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This report describes the implementation and early impacts of the Washington State Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program at three colleges: Bellingham Technical College, Everett Community College, and Whatcom Community College. I-BEST is a nationally known program that aims to increase access to and completion of college-level occupational training in a variety of in-demand occupational areas. Its signature feature is team teaching by a basic skills instructor and an occupational instructor during at least 50 percent of occupational training class time. Colleges operated I-BEST programs in one or more occupational areas including automotive, electrical, office skills, nursing, precision machining, and welding. I-BEST is one of nine career pathways programs being evaluated under the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) study sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families. The I-BEST program was launched in Washington in the 2006-07 academic year by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. I-BEST aims to help students in basic skills programs (e.g., Adult Basic Education, English as a Second Language), who otherwise might have spent time in remediation, to enroll and succeed in college-level occupational training courses. Each I-BEST program is a course of study within a structured career pathway, and it offers students the opportunity to obtain credentials and college credits in in-demand occupations. Besides the team teaching, the I-BEST program evaluated in PACE also included two enhancements: financial support for tuition and associated materials; and additional advising services focused on supporting students' academic needs, navigating college procedures, and career planning. Using a rigorous research design, the study found that the I-BEST programs at the three colleges increased participation in college level courses, number of credits earned and credential attainment. Future reports will examine whether the I-BEST program resulted in gains in employment and earnings.

This report documents the implementation and early impacts of the Pathways to Healthcare program, operated by Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. Pathways to Healthcare is one promising effort to help low-income, low-skilled adults access and complete occupational training that can lead to increased employment and higher earnings. It is one of nine career pathways programs being evaluated under the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) study sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families. The Pathways to Healthcare program consists of five elements: (1) the mapping of 16 existing healthcare occupational training programs into five pathways, each incorporating a ladder that enables students to obtain stackable credentials; (2) proactive advising such as career counseling; (3) scholarships for tuition and books; (4) two compressed basic skills programs that in one semester remediate students whose low skills prevented them from enrolling directly in training; and (5) job search assistance. The study considered the following primary research questions: (1) Was the intervention actually implemented as designed?; (2) How did services received differ between study participants who could access the Pathways to Healthcare program versus those who could not?; and (3) What were the effects of access to Pathways to Healthcare on short-term educational outcomes: hours of occupational training received, credits received, and credentials received? Using a rigorous research design, the study found that Pathways to Healthcare increased the hours of occupational training and the credentials its participants received within the 18-month follow-up period. Future reports will examine whether these effects translate into gains in employment and earnings.

This paper presents the findings from a follow-up quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County's Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). The results suggest that among students who enroll in the highest level developmental writing course, participation in ALP is associated with substantially better outcomes in terms of English 101 completion and English 102 completion (college-level English courses), which corroborates the results of a similar analysis completed in 2010. Moreover, using a larger number of cohorts and tracking students over a longer period of time, we also found that ALP students were more likely than non-ALP students to persist to the next year. In addition to specific subgroup analyses, we compared college-ready students enrolled in ALP sections of English 101 with their counterparts in wholly college-ready sections, and found that those in ALP sections had equivalent performance within English 101 itself, but slightly lower subsequent college-level course enrollment and completion. (Contains 2 figures, 8 tables, and 7 footnotes.)

Using data from the Virginia Community College System and building upon prior Florida-based research, this study examines whether student success course enrollment has positive associations with shorter term student outcomes, including earning any college credits within the first year and persisting into the second year. The present study finds that students who enrolled in a student success course in the first semester were more likely to earn college-level credits within the first year and were more likely to persist to the second year. The study also finds that students who were referred to developmental education were more likely to earn college-level credits within the first year if they enrolled in a student success course in their first term. (Contains 6 tables, 2 figures and 7 footnotes.)

Developmental education is designed to provide students with weak academic skills the opportunity to strengthen those skills enough to prepare them for college-level coursework. The concept is simple enough--students who arrive unprepared for college are provided instruction to bring them up to an adequate level. In practice, developmental education (or "remedial" education, the authors use these terms interchangeably) is complex and confusing. Experts do not agree on the meaning of being "college ready," and policies governing assessment, placement, pedagogy, staffing, completion, and eligibility for enrollment in college-level, credit-bearing courses vary from state to state, college to college, and program to program. The developmental education process is confusing enough simply to describe, yet from the point of view of the student, especially one with very weak academic skills and little previous success in school, it may appear as a bewildering set of unanticipated obstacles involving several assessments, classes in more than one subject area, and sequences of courses requiring three or more semesters of study before the student (often a high school graduate) is judged prepared for college-level work. The policy deliberation and especially the research about developmental education give scant attention to this confusion and complexity. Discussion typically assumes that the state of being "college ready" is well-defined, and it often elides the distinction between students who need remediation and those who actually enroll in developmental courses. In this Brief, which summarizes a study by the Community College Research Center on patterns of student progression through developmental education, the authors broaden the discussion by moving beyond consideration of the developmental "course" and focus attention instead on the developmental "sequence". (Contains 3 tables.) [This Brief is based on CCRC Working Paper No. 15, "Referral, Enrollment, and Completion in Developmental Education Sequences in Community Colleges" (ED503962).]

