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By Jennifer D. Jordan in the Providence Journal, Oct 20 2010. One state (Rhode Island) looks at the transition from high school to college and the steady need for developmental education among nearly 2/3 of its community college students, despite efforts made in K-12.

The study follows a cohort model and tracks the course-taking patterns of first-time community college students over a seven-year period. The data suggest that aspirations, age, ethnicity, and institutional factors affect students' completion of a developmental course sequence. After presenting the descriptive data, the authors outline five policy implications for their research. Three are particularly relevant to policy discussions we have had at Getting Past Go: using common assessments and early interventions to reduce the need for developmental education; identifying delays in course-taking to develop better-aligned support; and, addressing the issue of students not completing remediation from the lowest course levels.

Report that sets ambitious goals to increase the college completion rates and decrease achievement gaps at California Community Colleges

Georgia report evaluating the impact of developmental education on different student groups

Article in the Denver Post about statistics found in Colorado report on developmental education

Report documents action taken and data gathered y the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Article in Sacramento Bee. Budget cuts to California community colleges are, in some cases, resulting in cuts to developmental education.

With support from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) has established a new system-wide initiative to redesign its developmental math and English curriculum using technology- supported, active-learning strategies.

Setting Up Success in Developmental Education: How State Policy Can Help Community Colleges Improve Student Outcomes is an Achieving the Dream Community Colleges Count and Jobs for the Future Policy Brief written by Michael Lawrence Collins, program director at Jobs for the Future. June 2009

Report in preparation for legislative session with recommendations for action. Report includes recommendations on developmental education.

Details the tension between institutions developing innovative approaches to assess students and deliver remedial content and state policies that reinforce the traditional course-based design.

Research on the lack of progress that students make in developmental education. It attributes student failure to the fact that they don't begin or complete the full sequence of courses.

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.