Guest Post: Ohio’s Developmental Education Policy Review

This Statewise post comes from Ronald Abrams, president of the Ohio Association of Community Colleges. In this guest post, Ron describes how a task force conducted a comprehensive developmental education policy review at Ohio’s 23 community colleges and how their recommendations will help the colleges respond to a new performance-based funding system.

Per the request of Ohio’s 23 community college presidents, the Ohio Association of Community Colleges (OACC) organized a task force to review institutional policies related to developmental education. The presidents’ request was necessitated by Ohio’s Success Points performance funding model, implemented in fiscal year 2010.

The main focus of the Success Points model is student progression and success (i.e., completion of coursework and moving through appropriate pathways). Community colleges often work with populations that are unprepared or underprepared for college work, which has lead to increased enrollment in developmental education coursework. The Success Points mirror this increase by assigning a higher point value to developmental education completion and transition to college-level coursework.

The OACC Developmental Education Policy Review Task Force, composed of community college administrators, faculty, and staff began working on recommendations about institutional developmental education policies in January 2011 and completed their work in June 2011. Their recommendations were submitted to the Ohio community college presidents for initial review and comment. The final document, Developmental Education Policy Recommendations, focuses on institutional policies that may increase success for students progressing through developmental education coursework and also offers recommendations for state-level consideration (i.e., developing state-wide assessment standards, cut scores, etc.). 

The Developmental Education Policy Recommendations addresses the following institutional policies:

• Introductory information for placement testing/assessment
• Mandatory entry assessment
• Mandatory Orientation
• Mandatory developmental education course placement & continuous enrollment
• Require that developmental education coursework take place first
• No late registration for developmental education (also provide “flexible start” developmental education)—this policy may vary from campus to campus, but it ensures students are present for the first class meeting
• Required math & English sequences
• Implement interventions for repeated failure

The Developmental Education Policy Recommendations also addresses the following state-level policies:

• Ohio should become an ACT state
• The Ohio Board of Regents (OBR) should regularly review cut scores for college-level placement (“College-level” includes: transfer, certificates, and degrees)
• Define ABLE (Adult Basic and Literacy Education) referral & cut scores and determine connection to the college
• Define minimum standard of developmental education competency
• Allow for alternative math curriculum & instruction

You can download the complete Developmental Education Policy Recommendations document from the OACC website here.