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The COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous challenges to students across the United States, particularly those who are parents enrolled in community colleges. California's community college system serves a diverse student population, including a significant number of non-traditional, working adults who are also parents. These students have faced unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic, including the difficulties of balancing childcare responsibilities with academic and professional obligations. This paper summarizes the preliminary findings of a study that intends to contribute to the crucial conversation around childcare needs among community college students. The focus of this study was understanding the experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) mothers with young children and the impact of COVID-19 on their educational experiences in community colleges across the state of California.

Drawing on qualitative data collected in a sample of colleges as part of a larger study on the implementation and impact of Assembly Bill 705 in California, this paper explores the rollout of corequisite reforms, focusing on the use of embedded tutors in introductory math and English courses as a strategy to meet to the needs of students. This paper highlights promising practices identified through extant research and fieldwork at study institutions, provides additional evidence on the value of the reform, discusses challenges, and makes recommendations for the field.

Many public workforce training programs lead to industry-recognized, third-party awarded credentials, but little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of these credentials in the labor market. This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on the labor market returns to industry-recognized credentials connected to community college workforce noncredit training programs. Based on novel data that includes approximately 24,000 working-age adults enrolled in noncredit workforce training programs at the Virginia Community College System, we employ a comparative individual-level fixed effects model to estimate earnings premia net of fixed attributes and earnings time-trends. Our results indicate that earning an industry-recognized credential, on average, increases quarterly earnings by approximately $1,000 and the probability of being employed by 2.4 percentage points, although there is substantial heterogeneity in economic return across different program fields. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the earnings gains associated with the industry credential obtained through the noncredit workforce training would exceed program costs in just over half a year on average.

Informed by interviews with administrators, faculty, and students at LaGuardia Community College, this case study explores how a vibrant two-year institution and designated Minority-Serving Institution (MSI), centers the needs of a diverse student body to achieve their academic and professional goals. The case study delves into LaGuardia's innovative practices to create an inclusive and supportive learning environment for all students. These insights offer key strategies for institutions nationwide dedicated to equitable access, success, and postsecondary value: (1) Prioritize a student-centered culture: Building and maintaining a student-centered culture requires leaders who explicitly commit to and embody this mindset in every facet of their work. Where an institution invests its money, time, and energy shapes students' experiences. Leaders at LaGuardia encourage collaboration between administrators, faculty, and staff to explore the impact of policies and practices through a student lens. (2) Leverage data to drive change and innovation: LaGuardia utilizes data analytics to identify areas for improvement and implement targeted interventions. As one example, data on enrollment trends helped pinpoint students in nondegree programs who were potential candidates for degree programs and provide the students with additional support. (3) Proactively identify barriers and take opportunities to smooth student pathways: At LaGuardia, this includes establishing connections between nondegree and academic programs, developing articulation agreements with four-year institutions, and ensuring that students have targeted supports before, during, and after transition points.

This technical appendix accompanies the report, "Preparatory Pathways and STEM Calculus Completion: Implications of the AB 1705 Standards." The appendices contain a full methods section and multivariate analyses that augment the descriptive analyses presented in the report. Together, these analyses examined a cohort of more than 37,000 STEM majors who began in a transfer-level course in a calculus pathway at a California community college between 2012-2013 and 2019-2020 to determine -- based on their high school math preparation and high school GPA -- the implications of AB 1705 standards in practice. The law sets standards for students' placement and first math enrollment to ensure STEM students begin in transfer-level coursework that best positions them to complete calculus requirements for their programs.

