If Achieving the Dream has taught community colleges anything, it is that they must find better ways to move more students through remedial courses.
Such courses are often tedious, and many students take two years or longer to work through the required sequence—if they don’t get bored and drop out first.
Nearly 60 percent of community-college students take at least one remedial course, according to a 2009 report by the Community College Research Center. The report used Education Department data as well as Achieving the Dream’s own data from a study of 250,000 first-time students at participating colleges.
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The study by Achieving the Dream, the national project to use student-achievement data to find innovative ways to raise graduation and transfer rates, found that many students were not enrolling in required remedial courses even though the courses were a prerequisite for college-level work. Thirty-six percent of the students who were referred to remedial mathematics and 27 percent of those who required remedial English failed to enroll in the required course.
Such students set themselves up for failure because they will never progress and graduate. (See related essay on Page B19.)
By conducting focus groups, examining what works elsewhere, and showing a willingness to abandon programs that don’t work, three participating colleges have managed to improve retention rates and close achievement gaps. Along the way, they have also learned valuable lessons about what works—and what doesn’t.
Valencia Community College, in Florida, has shown significant success in narrowing its student-achievement gap under Achieving the Dream. Black and Hispanic students had long been behind their white counterparts in completing remedial courses. In 2004 the proportion of black students who completed six key courses lagged behind that of whites by 13.4 percent. Four years later, they trailed by only 3.6 percent.
Hispanic students are now doing better than white students: In 2008 the proportion who completed the six key remedial courses was four percentage points above that of white students.
Despite the gains, Valencia encountered a problem. Initially, it required all students who placed into all three fields of remedial classes—reading, writing, and math—to enroll in a course meant to help them adjust to college life. The college planned to expand the program but abandoned it after a curriculum committee questioned whether it was helpful.
“The data were inconclusive,” says Julie M. Phelps, project director for Achieving the Dream at Valencia.
A hallmark of the Achieving the Dream program is that decisions are data-driven, so it isn’t unusual for a college to discontinue a program, even if students like it. That’s what happened when New Mexico State University’s Doña Ana Community College adopted several measures to help more students pass remedial math. It began an in-class peer tutoring program and introduced a software program that offered students electronic math lectures and tutorials. It also started a program that helped students who were having trouble in the classroom. Instructors would refer students to a so-called case manager who could assist them with advising, tutoring, and any other issues.
“We thought intrusive intervention was best for this population,” says Fred Lillibridge, associate vice president for institutional effectiveness and planning at Doña Ana. “If we left students on their own, they would get lost in the process.”
The college was not able to prove statistically that the program boosted student performance, even though students were using it, he says. So when the grant money supporting the program ran out, the college shelved it. It hopes to offer such a program again in the future.
Doña Ana’s other interventions did prove successful: Between 2004 and 2007, its annual retention rates improved. Two-thirds of the students who started classes in the fall of 2007 returned to Doña Ana the following fall, compared with almost 59 percent of those who started in 2004.
With its three-year graduation rate among the lowest in Florida’s community-college system, Broward College began an intense period of examination after joining Achieving the Dream. Researchers found that nearly one-third of the entering class needed remedial work in all three basic skills—reading, English, and mathematics—and that students who needed multiple levels of remediation were at the greatest risk of failing.
The college began a program in which 40 faculty and staff volunteers became “student-success coaches,” but it later revised the program after data cast doubt on its effectiveness. The college also wanted to reach out to more students, but the volunteer program had its limits.
“The fact is that the quality of the services varied depending on the coaches’ availability,” says Trish Joyce, collegewide coordinator of learning communities. After further research, the college began what it calls holistic advising: It identifies a student’s problem, then recommends steps to help the student succeed. And this time, rather than relying on volunteers, the college hired the advisers as paid staff members.
While the volunteer program served about 400 students, the new program serves almost 2,000.
The change has also led to higher retention rates, especially for students who placed into three remedial courses and were holistically advised.
Removing barriers is the top priority at Broward, Ms. Joyce says. “We want our students to finish what they start.”