New research is demonstrating that the common, high-stakes approach for assessment and placement often fails to effectively distinguish between students who would benefit from remediation and those who could succeed in college-level classes with additional support. Further, the initial intake process for assessing and placing students can be confusing and inconsistent, and often does not communicate the implications of being assigned to remediation.

A new policy brief by Getting Past Go examined current state and postsecondary system policies that regulate assessment and placement in light of the emerging research and developments in the field. The paper suggests that states and systems could increase the success of underprepared students through more effective policies and practices. The recommendations fall into three broad categories:

• Requiring regular validity evaluations of assessments
• Incorporating more precise and multiple assessments for course placement
• Developing more effective systems for transitioning students into postsecondary programs.

The high rates of students referred to remediation and the low rates of their success threaten to undermine national and state goals to increase postsecondary attainment. The bottom line is that states will not be able to move more students toward degree completion without more effective assessment and placement policies and practices.

While, in general, few states have categorical prohibitions against remedial course delivery at four-year institutions, we found the nature of the limits and the varied institutional responses to them place added pressure on the postsecondary system.

The brief reviewed common institutional responses and found that most approaches have not been adequately evaluated for their effectiveness.

To increase degree completion and to spur economic growth, states must overhaul remedial and developmental education. This brief proposes six policy options that, when coupled with reform of institutional policy limits, could increase the odds of states achieving their education and workforce goals.

The six policy options relate to:

• Assessment and placement
• Use of multiple measures for course placement
• Non-course instructional models
• More transparent student advisement
• Guaranteed transfer between institutions
• Rewarding institutions for improving the success of underprepared students.

Most policy limits for delivering remedial education undercut state goals by allowing ineffective practices to proliferate. Policymakers should consider adapting the policy limits in order to transform practice and increase the success of underprepared students.

Right now, high school seniors across the country are receiving college acceptance letters, comparing financial aid awards, and making decisions about where they will pursue their college dreams.  Many of these students also will learn that they are in need of remedial course work in math, reading, or writing before they are allowed to take college-level courses that count towards a degree.  Here is a novel idea: what if all students who were accepted into college could start their postsecondary careers with credit-bearing college level work?  Imagine the time and money students and states would save if remediation did not exist at the college level.

An early remediation initiative started by Colorado GEAR UP is making this idea a possibility.  Last fall the program enrolled 52 low-income and mostly first-generation 8^th graders in the first level of the state’s remedial math sequence through a hybrid on-line teacher in the classroom delivery model, which allows for the students to learn at their own pace.  These students will attend a high school with a remediation rate over 70%, but through the early remediation program, they will have five years to complete the state’s remedial sequence in math.  A partnership with a local college will allow these courses to be transcribed. So no matter what their standardized tests or placement scores turn out to be, the students already will have passed the remedial level courses recognized by postsecondary institutions, thereby guaranteeing that they will not have to take remedial- level coursework.

This guarantee is crucial since decisions about who needs remediation typically are based on standardized-test scores or placement tests offered by institutions. Recent studies by the Community College Research Center, however, have shown these tests misplace a significant number of students into remedial classes, and that anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the students assigned to remediation could have passed college-level classes with a grade of B or higher.

The early remediation strategy is driven by the philosophy that the problems surrounding remedial education, and the idea of what it means to be “college ready,” can be answered with a simple question of timing.  If we know that a student graduating from a high school with high remediation rates will need remediation, then why wait for the student to enter college to be told this fact?   Why is it assumed that the curriculum in K-12 is different than in remedial education? Why is so much emphasis placed on scores from ACT or SAT exams?

While the idea of creating seamless P-20 systems is accepted by educators, policymakers, and most education stakeholders, a true transformation of our educational system requires more than just mutually accepted standards, curriculum alignment, and teacher training.  Concurrent enrollment opportunities and offering early remediation blurs the lines between K-12 and higher education in a way that is beneficial to students.

