Community College Journal: REEXAMINING Developmental Education

States, colleges examine how to speed up remedial courses to move students toward completion

BY ED FINKEL

State community college systems and their two-year colleges have spent the 2010s reexamining and redesigning decades-old developmental education tracks to ensure students get what they need—and only what they need—with an eye toward moving them more quickly into college-level courses and, eventually, the degree or certificate they want.

Administrators and faculty have worked together statewide and at individual institutions to redesign curriculum in a way that accomplishes this central goal without sacrificing learning, particularly for those from "at-risk" backgrounds, while gaining buy-in from skeptical faculty, ensuring they don’t lose revenue in the process and making adjustments along the way. Common themes include shortened or "module-ized" courses, more targeted placement tests, inclusive processes that include faculty and other stakeholders, and the prospect of making up lost developmental education revenue as students show greater persistence.

In Virginia, evidence collected nearly a decade ago by the Community College Research Center shows how unreliable developmental education placement tests were at that time, and how few students who placed into the lowest levels of developmental math, in particular, completed their degrees, says Sharon Morrissey, vice chancellor of academic services and research for the Virginia Community College System.

"That was very compelling evidence," she says. "In sharing it with college leaders, it didn’t take a lot of persuasion to say, ‘We’ve got to do something about this.’ Students are coming to us because they want a college education, a better salary, a better life. And we thought we were creating a very important support system for them. Instead, we were creating this Bermuda Triangle that they sunk into and never came out of."

To ensure broad buy-in from faculty, staff and students, in addition to administration, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities created a task force four years ago to examine who was doing what, what was working, what were some of the barriers, and what the system could do to advance developmental education, says Pakou Yang, director of P-20 & College Readiness for the system, which contains 30 community and technical colleges and seven state universities, not including the University of Minnesota.

" We’re finding that within a culture of reform, there are lots of galvanizing opportunities to meet students’ needs."

KATHLEEN CIEZ-VOLZ, associate provost of curriculum and instruction, Florida State College at Jacksonville

"The faculty involvement from the beginning created momentum and buy-in—we have faculty members who are our champions and lead our work," she says. "Our student leaders also have been an integral part of this. This impacts our students, so it’s important that they were a part of this conversation. And developmental education is about more than courses—it’s about creating integrated programming. So having people from all parts of our campuses involved in this work was critical."

In Florida, colleges were already examining data and piloting different programs when the state legislature passed Senate Bill 1720 in 2013. That legislation required colleges to redesign developmental education if they hadn’t already—and gave students the choice to opt out and go straight to a gateway course, says Madeline Pumariega, chancellor of the Florida College System.

FLORIDA’S FOUR-PRONGED REDESIGN

Florida colleges have pursued four different avenues to deliver redesigned developmental education. They have compressed courses, reducing a 16-week course to eight weeks so students can get through two of them in one semester. They have contextualized courses to students’ career pathways. They have module-ized courses to deliver customized instruction on just the skills and knowledge that a given placement test indicates the student needs. And they have introduced co-requisite courses in which a student simultaneously takes a developmental education course and its next-step, college-level counterpart.

Based on required reports that colleges have submitted to date, the system has seen successes in all four of those areas, stronger retention in English, reading and math, and increased completion rates, Pumariega says.

"Everyone expected students would fail their gateway courses, but we haven’t seen that," she says.

Colleges have reallocated resources, retooled their faculty, created stronger advising pathways, and added tutoring and academic success centers, Pumariega says. "Faculty had to look at, what are the pedagogical techniques related to shifting your delivery strategy?" she says. "If your course is compressed to eight weeks, what does that look like? How can you leverage technology and have students get some of those lectures and information before they arrive to class? We’ve seen that success in online hybrid classes."

Florida has been working with individual institutions to disaggregate data to make sure that students of different genders, races and economic backgrounds who opt into developmental education are all successful. To date, the state has seen some of the same achievement gaps as other states in terms of students of color and continues to focus on improving those results. The system also continues to track students beyond the gateway college-level courses to make sure a solid foundation was laid as they continue onward.

So how do the dollars and cents add up? The Florida College System asked individual colleges what investment they needed to increase student success, and they came up with an aggregate figure of $30 million. "Interestingly enough, the legislature cut us $30 million last year," Pumariega says. "Reform requires investment on behalf of the state and the institution in monetary and people resources. You don’t just reform something and say, ‘We did it.’ It does require time, talent and resources."

On the other side of the ledger, Florida’s community colleges haven’t seen as much decline in their enrollment overall as they might have expected given that developmental ed enrollment has fallen by upward of half during the past five years. "That means the colleges worked on getting students into programs," she says. "They’re not just saying, ‘Sorry, this isn’t the place for you.’ They did really wonderful work in engaging students and putting them on the right path."