Assembly Bill 1705 (AB 1705) seeks to strengthen students' completion of the first STEM Calculus course for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs across the California Community Colleges. The law sets new standards for students' placement and first math enrollment to ensure STEM students begin in transfer-level coursework that best positions them to complete calculus requirements for their programs. Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) Overview This legislation specifically calls for colleges to provide evidence that STEM students benefit from enrollment in transfer-level preparatory coursework (e.g., College Algebra, Trigonometry, Precalculus) before they attempt STEM Calculus. To support colleges with this validation process and to inform their local response, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office partnered with The RP Group's Multiple Measures Assessment Project (see sidebar) to conduct statewide analyses that examine enrollments in the STEM Calculus pathway and subsequent persistence to and completion of calculus. MMAP examined a cohort of more than 37,000 STEM majors with a first math enrollment in the California Community Colleges between 2012-2013 and 2019-2020 to determine -- based on their high school math preparation or placement by the state's default precalculus placement rules -- the implications of the AB 1705 standards in practice (see sidebar). Analyses included a look at: (1) Who was highly unlikely to succeed when enrolled directly in STEM Calculus 1, the first STEM calculus course? (2) Who was more likely to complete STEM Calculus 1 when they started in a transfer-level preparatory course? and (3) Who was more likely to persist to and complete STEM Calculus 2 when they started in a transfer-level preparatory course before completing STEM Calculus 1? This report contains descriptive analyses. A separate technical report provides multivariate logistic regression analysis responding to these same questions while controlling for factors such as time elapsed between high school and college math enrollment, prior use of placement testing, student demographics, and institutional characteristics.

A bachelor's degree is increasingly necessary for securing a job that pays a family-supporting wage, yet while most community college students aspire to transfer and complete a bachelor's degree, too few make it through to this goal. As is clear from the companion report on community college transfer outcomes, some responsibility for this lies with community colleges. But four-year institutions--which tend to have more financial resources to invest in student success--also need to do more to serve students who transfer from community colleges. These students make up a substantial proportion of four-year enrollments and tend to be more diverse in terms of family income, race, and age than students who start college at a four-year institution. Yet, as this report shows, although more than 80% of community college transfer students are retained into their second year, only about half complete a bachelor's degree within four years after transferring, and completion rates are even lower for low-income, Black, Native American, and older students. This report, which provides first-of-its-kind data on four-year institution outcomes for community college transfer students, is designed to be used by university and state-system leaders to set clear goals for eliminating disparities and expanding transfer opportunity for all students who start at a community college with the dream of earning a bachelor's degree. The analysis in this report offers insights into how effective four-year institutions are in enrolling and supporting community college transfer students. Using data on students who entered four-year institutions in 2015-16, we report on the prevalence of transfer, the retention and bachelor's completion outcomes of community college transfer students, and the extent to which they are represented among graduates in various majors. We disaggregate findings and examine differential outcomes for low-income, Black, Hispanic, and older students (those 25 years old or older). [The authors acknowledge research for this report was conducted through a partnership between the Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program; the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University; and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Additional funding was provided by Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.]

A bachelor's degree is increasingly necessary for securing a job that pays a family-supporting wage, yet while most community college students aspire to transfer and complete a bachelor's degree, too few make it through to this goal. This report, along with the companion report on four-year institutional outcomes, is designed to be used by college, university, and state-system leaders to set clear goals for eliminating disparities and expanding transfer opportunity for all students who start at a community college with the dream of earning a bachelor's degree. The analysis in this report offers several insights into whether transfer pathways from community colleges to four-year institutions are effective for all students. We discuss overall transfer rates and bachelor's completion rates of the 2015 entering cohort of community college students, and further investigate disparities in outcomes for low-income, Black, Hispanic, and older students (students 25 years or older) in comparison to national averages. We also provide a state-by-state look at these outcomes. In a companion report, "Tracking Transfer: Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor's Degree Attainment," we examine what happens to community college students after transferring to a four-year institution by reporting disaggregated measures on the enrollment, retention, and bachelor's completion outcomes of transfer students in the 2015 four-year entering cohort. [The authors acknowledge research for this report was conducted through a partnership between the Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program; the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University; and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Additional funding was provided by Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.]