With the school year almost over for the pilot program that began in the fall, 41 — or almost 80% — of the 8^th graders are on track to pass the first level of remediation, and one student already has moved onto the second level. The students who do not pass the first level will be able to pick up where they left off once they start school next fall, instead of having to sit through a semester’s worth of work that they have already mastered.  All of these students were behind grade level when they enrolled in the remedial course. Regardless of the progress the students make in 8^th grade, they will have four more years to complete the remedial math sequence so they can begin their postsecondary career with college-level work.

Scott Mendelsberg is the Executive Director of Colorado GEAR UP, a federally funded pre-collegiate program housed at the Colorado Department of Higher Education, which utilizes innovative solutions to help low-income and first generation students graduate from high school and earn a college degree.

From time to time, people ask how many students in developmental education have a learning disability. This is a difficult topic , given the discomfort, stigma and confusion related to this term. Approximately 1% of the total community college population report a specific learning disability or dyslexia. The actual number may be considerably higher but is unknown because postsecondary students are not required to self-report a disability, and many who were diagnosed as having special learning needs in K-12 prefer to leave that history behind and start afresh.

However, current trends in college assessment and placement raise a related question: Can developmental education learn anything from K-12 special education? Certainly, practices now emerging in college placement policy are reminiscent of that arena, and, if implemented thoughtfully, may not be a bad thing. I would like to suggest that developmental education may benefit from borrowing selectively from special education and seem already to be doing so, perhaps without knowing it. If this is the case, it may be useful for developmental education reformers to examine special education, so that they neither reinvent the wheel nor repeat its mistakes.

Special education is a federal program that was created to provide support to students unable to learn adequately from the conventional curriculum.  Children who display learning difficulties are referred for testing and if the tests reveal special learning needs, the child is legally mandated to receive instructional and support that meet his/her needs. These services are specified in an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), a document that lays out academic goals based on individual test results, and how the goals should be accomplished.

Identifying specific areas where an individual student needs help sounds like the diagnostic testing that is starting to be used in developmental education.  For example, the College Board’s ACCUPLACER test, widely used for placement in developmental education, now has an additional section which is intended for instructional planning.  Scores on this instrument point to strengths and weaknesses in specific “domains” of reading, writing and math that could, in principle, be used to differentiate instruction in developmental education classrooms. In this sense, there is a strong overlap between special education and the “actionable assessment” that some researchers and policymakers have been calling for in developmental education.

Once diagnostics are available for individual students, what is the next step? This is where developmental education may have something to learn from special education. The IEP is intended to be a comprehensive plan spelling out what a student with diagnosed special needs requires in order to learn. Often, services include not just instructional interventions but ancillary services. Further, the team that creates the IEP includes teachers, parents, someone who is knowledgeable about available resources, therapists and evaluators. The child may also be on the team. With some modification, this may be a promising direction for developmental education, which includes not only classroom instruction but services such as tutoring in a college academic assistance center, and supportive mentoring or counseling. A collaboration between student, developmental education faculty, and support personnel to develop an appropriate learning plan may be something worth borrowing from special education.

However, there are two practices in special education that do not seem particularly helpful for developmental education. For one thing, it does not seem beneficial to label developmental education students with a learning disability diagnosis. Historically, many children receiving special education services have had learning disabilities, defined as a condition in individuals who meet exclusionary criteria, meaning that the weaknesses cannot be attributed to reasons such as inadequate instruction, social disadvantage, emotional problems, organic brain injury, low English language proficiency, mental retardation, or sensory deficits such as severe visual or hearing impairment. Because there is a high correlation between income and literacy, many low-income students with learning difficulties do not meet criteria for a formal diagnosis of learning disability. Traditionally, such individuals would not be eligible for special education services.

Another wrinkle in the story is that, contrary to popular myth, there is little research evidence that learning disabled and typically-developing students benefit differently from instructional interventions.  Most low-achieving students, whether diagnosed with a learning disability or not, seem to benefit from the same instruction, as long as it is of high quality. For these reasons, it does not seem advisable to spend scarce resources on diagnosing learning disabilities in developmental education students.

