Group items tagged

By Rosemary Capps, August 2010. In this dissertation, Capps looks deeply at the persistence of 9 adult learners in a community college, while also looking at the literature of persistence, demographic surveys, etc.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2011. Studies conducted by MDRC have found that, "while students [in learning communities] do make academic gains, such as progressing more quickly through developmental courses, the gains don't persist beyond the semester students are involved in the learning community." Authors acknowledge that these are early findings and that later findings may prove different results.

Developmental Education - Beyond Remediation through Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. "The purpose of the Summer Institute is to give those who work with developmental students the theory and practical applications to improve the success, retention, and persistence rates of their students."

By Eric Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long, forthcoming in Economic Inequality and Higher Education: Access, Persistence and Success, Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Ross Rubenstein, eds., Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2006. Looks at preparation and remediation generally, but also focuses on a database of students maintained by the Ohio Board of Regents.

By Tom Bissonette in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Commentary, August 14, 2011. The author brings attention to the fact that many students enter college with a variety of developmental issues and that these are not properly addressed. Faculty members are often lacking pedagogical education and knowledge of human development. The author argues for assessment of incoming students in several areas, including academic ability, social skills, study skills, vocabulary, general knowledge, work history, and community involvement. Results of these assessments would be used to identify appropriate support. The author believes that the concept of retention is misguided. When faculty and administration partner with students on the front end, the odds decrease that students will be unable to persist.

J.E.C. mentioned article in Summer 2011 Coffee Klatch

A collection of related studies looking at college completion and student success from the ECS Research Studies Database. Studies are from a variety of sources -- not the ECS (e.g. Journal of Higher Education, National Bureau of Economic Research, and American Educational Research Journal).

Overview of the study being conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University. "In this study, CCRC will conduct multivariate analyses of the effects of participating in ALP on student pass rates in English 101 as well as on other measures, including rates of persistence and passing college-level courses in subjects other than English."

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, Carey (policy director of think tank Education Sector) argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education.

By David Glenn in the Students column of The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11, 2011. A Q&A with Rosemary Capps, who studied 9 community college students for her dissertation, which won an award at AERA. In this Q&A, Capps discusses the importance of developmental education, and how these teachers often made a real difference to the students that she studied.