The Maine Community College System provides this letter in accordance with 20-A MRSA §10013. This law requires the Maine Community College System (MCCS), University of Maine System (UMS), and Maine Maritime Academy (MMA) to provide the following information about first-generation college students by January 15th of each year: (1) Data regarding enrollment of first-generation college students and educational outcomes, including graduation rates for first-generation college students compared with other college students; (2) A summary of strategies used, and activities undertaken to increase enrollment and graduation rates of first-generation college students and any available data indicating the effect of those strategies and activities; and (3) Plans for or recommendations regarding new strategies or actions designed to increase enrollment and graduation rates of first-generation college students. To meet the requirements of the legislation, MCCS worked with the University of Maine System and Maine Maritime Academy to coordinate data collection and reporting to promote a common framework for determining enrollment and educational outcomes of first-generation college students. Additionally, the three institutions agreed that for the purpose of this report, a first-generation student would be defined as one with neither parent having completed a college degree. Each institution determined the level of college completion appropriate to its mission. For MCCS, a student is first-generation if neither parent has earned an associate degree. For UMS and MMA, a student is first-generation if neither parent has earned a bachelor's degree. For consistency, data on MCCS students with neither parent having earned a bachelor's degree is provided.

"How Clear Is Their Path? Guided Career Pathways and Community College Students" explores how prepared community college students are to meet their career goals. Over 90 percent of students responding to the 2023 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) indicated they had chosen a career path. But many of those respondents were missing vital information about what that path would entail. This report contains data from 83,189 students across 199 community colleges who responded to CCSSE in spring 2023.

Wyoming community colleges provide dynamic lifelong learning environments through higher education, workforce development, innovative partnerships, and civic and global engagement that lead to responsible citizenship and economic, social, and cultural prosperity. Planning for the future of Wyoming's community colleges and fulfilling the mission of the Wyoming Community College Commission (WCCC) includes providing coordination, advocacy, funding, and accountability. Wyoming Statute 21-18-202 (h)(iii) mandates that the WCCC develop performance benchmarks, outcome measures and other performance indicators which serve as the basis for annual reporting to the Wyoming Legislature and the Governor. The annual reporting must include, but is not limited to, the following measures: (A) Student goal attainment and retention; (B) Student persistence; (C) Degree and certificate completion rates; (D) Placement rate of graduates in the workforce; (E) Licensure and certification pass rates; (F) Demonstration of critical literacy skills; (G) Success in subsequent, related coursework; and (H) Number and rate of students who transfer. The Wyoming Community College System Strategic Plan for 2020-2025, adopted by the WCCC in October 2020, has identified four primary goals and related objectives that center around the Commission's mission. They are: Goal #1 Educational Attainment -- Facilitate postsecondary educational attainment to the betterment of all Wyoming citizens. Goal #2 Affordability -- Facilitate community college system sustainability, funding, and affordability while keeping higher education as nearly free as possible. Goal #3 Program Alignment -- Facilitate alignment of post-secondary programs with the University of Wyoming (UW), the workplace, and the workforce to provide a seamless pathway for Wyoming citizens to pursue their employment goals while benefiting the state. Goal #4 Economic Development -- Facilitate initiatives leading to the diversification and growth of Wyoming's economy. This report aligns the Wyoming statutorily required performance indicators with the four goals in the WCCC's strategic plan.

This report provides a look at the Fall 2023 term enrollment in categories such as student load, location and demographics of the community college student population. The content and format of this report have been developed through a collaborative effort between the Wyoming Community College Commission (WCCC), the Executive Council, and the Data Governance/Institutional Research Council members representing the seven community colleges. Effective with the Summer 2016 reporting term, data were extracted from the Central Station Instance (CSI) using one report rather than consolidating individual customized reports from all seven colleges.

The California Community Colleges (CCC) College Attendance Survey was designed to understand the factors influencing prospective and previously enrolled community college students' decisions to attend a California community college in fall of 2023. This report summarizes the second administration of this survey in late summer/early fall 2023 and includes responses from 117 institutions, including 115 community colleges and two continuing education institutions, by 29,463previously enrolled and new/prospective (as of fall 2023) students. The 42-item survey included a mix of fixed-choice and open-ended items to understand what influenced students' decisions to attend college in fall 2023 and items focused on reasons affecting the decision to enroll in fall 2023, prior college experiences, and perceived value of education. The survey link was distributed to students with assistance from the institutional research offices at each college. [For the 2022 report, see ED628128.]

