College Readiness > Developmental Education

Accelerated Learning Program. At Maryland’s Community College of Baltimore County, the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) invites students who place into upper-level developmental writing to become part of a 10-student cohort that takes English 101 concurrently with their developmental writing class. The two classes are taught by the same instructor and typically are scheduled during consecutive class periods. Independent research found that 74% of ALP students successfully completed English 101, as compared to 33% of students in the traditional developmental writing course. Moreover, 33% of the ALP students passed English 102, as compared to 10% of students in the traditional developmental course.

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The foundation’s collection of math pathways has two game-changing goals: (1) students will move through developmental education to earning credit in college-level math in one academic year; and (2) each student takes college math that is appropriate to his or her chosen program of study. Statway is a pathway that culminates with college-level statistics. About 50% of developmental math students entering Statway have earned college math credit in a year or less; by comparison, only 16% of traditional developmental math students in the same colleges earned college math credit in two years. Another pathway, Quantway, is focused on quantitative literacy and involves two courses: developmental math (Quantway 1) and college-level math (Quantway 2). About half of Quantway 1 students complete their developmental math requirements in a year. Sixty-eight percent of students entering Quantway 2 earn college-level math credit.

Community College Research Center (CCRC). A toolkit on developmental education redesign was developed by CCRC.

New Mathways Project.  All 50 Texas community college districts are involved in New Mathways Project, a statewide transformation of math education. The project, a joint effort of the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Association of Community Colleges, aims to develop and fully implement three accelerated math pathways—statistics, quantitative literacy, and STEM—that will align with students’ credential or career objectives. The pathways include intentional strategies to help students develop skills as learners.

SAILS Program. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission’s Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support (SAILS) program helps high school students make sure they are prepared for college. The program includes a bridge math course that introduces a college’s developmental math curriculum in the high school senior year.

Virginia Community College System. Curriculum modularization is being used as a key strategy for helping most students complete developmental math within one year. The developmental math curriculum has been redesigned into nine one-credit units. Students take only the modules they need, based on initial assessment and their own program of study. Mastery of content must be demonstrated before a student moves on to subsequent modules. Preliminary data show that within one year, 56% of students who took the new developmental mathematics placement test had either successfully completed their required developmental math units or were assessed as college-ready.

 

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