Community colleges are becoming increasingly creative in their approaches to teaching, but it’s important to understand what impact these new instructional approaches have on student learning. This brief describes the findings of a controlled trial of Content Comprehension Strategy Intervention, a self-paced and self-directed format for building in critical reading and writing skills in upper-level developmental courses.

While community colleges nationwide struggle to figure out how best to increase completion rates for their students, one state has achieved high completion rates with its unique postsecondary education system. This case study describes the Tennessee Technology Centers and how these 27 institutions are organized, how they operate, and how they are able to achieve postsecondary success for their students. The report examines four highly integrated components of the Centers’ framework and how these components appear to be critical to producing high rates of completion and placement in relatively high-wage jobs. Through the description of this alternative approach to occupational education and the lessons learned by Tennessee Technology Centers, a working model for student success is offered.

While some colleges have begun experimenting with alternative delivery and design of remedial courses, institutions are guided (and sometimes limited) by systems and state policies that often reinforce the traditional design and delivery and make reform difficult. This policy brief draws on the examples from three community colleges to explore the impact of state and system policies on school-level efforts to reform developmental math curricula.

Miami Dade College developed an eight-step Student Outcomes Improvement Process to inform decisions around student outcomes in developmental mathematics. In this report, the authors provide details on the process and explore how a few of the promising strategies have been implemented in other academic programs across the institution.

This report reviews existing research on Contextualized Teaching and Learning and its connections to learning theories. The authors also present interviews with faculty/program directors, and profiles of 11 contextualized practices in order to discuss ways of improving students’ acquisition of common skills and to explore common themes used in CTL.

According to American employers, our nation’s college graduates are not prepared for the workforce, despite having “served their time” in school. This report describes the history of the “credit hour” and how it has become standard practice for colleges to award degrees based on seat time rather than on learning attained. The author discusses the negative consequences this practice has had on completion rates and student debt. In response, the author recommends how the federal government can use three existing tools that would redefine “credit hours,” award financial aid based on learning and not time, and support innovation and experimentation in this area.

These slides accompany a presentation on how to develop deep learning experiences. The presentation maps out methods to influence students’ approach to learning and the mental processes involved in deep learning, providing strategies that can be used to encourage students to engage these processes.

Through recent changes in regulation, California community colleges have been eliminating contextualized math courses since they often do not have an elementary algebra prerequisite. This study documents both the scarcity and the effectiveness of contextualized developmental math in California community colleges. Report findings suggest that students in the contextual group passed their developmental math course at much higher rates than students in a control group.

Students forced to complete a long sequence of remedial or English language classes before they can begin their postsecondary program are less likely to earn college certificates or degrees. This brief highlights six promising programs that show how career pathway bridges help lower-skilled students move farther and faster along college and career paths through programs that link basic skills and occupational certificate courses. The author explains two career pathway bridges models — the paired course approach and the integrated course approach — and describes how six colleges implement either approach to meet the particular needs of lower-skilled adults.

A distillation of the paper of the same name, this presentation from the 2011 convention of the American Association of Community Colleges explores the importance of tracking student progress toward entry in coherent programs of study and provides an overview of effective practices to enact at each phase to improve students’ success.

One population of postsecondary students who leave school before completion is adult learners. This report describes a six-state project aimed at raising educational attainment levels by focusing on identifying and eliminating barriers that keep adults with prior college credit from completing their postsecondary degrees. The report discusses how these states used data to identify ready adults and formed workgroups to examine and tackle state and institutional policy and practice barriers in five areas:  data, academic affairs, student services, financing and financial aid, and communications and outreach. The authors present a state-by-state profile describing the role that state governance structure and institutional context played in addressing barriers, as well as recommendations and promising strategies each state employed. Overall findings and recommendations conclude the report.

Far too many community college students, especially developmental education students, are at risk of failing, and thus at greater risk of not earning a living wage or advancing through job opportunities. This policy brief examines the challenges of developmental education and the efforts that states can pursue to increase the success of students enrolled in remedial courses, leading to improved rates of transition to credit-bearing courses. The authors recommend that state policymakers consider policy changes affecting data systems, assessment and placement, concurrent developmental and college-level course taking, financial aid eligibility, support services, and funding for new models of delivery. These recommendations are discussed along with brief examples of what a few states have done to increase student transition out of developmental education.

Low-income, minority, and adult students’ lower rates of passing introductory courses reduce their chances of earning a degree. Introductory courses are often generic and lecture-based, failing to meet the learning needs of students, but some institutions have effectively redesigned instructional approaches to increase rates of course completion. In this monograph, researchers identified six characteristics integrated into the student learning experience in the effective approaches, including student-centered learning, computer-based learning and testing resources, and on-demand help. Examining the implementation of redesigned courses in colleges with large populations of underserved students, the authors found improved outcomes for underserved students.

