 2007 and provides unusually comprehensive services to help students attend community college full time and graduate in a timely manner. For the evaluation, ASAP is targeting low-income students who need one or two developmental courses. The study is taking place at three community colleges in the CUNY system: the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Kingsborough Community College, and LaGuardia Community College.
Finally, as part of its partnership in the National Center for Postsecondary Education, MDRC is conducting Texas Development Summer Bridge Study, which is evaluating intensive summer programs at eight colleges and universities for incoming freshmen to reduce their need for English and math remediation.
Key Documents on Developmental Education
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