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how triangulating responses from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) with information from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) exposes data incongruency, specifically when considering the population of students with disabilities at 2-year institutions. Data from 503 CCSSE institutions were aggregated to calculate the average proportion of respondents who use services for students with disabilities, and then were compared to the percent of undergraduates who are formally registered with the institution's Office of Disability Services, as reported to IPEDS. Pearson correlation coefficients indicated statistically significant relationships, that are yet moderate in strength, between these measures of disability services use (0.274 < r < 0.331), compared to strong correlations of measures of gender, race, and enrollment (0.618 < r < 0.955). These effects indicate an incongruency between measures of disability, compared with other aspects of demography. Accounting for coverage of survey data using a multiple linear regression model did not improve convergence. These findings have implications both for institutional staff to triangulate their data to see if there is a need to review reporting procedures, and for higher education scholars who work with these data to understand the proportion of disabled students in the 2-year sector.

This report examines the success of students with lower levels of high school performance who began in transfer-level math as a result of Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin 2017). AB 705 is historic legislation that transformed placement and eventually ended developmental education in California's community colleges. Since community colleges are open access institutions, it is particularly important to monitor the impact of such reforms on students who are perceived to be underprepared--particularly in math, which has historically been a persistent barrier to academic progress for many students. In this report, the authors focus on students in the lowest placement band of the placement rules (i.e., default placement rules), that were developed by the Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) to support colleges in operationalizing AB 705. The authors compare the predicted versus actual success rates of students in the lowest placement band who were placed into, and began in, transfer-level math courses post-AB 705. If the predictions overestimated the success of these students, California community colleges may have grounds to revisit the efficacy of developmental education as a means for meeting AB 705's mandates.

Large numbers of students entering community colleges are deemed not academically prepared for college-level math. These students have historically been assigned to one or more non-credit-bearing courses for remedial, often called developmental, math instruction before they can take college-level courses. Research has found that most students assigned to traditional developmental math course sequences never complete those sequences or attain a credential. The Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model was created in 2011 to better support the needs of these students. It diversifies developmental and college-level math course content, separating it into distinct pathways that better align with students' career interests. It also streamlines the developmental math sequence so students can move into college-level courses more quickly. This brief highlights the findings from a rigorous long-term follow-up study of an early version of the DCMP model. The study found that the model had a sustained impact on students' successful completion of their first college-level math course of 5.6 percentage points after five years. This impact on college-level math completion did not lead to discernible effects on credential completion, however. Since the launch of this early version of DCMP, the Dana Center has continued to refine and update the model over time and the findings in this study do not reflect the effects of the current version of the DCMP model. The findings do offer some insights that may inform the current implementation of math pathways and other developmental math reforms.

At community colleges and open-enrollment universities, most first-year students take placement exams in English and mathematics to determine whether they are ready for college-level courses. But large-scale studies have indicated that these test scores misplace substantial numbers of students--in other words, for many students, the test score does not accurately reflect their ability to succeed in college-level courses. This fact means that many students are taking these courses when they do not need them, using up valuable time and money. To improve placement accuracy, hundreds of colleges across the country have begun implementing a strategy called multiple measures assessment (MMA), a placement approach that uses alternative indicators including high school grade point average instead of or in addition to a single test score to improve placement accuracy. Both corequisite remediation and MMA have been shown to get more students into college-level courses quickly and to help more students pass those courses. This brief summarizes findings from two surveys that show both corequisite and MMA practices are on the rise nationally, making it even more important to understand how best to implement these two practices together. This brief also introduces a study that will provide rigorous evidence related to that question.

Following up on a previous impact and cost study of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) model, which used an individual-level randomized controlled trial, this study assesses the costs and cost-effectiveness of the program on longer-term college progress and college attainment. The version of DCMP included in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content, separating the content into distinct pathways that better aligned with students' career interests. It also streamlined the developmental math sequence into a one-semester developmental course for all students, regardless of placement level, and implemented an evidence-based curricula and pedagogy to engage students in active problem solving pertinent to real-life situations. The study, which included 1,411 students across four Texas community colleges and ten campuses, found that DCMP saves students money and may be cost-effective when used as part of a larger strategy to improve student success.