Students who have been raised in homes where English is not the dominant language, who have attended U.S. high schools, and who speak more fluently compared with more recent immigrants, have academic needs that are different from native-born English speakers and other groups of students learning English, yet their unique circumstances aren’t considered in how they are assessed and placed in their postsecondary courses. This report explores language-related policies, practices, and instructional options that U.S.-educated language minority students encounter in California community colleges, and how information concerning assessments, placements, and course sequences are communicated to them. Researchers discuss findings from an analysis of college websites, interviews with community college staff and administrators, and site visits, and offer recommendations for improving access and success for U.S.-educated language minority students. This report is the first of three focused on the practices and implications of community college ESL and English placement tests on U.S.-educated language minority students and promising practices for meeting their needs.

In 2003, MDRC launched the Opening Doors Demonstration, partnering with six community colleges to develop and evaluate a variety of programs designed to improve student persistence and completion rates. This brief provides summary descriptions of the implemented programs—performance-based scholarships, freshman learning communities, academic counseling, coordinated student support services—and their effects as observed through at least two years of random assignment evaluation.

In this era of community college reform, college leaders are focused on increasing student success, but their efforts to create change are not always supported by current policy conditions. Based on the collaboration of California community college chief executive officers and members of their boards of trustees, this report captures their evidence-based recommendations and proposes a new policy agenda that creates conditions conducive to reform. The agenda comprises a breadth of specific recommendations for changes in local policies and practices as well as changes in state policy — given the political and economic climate — that are needed for community colleges to improve student success.

This contribution to the Assessment of Evidence series examines the existing research on using classroom pedagogy reforms as a tool to improve student success in developmental math courses. Using research on both K–12 and postsecondary classroom practices to identify six specific types of teaching strategies—student collaboration, metacognition, problem representation, application, understanding student thinking, and computer-based learning—the author explores the underlying theories and observed impact of each. She goes on to provide recommendations for incorporating strategies in developmental math courses.

This report describes the Strengthening Pre-Collegiate Education in Community Colleges initiative, which is designed to introduce innovation to the teaching and learning of developmental education in the community college classroom. Currently underway at 11 California community colleges, the initiative encourages a data-driven culture in which educators work together to improve student learning. To address the challenges facing students who may not believe themselves to be “college material,” the initiative includes a variety of student supports, including learning communities, tutoring, and explicit instruction.

Navigating the college process is challenging enough for most students, but first-generation college students often have additional circumstances that make the process even more challenging. This brief, prepared for institutions working on increasing capacity for supporting underserved students, or Minority-Serving Institutions, provides an overview of existing programs and resources aimed at supporting this particular population of postsecondary students. The report offers promising classroom-based practices and examples from institutions participating in the Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative toward the effort of improving first-generation student success.

In the past twenty years, many school reform models have been initiated to improve college preparation, access, and success for underserved students. This paper examines the predictors of college-going behavior and how they have been addressed within the high school reform movement. The authors review and analyze a variety of school reform initiatives including AVID, Talent Development High Schools, International Baccalaureate, Project GRAD, and GEAR UP, among others. The authors extrapolate promising practices from existing reform initiatives and make recommendations for addressing the predictors of college-going behavior. Among the predictors, the authors find that academic rigor and strong social and academic support are the most crucial predictors of a student’s successful enrollment in, and completion of, postsecondary education.

By engaging in a close, critical analysis of student learning in a course, teachers can begin to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their course design or instruction methods. By sharing out with colleagues in communities of faculty inquiry, they can begin to identify trends and work on larger-scale reform. Here the author examines how schools participating in the Carnegie Foundation’s Strengthening Pre-Collegiate Education in Community Colleges initiative used this practice to improve the design and delivery of developmental courses through a better understanding of student needs.

The Wallace Foundation: Knowledge Center offers a compilation of research reports and promising tools in areas including School Leadership and Adult Literacy.

Using existing research, the authors evaluate the evidence base of four different models for addressing the needs of remedial students— preventative interventions (e.g., dual enrollment and bridge programs), acceleration, contextualized instruction, and supplemental supports. For each program type, they include examples of successful implementation.

Students arrive to college needing more than just academic supports, but they don’t always know how to look for the help they need to be successful. This paper uses student interview data to examine how the academic confidence of community college students — both apprehensive students and self-assured students — is shaped by their prior academic experiences as well as the new experiences gained in their postsecondary career. The authors discuss how academic confidence can impact student success over time, and as a result of the study, use data to suggest classroom and on-campus strategies for creating opportunities that may contribute to improving student success.