Another disadvantage of special education is the separation of students with special needs from the mainstream. This is an unresolved problem in K-12. With the advent of “inclusive classrooms” in which typically-developing students and students with disabilities are taught together, there is concern that the latter group are not receiving the intensive help that they need. At the same time, separating them from the mainstream has obvious social and psychological costs.

Bearing the disadvantages in mind, it seems useful to borrow selectively from K-12 special education practice. To make actionable assessment a reality, colleges could create educational planning teams that included the student test-taker, a developmental instructor, learning assistance tutor and counselor (and other personnel as needed), and create individualized educational plans based on the diagnostic testing, and other information such as the student’s self-assessment of his/her strengths and weaknesses in study skills and time management, and high school record.  

Such individualized plans would indicate that different emphases for different students will be needed in the same developmental education classroom. One instructor, however, cannot hope to provide different interventions for individual students in the same class. One approach would be to track students based on their diagnostic test results. However, this practice is not advisable because it would separate low-skilled students from the mainstream, with negative consequences as experienced in special education.  It is probably most feasible for specialized reading, writing and math interventions to be provided by tutors in college learning centers, a currently under-utilized resource. Professional development would be needed for tutors not only in high quality, research-supported reading, writing and math interventions, but to ensure consistency with developmental classroom curricula.

Although the idea of borrowing from special education may raise hackles for various reasons, I feel that it is worth considering in the interest of finding ways to improve developmental education outcomes. In any case, the diagnostic testing now emerging already mirrors special education practice, whether developmental education is conscious of it or not.

Dolores Perin is a senior research associate with the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

In a presentation to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), Katie Hern, director of the California Acceleration Project, argued that long remedial sequences in English and math weed out students at the front door of community colleges. She also showed that students of color are disproportionately impacted by these practices, because they are disproportionately placed into the lowest developmental course levels.

Hern outlined a five-point agenda for policymakers and higher education leaders to pursue to increase college completion rates for remedial students.

While many might point their fingers at Accuplacer and Compass as the villains in this sordid tail – Judith Scott Clayton makes it pretty clear in her study that the real problem is that institutions misuse the assessments and don’t exact the necessary due diligence to make sure the assessments are valid measures of college readiness at their institutions. Yes, validity testing or aligning an assessment with expected learning competencies for students is not easy work. However many states like Virginia and Florida have done the heavy lifting and now are using assessments that are more aligned with the content they expect students to know. In fact, Accuplacer, in their response to the two studies articulate that the redesigned Accuplacer is intended to be customized so that it can be more effectively aligned with the content that institutions or systems expect. Likewise, ACT maintains that their diagnostic assessment can be aligned with specific college content. The problem, according to College Board and ACT is that not many take advantage of these tools.

All of this is not to say that the Accuplacer and COMPASS are ideal instruments for measuring college readiness.  They are inexpensive and short exams that meet the convenience test for many institutions.  It is for this reason that both studies, particularly the second study by Clive Belfield and Peter Crosta, look at additional measures to determine whether they predict student success.  In particular, the studies look at high school transcripts and high school GPAs. The studies find that while a review of high school transcripts does not help predict student success, high school gpa does and is often a better predictor of college readiness than placement exams. Despite concerns from postsecondary institutions about whether GPA is reliable given the inconsistency of high school requirements and curriculum, the studies found that GPA is a very effective proxy for measuring other factors like student effort and commitment. When combined with a placement exam, high school GPA improve the likelihood that institutions will make a correct placement.

Belfield and Crosta take their work one step further by suggesting ways that postsecondary institutions could easily incorporate GPA into their placement decisions. Their research found a rule of thumb that institutions should test.  Essentially they contend that when using high school GPA, institutions could be reasonably confident that students would perform approximately one grade level below their high school GPA or better in college level gateway classes.  In other words, a “B” student in high school could be expected to earn a C+ or better in gateway courses.  They suggest that campuses could guarantee admission into gateway courses for any student who has a GPA that is at least one grade above what would be acceptable in a gateway course.  For those who fall below this standard, you could offer a placement exam to determine whether a student should be placed in to some form of academic support.