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship opportunities to their students, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community colleges role in expanding apprenticeship. Based on these conversations, we chose case studies and conducted in-depth interviews with leaders from the Community College System of New Hampshire's ApprenticeshipNH, Arapahoe in Colorado, San Jacinto in Texas, and Howard Community College in Maryland's programs in IT and cybersecurity, and Coastal Alabama Community College's nursing apprenticeship. Each of these colleges found a different way to fill the role of intermediary, taking on funding from different sources, using a mix of strategies for sponsorship, and finding place-based approaches to strengthening workforce partnerships. In a variety of sectors, these five colleges found ways to fill the intermediary role that worked for their context, and in doing so provided excellent programming that filled their community's needs. This mosaic of case studies demonstrates that there are some common challenges and successful strategies that colleges looking to serve as apprenticeship intermediaries can learn from.

For far too long in California, remedial courses in California Community Colleges meant costly barriers to student success. Fortunately, recent legislation -- Assembly Bill 705 signed into law in 2017 -- requires these colleges to eliminate remedial courses and instead use research-backed strategies like corequisite support to help students complete transfer-level courses. Ed Trust-West's latest "bright spot" looks at Ventura College (VC) and its implementation of Assembly Bill 705 (AB 705), outlining the successful strategies the college is leveraging to place students into coursework that gives them the best chance of completing transferable, college-level math within a year of their first attempt. The report describes VC's strategies for increasing access to transfer-level math courses and supporting students to complete those courses.

In 2022-2023, The RP Group surveyed over 7,000 African American/Black students across the California Community Colleges (CCC) system to further explore their transfer experiences. This report offers a selection of highlights from this comprehensive, statewide survey and specifically elevates findings related to the four core student experiences: gateway English and math completion, academic counseling, Umoja participation, and academic probation. The report begins by reviewing prior research by The RP Group that informs this current effort. Then, the authors describe the survey participants and summarize new insights from the students themselves on the four core student experiences. Student quotes from the open-ended questions in the survey appear throughout in callout boxes. The report concludes with recommendations to individuals working within the CCC system and beyond for how they can act on this information to better support transfer-motivated African American/Black students and ensure they make progress toward their educational goal: a bachelor's degree.

This brief is part of the Affirming Equity, Ensuring Inclusion, and Empowering Action initiative. This brief summarizes the research on dual enrollment programs--programs which allow high school students to enroll in college coursework through a partnering college or university--and offers policymakers a strategy to increase college enrollment and attainment via such efforts. Dual enrollment represents a promising lever for increasing educational equity, given its large scale and demonstrated effectiveness for increasing college access and success among its participants. Black, Latinx, and other minoritized students benefit from dual enrollment participation, yet these and other groups underrepresented in higher education often do not have meaningful access to such programs. Strong dual enrollment programs have the potential to raise college enrollment rates among high school graduates and improve college-attainment rates for students who participate. [Eileen and Harold Brown provided additional funding for this series of briefs.]

Participation in humanities coursework is vital, both for community college students pursuing credentials considered "academic" and for those in career and technical education fields who may not transfer to four-year colleges. Humanities courses help students develop foundational skills; they may also light students' fire for learning as they experience opportunities to think critically and collaborate creatively with peers. In this report, the authors present findings from research on humanities coursetaking at Michigan community colleges conducted as part of the Strengthening Michigan Humanities (MiHumanities) project. The authors analyze quantitative data, including term-over-term enrollment, coursetaking, and credential completion records for students entering Michigan community colleges between academic years 2009-10 and 2017-18, and qualitative data from interviews and focus groups with faculty, administrators, and students at a number of Michigan community colleges. They find that while community college students and faculty identify benefits they associate with participation in humanities coursework, most Michigan community college students take relatively few humanities courses outside of English Composition, and the number of students taking non-composition humanities courses has declined modestly in recent years. The use of streamlined pathways to promote program completion at community colleges makes it challenging for colleges to simply increase the number of humanities courses students are able to take within a program of study. It therefore becomes important for community colleges to make the most of the opportunities that students do have to encounter the humanities. Colleges should implement strategies that position critical thinking, argumentation, and creativity as central to the student experience, regardless of intended course of study. The authors offer ideas on how states, intermediaries, and individual institutions can bolster humanities learning among community college students across all programs of study.

