Group items tagged

The author describes the experiences of three states that reviewed their placement assessment policies. The report encourages states to consider college placement policies as part of a broader vision of college readiness. (Michael Lawrence Collins, Jobs for the Future, 2008)

It's Not About the Cut Score: Redesigning Placement Assessment Policy to Improve Student Success is an Achieving the Dream Community Colleges Count and Jobs for the Future Policy Brief written by Michael Lawrence Collins, program director for Jobs for the Future's Youth Transitions Cluster, July 2008.

Resource shared at the GPG Workshop on Remedial Education in Nashville, TN on October 5-7, 2010.

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)

This policy brief examines the limitations of current assessments to determine student placement into developmental studies courses. Special attention is given to the GED as it relates to postsecondary readiness. The report recommends that the adult educa

Assesses the impact on enrollment pathways and academic milestones on student success, as part of a larger study. The report finds that enrollment pathways are an effective strategy for adult students and academic milestones are more effective for younger students. The researchers used data from students at Florida community colleges. (Juan Calcagno, Peter Crosta, Davis Jenkins and Thomas Bailey; Community College Research Center, 2006)

This piece is great for outlining the basis of the recent movement toward "momentum" points in postsecondary education.

ECS / Getting Past Go: Telling the Story of Developmental Education: Using Data to Develop a State Strategy. February 2010

Research done by MDRC looking at the assessment and placement process at three community colleges. It highlights several issues and challenges, including a lack of consensus about the standard for college-level work, the high-stakes nature of the assessments, and the minimal relationship between assessment for placement and diagnosis for instruction.

Include this report in the resources for the April 29 jam.

Provides an overview of the issue of remedial education, particularly as it relates to President Obama's goals for increasing college attainment and also the current ecnonomic crisis.

Piece from Kati Haycock from Ed Trust on the movement to push more students, particularly low-income students toward two-year institutions and the potential impact on bachelor's degree attainment. This could be useful piece for the push to move remedial education exclusively to community colleges.

Analysis matches up the common core standards in math with NAEP test items. In algebra, it found that the NAEP items were, on average, two to three years below the 8th grade math recommended by the common standards. (Brookings Institute, February 2011)

Discusses Brookings Institution analysis that matches up the common core standards in math with NAEP test items. (Education Week, premium article access compliments of edweek.org, 01/11/11)

Study on the effectiveness of the Prentice Hall Algebra 1 curriculum from Pearson. Contends that curriculum prepares students for college math

Brief by Bruce Vandal for NGA; highlights approaches to improve productivity, student success in remedial education; also has college completion implications

CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors are associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass college-level math and English?

The report from the Community College Research Center studies the validity of developmental education assessments in predicting retention and student completion odds. While many have focused on instructional innovations, few have studied the empirical power of assessments to predict future performance.

Urges states to track how well high school graduates perform in college so that the schools can better prepare students for and succeed in postsecondary education. States should track postsecondary enrollment, remediation and credit accumulation. Recommends four actions for states to take to track and publish these data. (J.B. Schramm and E. Kinney Zalesne, October 2011)

Summarizes findings from VCCS' effort to improve the rates at which students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or "gatekeeper," math and English offerings. (Community College Research Center, November 2009)

Story on basic skills courses for adults that lead to livable wage employment

"Some of the conclusions from the review include: * Assessments appear to be more successful in placing academically prepared students than in placing academically underprepared students. * Students who narrowly miss an assessment "cutoff" score and who complete remedial courses are no more likely to complete credit coursework than students with similar scores who continue straight to credit coursework without taking remedial classes first. * Multiple measures for placement, such as high school transcripts and written essays in addition to assessments, may improve placement accuracy, as might the use of more diagnostic and affective assessments. "What we found is that assessment does not appear to be an effective means of placement for all students," said Dr. Hughes. "States may want to do more research in this area before relying too much on one measure, an assessment score in this instance, for placing community college students.""