In this Brief the authors first report on evidence about the effectiveness (or, unfortunately, in too many cases, the ineffectiveness) of remediation and then provide information about the progression of students through the developmental sequence. They discuss problems associated with the crucial assessments and make a brief statement about costs. They then describe three initiatives designed to improve the performance of remedial services. (Contains 10 endnotes.)

To increase the rate at which adult basic skills students advance to and succeed in college-level occupational programs, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) developed the Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training, or I-BEST. In the I-BEST model, a basic skills instructor and an occupational instructor team teach occupational courses with integrated basic skills content, and students receive college-level credit for the occupational coursework. The goal of this instructional model is to increase the rate at which basic skills students are able to succeed in college-level coursework leading to certificates and associate degrees in high-demand fields. The authors examined students who enrolled in I-BEST in 2006-07 and 2007-08. They examined the effect of the program on seven educational outcome variables: (1) whether a student earned any college credit (of any kind), (2) whether a student earned any occupational college credit, (3) the number of college credits a student earned, (4) the number of occupational college credits a student earned, (5) whether or not a student persisted to the following year after initial enrollment, (6) whether a student earned a certificate or degree, and (7) whether a student achieved point gains on basic skills tests. They also examined the following two labor market outcomes: the change in wages for those who were employed both before and after program enrollment, and the change in the number of hours worked after leaving the program. They found that enrollment in I-BEST had positive impacts on all but one of the educational outcomes (persistence was not affected), but no impact on the two labor market outcomes. However, it is likely that I-BEST students did not fare better than the comparison group in the labor market because they were entering the market just as the economy was entering the recent major recession. Perhaps a future evaluation will reveal better labor market outcomes. The difference-in-differences (DID) analysis found that students who attended colleges with I-BEST after the program was implemented were 7.5 percentage points more likely to earn a certificate within three years and almost 10 percentage points more likely to earn some college credits, relative to students who were not exposed to I-BEST. Unlike the regression and PSM analyses, the DID approach allows them to make causal inferences about the effectiveness of I-BEST. The DID findings are especially impressive given that they are based on the effects of I-BEST during their first year of implementation at the subset of colleges offering the "treatment" examined. They assume that the effectiveness of the I-BEST model will improve as colleges have more experience with it. Appendices include: (1) Tables; and (2) A Brief Description of Propensity Score Matching. (Contains 13 tables, 4 figures and 17 footnotes.)

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is engaged in a strategic planning process to improve performance beyond the goals in "Dateline 2009," the system's current vision and plan. A key objective is to encourage colleges to improve retention and academic success for students, particularly the substantial numbers who arrive unprepared for college-level work. Specifically, the VCCS seeks to improve the rates at which underprepared students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or "gatekeeper," math and English offerings. The VCCS asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct analyses to inform its efforts to improve student outcomes. In response, CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors are associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass college-level math and English? The dataset used by CCRC, provided by the VCCS, contained information on 24,140 first-time college students who enrolled in a VCCS college in summer or fall 2004. This report presents the main findings from CCRC's study and outlines suggestions for steps that the VCCS and its member colleges might take to improve completion of gatekeeper courses by the many students who enter the state's community colleges poorly prepared to succeed in college-level work. Appendices include: (1) Tables; and (2) Figures. (Contains 35 footnotes, 20 tables, and 11 figures.)

After being assessed, many students entering community colleges are referred to one or more levels of developmental education. While the need to assist students with weak academic skills is well known, little research has examined student progression through multiple levels of developmental education and into entry-level college courses. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the patterns and determinants of student progression through sequences of developmental education starting from initial referral. We rely primarily on a micro-level longitudinal dataset that includes detailed information about student progression through developmental education. This dataset was collected as part of the national community college initiative Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. The dataset has many advantages, but it is not nationally representative; therefore, we check our results against a national dataset--the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. Our results indicate that only 3 to 4 out of 10 students who are referred to remediation actually complete the entire sequence to which they are referred. Most students exit in the beginning of their developmental sequence--almost half fail to complete the first course in their sequence. The results also show that more students exit their developmental sequences because they did not enroll in the first or a subsequent course than because they failed a course in which they were enrolled. We also show that men, older students, Black students, part-time students, and students in vocational programs are less likely to progress through their full remedial sequences. Finally, we provide weaker evidence that some institutional characteristics are related to a lower probability of completion of developmental education. (Contains 7 tables and 7 figures.)