Following up on an individual-level randomized controlled trial of a Dana Center Math Pathways (DCMP) model, this study assessed longer-term impacts on students' math completion, academic progress, and academic attainment. The version of the DCMP that was assessed in this study diversified the developmental and college-level math course content that students take, separating it into distinct pathways that better aligned with their career interests. It also streamlined developmental math sequences into a one-semester developmental course for all students, regardless of placement level, and implemented evidence-based curricula and pedagogy to engage students in active problem solving that was pertinent to real-life situations. The study, which followed 1,411 students from four Texas community colleges and ten campuses, found that, in the five years after random assignment, program group students were consistently more likely to successfully complete their first college-level math courses than control group students. The study did not find impacts after five years on the number of overall college credits that students accrued or on the likelihood that students attained a credential or transferred to a four-year college.

In fall 2016, CAPR began a randomized controlled trial of multiple measures assessment (MMA) in community colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) to learn whether MMA yields placement determinations that lead to better student outcomes than a system based on test scores alone. In 2020, a report was released on students' outcomes after three terms. CAPR then launched a follow-up study to estimate outcomes for a longer time period. In this follow-up study, student outcomes, including college-level math and English enrollment and completion and college-level credit attainment, were tracked for at least nine terms from the time of testing, through spring 2021. The findings were disaggregated by race/ethnicity, Pell recipient status, and gender subgroups; a cost analysis of MMA was also conducted. This brief focuses on "bump-zone" findings--those for the subset of students whose placements changed (or would have changed) under MMA. The study finds that--four and a half years after random assignment--students who were "bumped up" into college-level math and English courses through MMA were much more likely to have enrolled in and completed a college-level course (with a grade of C or higher) than similar business-as-usual group students. The benefits of MMA were likely driven primarily by increased access to college-level courses rather than by any improved accuracy from using MMA. Regardless of subject area, program group students who were bumped up through MMA had better outcomes than similar students in the business-as-usual group, and program group students who were bumped down through MMA had worse outcomes than similar business-as-usual group students. It is important to recognize that MMA can be designed in a way that promotes more access and that prevents students from receiving a lower placement. [For the accompanying working paper, see ED632523.]

Multiple measures assessment (MMA) has gained considerable momentum over the past decade as an alternative to traditional test-based procedures for placing incoming students into developmental or college-level coursework in math and English at broad-access colleges. Compared to standardized tests, which measure student performance at a single point in time, MMA (which often emphasizes high school GPA as a measure) provides a more holistic picture of students' academic preparation. Despite positive impacts on student outcomes that have been found by recent research on MMA, questions remain about whether the positive effects of MMA are sustained over time. This study--a follow-up to prior research using the same sample of students--employs a randomized controlled trial to investigate whether algorithmic MMA placement used at seven State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges led to better student outcomes, for up to four and a half years after randomization, than a system based on test scores alone. Nearly 13,000 incoming students who arrived at the seven colleges in fall 2016, spring 2017, and fall 2017 took placement tests and were randomly assigned to be placed using either the status quo method (business-as-usual group) or the alternative, algorithmic MMA method (program group). Using this sample, we estimate the overall treatment effects on placement into, enrollment in, and completion of college-level math and English as well as effects on other outcomes. We conduct similar analyses on race/ethnicity, Pell recipient status, and gender subgroups. We also descriptively examine the proportion of program group students who were bumped up (i.e., their placement changed from a developmental course placement to a college-level course placement) and bumped down (i.e., their placement changed from a college-level course placement to a developmental course placement) by the MMA algorithm, and we perform a cost-effectiveness analysis. We find that the MMA method used at the colleges improved access to and success in college-level courses and that lower cut scores in English rather than math are associated with larger and longer lasting impacts on completion of college-level coursework. While MMA improved outcomes among student subgroups, it had little to no impact on gaps in outcomes between subgroups. We also find that bumped-up students had substantially better outcomes in both math and English, while bumped-down students had substantially worse outcomes. Our results suggest that increased access to college-level courses is the driving factor in the positive outcomes experienced by program group students and that placement into standalone developmental courses can have detrimental effects on student outcomes. In the discussion of the study's results, we make recommendations for adopting MMA at colleges. Implemented together with other initiatives to support students, MMA can be a first step on the path to success for incoming students. [For the accompanying research brief, see ED632528.]

