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Urges policymakers to focus the mission of community colleges in three core areas: basic skills education, career technical education and preparation for transfer to four-year universities. The Commission called for shifting adult basic education from the state education department to the community college system, and for giving more authority to the chancellor to oversee the campuses. (Little Hoover Commission, February 2012) Link to executive summary: http://www.lhc.ca.gov/studies/210/Executive%20Summary.pdf

Identifies current state policies that impede student attainment of basic skills for postsecondary education. The report recommends using standardized assessments, requiring remediation upon enrollment and provides flexibility to community colleges to address issues. (Elizabeth G. Hill, California Legislative Auditors Office, 2008)

Large research studies inside and outside California have established that the more levels of developmental courses a student must take, the less likely the student is to ever complete college courses in English and Math. The California Acceleration Project stresses that we can't keep attributing this problem to students' low skills or low motivation.

This resource contains the article "Exponential Attrition and the Promise of Acceleration in Developmental English and Math," which makes the case that high attrition rates are structurally guaranteed in long developmental sequences and that open-access accelerated courses are a promising way to increase completion rates in college-level English and Math.