Florida State College at Jacksonville was among the campuses starting work on developmental education reform nearly a decade ago, after several decades of didactic, lecture-driven courses, says Kathleen Ciez-Volz, associate provost of curriculum and instruction. The campus has since moved to a "student-centered model with lab-assisted technology, something of a quasi-emporium-based model," informed by research from the Center for Academic Transformation.

When SB 1720 passed, the campus felt it was already on the case, Ciez-Volz says, although the legislation catalyzed an emphasis on compressed courses, most of which are down to seven weeks from 15 or 16. A student taking developmental math, for example, can complete an entrylevel course and then elementary algebra in one semester.

"We’re finding that within a culture of reform, there are lots of galvanizing opportunities to meet students’ needs," she says.

Ciez-Volz describes a "collective and collegial effort statewide" in exploring how to approach the legislation and explore different models, with plenty of state-supported professional development in the mix. Some faculty have been uncertain about and surprised at the scope of the legislation, she acknowledges, which has led to "hard, candid conversations. What can we do? If we keep the student at the forefront of our conversation, we will do meaningful, purposeful things. That’s what it’s about."

The campus’ success rates have remained fairly steady during the three years for which it has submitted developmental education accountability reports to the state, Ciez-Volz says. Reading and writing have had pass rates of about 75 percent (at a C or higher), while math has been in the 60 percent to 65 percent range. "We were all very concerned, if we were compressing the course structure, how would students perform? They seem to hold fairly steady," she says. The next step: longitudinal analysis as more students pass beyond gateways into upper classes.

The Jacksonville college, which has several campuses in addition to online offerings, does not have a definitive cost figure for the reforms, Ciez-Volz says. The college increased investment in tutoring, student advising and career counseling, at perhaps $1 million per year in recurring costs, as well as additional costs for professional development and curriculum development, although a federal Title III grant has helped pay for those.

MINNESOTA LAYS DOWN A ROAD MAP

The Minnesota efforts, which were also partly spurred by state legislation that required colleges and universities to report on various student outcomes including developmental education, led to a strategic road map with seven broad goals and action steps, Yang says.

The first goal: increase student success by offering an accelerated option through developmental education. "We believe developmental education is valuable and critical, but students who don’t need the courses shouldn’t take them," she says. "We want to make sure they get to college-level courses. Students who need additional support [for college-level courses] should receive it through programming on the campuses."

Minnesota State has established a "data mart" that provides "drill-down information about student outcomes," which can be looked at both individually and in aggregated form, Yang says. Where programs have been successful, the state system is working to share these results among various campuses and take them to scale.

"They can be tweaked and implemented there, so the overall impact on student success at an aggregated level is much higher," she says. "That success is noticeable in our system-wide data: enrollments in development education have gone down, student success has increased, and completion rates in the first-year gateway [courses] in English and mathematics have increased. Those are the metrics we’re looking at. There is a lot of excitement."

Minnesota has faced similar challenges to Florida in terms of achievement gaps among students of color, low-income students and first-generation students.

"Part of our commitment is to make sure that we are implementing policies and programs that are not only showing overall success but in particular populations we care deeply about, especially as the demographics of Minnesota continue to shift," Yang says. "We are seeing that gaps are narrowing, but we want those gaps to be eliminated."

At Minnesota State Community and Technical College (M State), administrators and a consultant pored over data searching for patterns that explained why students did or didn’t succeed in developmental education and uncovered opportunities, President Peggy Kennedy says. "We couldn’t force changes on everybody," she says. "We wanted an inclusive process that involved the faculty who were teaching the courses. The data from our consultant was enough impetus to get going, and we wanted to share that with faculty and staff."

Carrie Brimhall, vice president of academic affairs and chief academic officer, led an internal collegewide group that hashed through the opportunities and challenges and came up with a reenvisioned developmental education program. Among the key elements were additional compensation for faculty who did additional work beyond their teaching jobs, and clear setting of parameters so faculty knew what redesign limits were.

"Nothing frustrates faculty more than spending hours and hours, and then being told by leadership, ‘That’s not what we were thinking,’" Brimhall says. "One parameter was, we will not accept more credits in this area, because cost is an issue. … We get data to have authentic conversations with faculty, then leave the room and have them come back to us, be open to feedback and start the process all over again. I don’t think you can do this work without having that [inclusive] culture."

Math faculty split developmental classes from 16-week to eight-week blocks, so students can complete four in one semester, and withdrawal rates were cut in half from 26 percent to 13 percent between 2014 and 2016. "Eight-week courses seem to be successful for this generation," Brimhall says. "The English folks are not seeing that [reduction in withdrawals]. Their rates are up and down, and not down as significantly. We’re challenging them to come up with eight-week blocks."

Curricular changes alone will not improve student success, Kennedy says. "The developmental program is certainly responsible in terms of helping us to improve retention," she says. "But other things Carrie and her team put in place, like academic support and bridges, all those together helped us improve student success."