In 2015, Tennessee launched Tennessee Promise (TN Promise), one of the most comprehensive and well-funded statewide free-college scholarship programs in the country. To support TN Promise students, and especially those from the lowest-income households, tnAchieves, a key partner facilitating all non-financial components of TN Promise, implemented completion coaching across the state's 13 community colleges beginning in fall 2018. In partnership with tnAchieves, Research for Action (RFA) conducted a three-year mixed methods study to evaluate tnAchieves' completion coaching program, focusing on the relative effectiveness of proactive versus reactive coaching. The study included four parts: (1) an analysis of impact on student outcomes; (2) an implementation study; (3) an exploratory study of dosage effects; and (4) a cost analysis. The impact study used a randomized control trial (RCT) design that randomly assigned the fall 2019 Promise cohort to proactive or reactive coaching conditions. In this report, study findings are summarized and implications for program and policy development are discussed. The study contributes valuable insights to the field of college coaching and TN Promise programs, shedding light on the effectiveness of such programs in supporting students from low-income backgrounds.

In spring 2023, The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (The RP Group) partnered with the CEO Affordability, Food & Housing Access Taskforce of the Community College League of California (CCLC) to assist in survey data collection efforts and provide updated data trends regarding California Community College (CCC) students' food and housing security. Over 66,000 students from 88 California Community Colleges responded to the survey, revealing that two out of every three CCC students grapple with at least one basic needs insecurity. Nearly half of CCC students are food insecure, almost 3 out of 5 are housing insecure, and about 1 in 4 are homeless. The first section of the report describes the overall rates of basic needs insecurity across all survey respondents, as well as variations in these rates across colleges and regions. The report's second section further describes rates of basic needs insecurity by specific groups of students. The third section details associations between students' work and academic experiences and their basic needs insecurity. Finally, the fourth section reports the utilization of public assistance by students who need support. [Katie Brohawn, Tammeil Gilkerson, and Alyssa Nguyen contributed to this report.]

In 2022, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Project SPARC conducted research to better understand the barriers experienced by parenting students in CalWORKs, California's cash assistance program for families with children. This brief highlights findings from the research on parenting students' experiences transferring to four-year institutions.

Associate degrees and credentials in Information Technology (IT) have the potential to open up high-wage and high-opportunity labor market opportunities for learners. Yet structural barriers in access to and completion of these degrees and credentials continue to make it difficult for Black learners and workers to access and thrive in these programs. To learn more about opportunities and barriers along the pathways to tech careers for Black Americans, Jobs for the Future (JFF) conducted research exploring Black men's and women's enrollment and retention in, and completion of, postsecondary IT credential programs by institution and over time. The authors drew from several years of restricted-use National Student Clearinghouse data to conduct this analysis, along with focus groups with administrators, staff, and faculty at five colleges that have shown some promise in supporting Black learners into and through technology programs. The research findings confirm that Black learner participation in associate degree and credential IT programs across the country is limited. In addition, Black learner retention in and completion from these programs is also low. From the focus groups, it was learned that for most of the schools in the sample, race was not a significant or primary factor informing the development of strategies, policies, and programs to support learners. Rather, schools focused on other aspects of student need (socioeconomic, academic, social, emotional) through what could be called a "race-neutral" lens. While there were some noted exceptions to this--most prominently the acknowledged need for Black mentors and role models, especially Black men in IT, and more resources to reinforce such programs--race was not at the forefront of efforts to support students. When it came to women in IT, gender was also not a significant or prominent factor for policy or programmatic consideration. [This research was supported by Capital One.]

One of the key commitments of the Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI's) STEM Transfer Partnership (STP) program is to transform STEM transfer pathways and improve outcomes for students from low-income backgrounds using student input. Student input is an essential element in institutional transformation for student success but the process of cultivating student input involves creative rethinking of data collection strategies. This data note documents the collaborative work of community college and university partnerships to collect student input and translate that data into improvements in the STEM transfer pathway. The authors find that these partnerships are developing contextually responsive, multifaceted strategies for incorporating student input that prioritize student engagement and clarifying information systems.