Yes, there are many students who are years removed from high school so high school GPA may not be an ideal measure, but the findings are clear – institutions must consider multiple measures for all students. For adults, it may be nothing more than a simple survey combined with an assessment exam that provides some insight into the motivation and commitment of students to succeed in college – the very measures that the research suggested high school GPA was a reasonable proxy.

Like so much of what has been learned from research into developmental education, this research makes it pretty clear that institutions must review and change their practices. The good news is that simple changes might result in significant improvements in student success – an important accomplishment in our new era of postsecondary accountability.

The Role of Minority Serving Institutions in Developmental Education

Join a national online discussion on best practices in developmental education at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) – March 6, 2012 (11am – 6pm eastern time).

Join faculty, staff, institutional leaders, researchers, concerned policy makers and funders in an online conversation on developmental education. Discuss how MSIs assess, place, instruct, support and measure outcomes for students.

To Register:
Click Here. You will receive the participation link, a username and password via email. We invite a diverse group of participants from all levels and departments from your institution, so please share this email and the registration link with others.

Questions:
If you have any questions about the JAM, please contact Lisa Levinson at Knowledge in the Public Interest of Dr. Tara Parker at Project PREPARE, University of Massachusetts Boston.

This event is co-sponsored by the Southern Education Foundation, Excelencia in Education, Center for Policy Research in Preparation, Access and Remedial Education (PRePARE) at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Emerging research and programmatic activity that more effectively integrates developmental education into the college completion continuum has been all the rage for a couple of years now. However, the challenge has always been to see the line of sight from completion of developmental education and earning a degree.  One reason for that difficulty is that developmental education has largely been viewed as a separate enterprise that students must complete before beginning their academic program in earnest.  It has not been viewed as part of the academic program – but instead a preliminary, prerequisite step.

This has begun to change with efforts like the Statway project and the impressive results from Washington’s I-BEST program. Both of these efforts emphasize the importance of students only receiving developmental instruction in the content they need to succeed in their desired academic program of choice. The emphasis on more precise content and contextualized instruction as part of an academic program are two critical ways to more effectively make the connection between developmental education and college completion. However, these efforts are likely not enough to make the connection seamless.

Recent research by Davis Jenkins from the Community College Research Center provides another critical element; a benchmark for measuring student entrance into a program of study and its impact on college completion.  In his recently re-released report, Get With the Program, Jenkins finds those students who complete 9 semester credits or approximately 3 college courses in a specific program of study are far more likely to earn a college credential.

Jenkins argues that this measure of “early momentum” in postsecondary education should become our default success point for institutions and particularly providers of developmental education. While measures like success in a college gateway course are still a useful measure for developmental education – it does beg the question of what next? Because developmental education is often not effectively aligned with academic programs, completion of entry-level math and Comp 101 may not mean anything if students don’t take steps toward a degree program.

Because of this reality, Jenkins argues that institutions need to re-conceive the way they matriculate students into their institutions. Improved assessment of student academic goals and academic skills combined with better student support services can more effectively move students to Jenkins’ program of study threshold. Consequently, developmental education needs to be integrated with programs of study both in terms of content and instruction – but also paired with better information to students about their options given their academic skills.  It just may be that students whose skills are severely below what it takes to pursue a STEM field should be given the odds of their success and instead should be encouraged to examine other fields where completion of a credential is more attainable.

This is challenging stuff, providing students quality guidance without guiding them into a program that they don’t want to pursue.   Thankfully, we have efforts like the Completion by Design initiative that are tackling these issues.  Hopefully in the near term we will have another new model – or an entirely new paradigm for how to increase the college success of students who require developmental instruction.