Leveraging resources like the tutoring center can give those on the placement testing borderline the confidence to err on the side of starting at the higher level course, Brimhall says. "It’s a Mother Hen strategy for tutoring students," she says. "This is not about math, it’s about how they’re going to feed their family tomorrow. We’ve changed our entire model to focus on the holistic needs of the student."

The reductions in credit hours and courses taken has a definite revenue impact on the college, Kennedy says, but M State has made up for that in students persisting and completing their degrees.

"Developmental educators care deeply about the success of their students. They’ve approached this as something they need to do and want to do," Kennedy says.

VIRGINIA STEERS OUT OF THE ‘BERMUDA TRIANGLE’

In Virginia, the process also began with the state convincing leadership on campuses, which Morrissey says did not take long, and then campus leaders convincing faculty, which involved more time and effort. "The most important thing VCCS did when it started this work was to empanel faculty committees to lead the work," she says.

"This is not about math, it’s about how they’re going to feed their family tomorrow. We’ve changed our entire model to focus on the holistic needs of the student."

CARRIE BRIMHALL, chief academic officer, Minnesota State Community and Technical College

The initiative began with four goals: decrease the number of students enrolling in developmental education, which related to the placement testing strategy; increase the number of students who completed the requirements in one year; increase the number of students who successfully completed college-level math and English; and increase the percentage of students who graduated. The system has seen positive results on all fronts, Morrissey says.

" How best do we help those students get where they need to be, without compromising quality? That’s the challenge."

DANIEL DEMARTE, executive vice president for academic and student affairs, Tidewater Community College

Before the redesign, Virginia had semester-long courses with several courses in a sequence, she says. "If you placed into a developmental math course, you had to go back over coursework that you might have already known. It was bundled into a big, old course over a whole semester. English and reading were a separate course from writing, but students who placed into developmental English placed into both. There were hours and hours students had to take before they got into a college-level course."

The faculty redesigned those courses into narrow, discreet modules, and placement tests are now tailored to those modules. "We made structural changes such as a co-requisite option, so students who place at a certain level can take developmental English and college-level English at the same time," Morrissey says.

The math courses will be offered that way next fall.

To ensure students are learning, VCCS set a bar of 85 percent achievement on each module before students can move on to the next one, Morrissey says. "We also set a floor, a level below which students would be referred to adult basic education," she says. "We’re getting better and better at figuring out how to analyze data, and look at those data in a way that helps us figure out, are we doing the right thing, or should we make further adjustments?"

The community college system has focused in on high school GPA more so than in the past, determining that anyone with a GPA of 2.8 or above who graduated high school in the previous five years is deemed to be college-ready, Morrissey says. "High school GPA is, in and of itself, a multiple measure," she says. "It indicates the student knows how to take tests, turn in homework on time and show up to class. Those habits and characteristics carry with them to college."

VCCS also has focused on enrolling military veterans, believing that the habits, skills and drive acquired in the service will drive success in higher education, as well. The system is undertaking a pilot study allowing colleges to place veterans as college-ready, and "if it turns out they are successful, we will make that [policy] statewide," she says.

Similar to the other states, Virginia colleges have seen a drop in developmental education revenue that Morrissey believes has been counteracted due to students persisting longer and getting through to completion. This is ensured partly due to state’s performance funding system, which rewards colleges when students finish college-level math or English, complete a certain number of hours, or transfer to a four-year institution.

To Daniel DeMarte, executive vice president for academic and student affairs at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, the linchpin of the Virginia reforms has been the disaggregation of content from the semester-long courses to the discreet modules.

"Part of the intent was to weed out duplication," he says. "For that to work, the placement test had to match up to the discreet units. They would test out of any content they were proficient in, and only would need to take areas where they had deficits. They save time, they save money and they get onto the college programming track sooner."

For the college as a whole, the reforms were a no-brainer based on the data the state system shared, DeMarte says. Buy-in from faculty has been somewhat uneven, he says, but "that’s partly just the nature of the beast."

DeMarte finds it difficult to estimate costs of the switchover, although he notes that would include reworking of the curriculum, training faculty and creating the new placement testing system. They have cut costs somewhat by using the My Open Math open educational resource product, eliminating the need for students to purchase textbooks and other course materials.

Tidewater has seen a "significant drop" in revenue from developmental education enrollments, but DeMarte is optimistic that overall revenue will rebound as students move through the four-week modules and persist onward.

DeMarte looks forward to continuing to experiment as well as watch what states like Florida do. "We’ve made the change, it’s not worked as well as we’d like, but we’re still moving. There’s just no end to this conversation. The need is there. How best do we help those students get where they need to be, without compromising quality? That’s the challenge."

Ed Finkel is an education writer based in Illinois.