Achieve’s Postsecondary Education Strategic Engagement and Collaboration plan is designed to ensure a student’s successful transition from K-12 to postsecondary education culminating in earning a degree and competing successfully in the global economy upon graduation from college.  This successful student transition is dependent upon the extent to which graduating high school seniors master the requisite core competencies in English and mathematics embedded in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) necessary for placement into entry-level, credit-bearing classes without the need for remediation upon matriculation to colleges and universities as well as rigorous high school graduation standards in American Diploma Project (ADP) states.  To achieve this outcome, postsecondary education must support K-12 education reform efforts that include adoption of the CCSS, accountability assessments, and adoption of more rigorous high school graduation standards.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) college ready assessment will be used to determine whether a student will be “placed” into remedial courses or enrolled directly into entry-level, credit-bearing courses.  When colleges and universities refer to “placement,” they are referring to two types of “placement”:  (1) placement into remedial courses, and (2) placement into credit bearing courses.

Thus, the PARCC college ready assessment, and that of SMARTER Balanced, too, will be used by colleges and universities as a “placement test” that determines into which course a student will be placed — remedial or credit-bearing.

It is correct that the college ready placement exam is not designed as a “diagnostic” tool that would identify specific remedial areas in which the student needs additional support.  It will simply indicate whether a student is on track to be college ready at the end of 11th, and if they score “college ready” on the PARCC assessment, the college/university will not require the student to take the institution’s own placement test — thus exempting the student from taking the placement test and placing the student directly into entry-level, credit-bearing courses.

The assessment will determine the extent to which students have mastered the core competencies in Common Core State Standards identified by postsecondary education faculty as key to success in entry-level, credit-bearing courses in English and mathematics.  It will then signal placement into “General Education types” of English (101) and College Algebra if the student is college ready.  It is not intended to determine admission to college or university, and it does not replace college/university tests to place students into higher level mathematics and English courses.

In all, over 750 postsecondary systems and institutions, representing hundreds of colleges and universities, have committed to participate in PARCC. These colleges and universities, including many flagship universities and most of the largest state systems, have signed on to ultimately use these tests as college placement tools.

Finally, it is a requirement of the federal grant to both consortia that each develop a college ready assessment that colleges and universities will use to determine whether the student is placed into entry-level, credit bearing courses.

Allison Jones
Vice President for Postsecondary Collaboration, Achieve

For many, a critical lynchpin to the common core standards is the extent that the standards are recognized by higher education and used to determine readiness for postsecondary education.  After all, if higher education does not acknowledge the standards as an accurate measure of what students need to know to be successful in college, then many students will be faced with the same challenges of learning one set of skills and then and being asked to show readiness for college on a different set of skills.

To be fair, the standards were specifically designed for college readiness and to date there has not been a compelling case made that the standards do not hit the mark as an articulation of what it takes to be college ready.  In fact, many higher education institutions are recognizing that the standards are actually higher in some areas than they currently required.

The real challenge is how to assess college readiness. The hope of the two assessment consortia is that the college readiness exams that both are developing will be recognized by higher education institutions as an appropriate tool to indicate that a given student is ready for college level work. It is safe to say that this evolution will take time and may be a long slow process of getting buy-in state by state, institution by institution.

Yet another issue is how the college readiness assessments will be aligned with the college placement exams at college campuses. According to Allison Jones at Achieve, Inc. the PARCC exam will not be designed to replace current college placement assessments such as the Accuplacer or COMPASS to place students into specific developmental education courses and the exam will not have a diagnostic component.  However, the exam will be used as an initial placement tool to determine whether a student is ready for college level work or requires some form of remedial instruction. For a full explanation of the intended use of the college readiness exam for college readiness, we encourage you to read this explanation from Dr. Jones. Smarter Balanced on the other hand has not made any decisions on how their college readiness assessment could be designed to serve as a college placement tool.

In any event, as systems and institutions go through the process of evaluating their current placement exams and consider a move to more diagnostic tools, it makes sense that they take a good hard look at the common core standards and how they might inform the development of competencies for developmental education. A logical step for higher education leaders is to engage your state representatives who are involved with either the PARCC or Smarter Balanced deliberations to explore how the college readiness assessment may impact college placement processes.

Both the Smarter Balanced and PARCC assessments are still off into the future – with full implementation anywhere from 2-4 years away. Nevertheless it seems to make some sense, particularly for those engaging in developmental education reform, to do the work now to align common core standards with developmental education competencies on your campuses.