Guest Post: Asking the Right Questions: Aligning Basic Literacy and Developmental Education Classes in Ohio

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: finding and implementing scalable solutions to the dev ed challenge requires integrated college and state policy strategies. Today’s post from Karen Scheid, Regional ABLE Consultant and Director of the Developmental Education Initiative for the Ohio Board of Regents, looks at the Buckeye State’s approach to widespread alignment of ABLE and developmental education instruction.

A key focus of the Ohio’s state-level Developmental Education Initiative plan has been the establishment of a pilot project to promote the alignment of remedial services between Ohio community colleges and local adult basic and literacy (ABLE) programs. Why did we select this as an approach for improving student success? Research has demonstrated that developmental education students in need of the most remediation seldom achieve a postsecondary certificate or degree. Those students who do succeed in advancing through traditionally delivered developmental education courses find that they have depleted much of their financial aid in doing so.

Could ABLE programs that are offered at no cost to students be more successful at helping those students starting at the lowest level of developmental education to acquire the skills needed to enroll in credit bearing classes or at least begin their college studies at a higher level of developmental education? Why might ABLE programs succeed in doing so? ABLE programs target instruction to specific learner needs as determined by required assessments administered to students at the program’s orientation. In addition, ABLE programs use information gleaned from learning style inventories and learning disability screenings to offer students insights into how they learn best. In recent years, more ABLE programs also are infusing both career awareness and postsecondary-related information into their day-to-day instruction and directly teaching students learning strategies to help them improve their abilities to obtain, retain, and recall information, as well as manage their learning experience.

Ohio ABLE programs have demonstrated their effectiveness at increasing students’ basic skills performance two or more grade levels per program year. But, can the way ABLE programs provide remediation be modified to accelerate the rate of progress for the students referred by the colleges? If so, what modifications lead to student success?

Since the launch of the pilot at the end of July 2010, 22 of Ohio’s 23 community colleges and their ABLE partners have submitted agreements for colleges to make ABLE referrals for students who score below an agreed level on a placement test. The agreements, most of which are in early implementation, reflect diverse approaches—some ABLE programs have established single-subject ABLE classes, while others are addressing multiple subjects within the same class; some have established  managed enrollment classes with definite beginning and end dates, while others are maintaining an open enrollment environment; most are offering the ABLE classes on the college campus; and most colleges are providing some college privileges to students referred to ABLE even if the student is not officially enrolled in college classes.

Through observing the partnerships and tracking students’ academic progress over time, we will:

• Determine  the instructional approaches and support services that are most successful in helping students transition from ABLE back to community colleges,
• Identify best practices for developing and sustaining ABLE-community college agreements for serving students who are not college ready,
• Recommend a  uniform developmental education placement policy,
• Determine state policies and decisions that could support ABLE-community college agreements.

There is no question that this project is a work in progress and that we and the college-ABLE partnerships are learning as we progress.  All of us, though, are keeping our eyes on the main reason for trying this approach—the chance that the ABLE-developmental education alignment will result in more students who are least prepared for college work ultimately succeeding at the postsecondary level.

Heads Up

Happy Friday, all! We wanted to alert you to a few good reads before the weekend.

Yesterday, our friends at Jobs for the Future released a revamped Achieving Success newsletter. The new version is going to be published bimonthly and will be chock full of updates about how the ATD/DEI State Policy Teams are advancing dev ed reform. In the latest edition, we learned about the Center for Student Success in Michigan, developmental math redesign in North Carolina, and ABLE/Dev Ed integration in Ohio. The newsletter is not available online, but you can subscribe to future editions.

Today, Dean Dad wrote about developmental education on his “Confessions of a Community College Dean” blog over at Inside Higher Ed. Based on research suggesting that students likelihood of success decreases as they spend more time in dev ed, he ponders ideas getting students through these courses more quickly or letting them bypass them altogether. Looks like he thinks we need to escape the weight of history, too.

Duly Noted: ATD Data on Developmental Education Time to Completion

Every two months, JBL Associates publishes Data Notes: Keeping Informed About Achieving the Dream Data. These briefs dive into the ATD database to examine patterns occurring across the entire ATD network. Since ATD colleges provide extensive student-level data on first-time, full- and part-time cohorts, there’s a lot of interesting discoveries to be made. The January/February 2011 edition, “Developmental Education: Time to Completion,” written by Amy Topper delves into how many attempts students make in order to complete all of the developmental education courses to which they are referred. They also look at persistence and subsequent gateway course completion. Based on three-year outcomes in English and math, the analysis finds that:  

• Students referred to developmental math were more likely to attempt the class than were students referred to developmental English
• The higher the number of course attempts, the less likely students were to have successfully completed a gateway course (Sadly, it will not surprise you to learn that the same was true of the student’s referral level: the more levels down in developmental math, the less likely to successful gateway course completion.)
• Students who completed their developmental education coursework were about twice as likely to persist than those who did not complete the referred sequence

Topper concludes that “students with the greatest developmental needs are at the greatest risk of leaving college; however, if the college can keep the developmental student enrolled, his or her chances of success improve.”

One great thing about the Data Notes briefs, aside from opening a window into ATD data, is that they always end with intriguing questions for colleges that are tackling these particular issues. Given these data regarding the outcome differences for students who make multiple attempts and those that complete their dev ed coursework on the first attempt, Topper suggests colleges consider the following:

• Why is there a substantial number of students who are still enrolled after three years, but have not even attempted to complete their developmental coursework?
• What distinguishes students who make multiple attempts at developmental education from those who do not?
• Why is it that some students who complete their developmental coursework successfully within three years, or even earlier, do not persist, complete, or transfer?
• Do unsuccessful developmental education attempts vary by subject area or referral level at your institution?
• What distinguishes students who experience higher first-time success in developmental education courses to which they were referred from students whose outcomes are not as successful?

Has your college taken on such questions? How would you begin to answer them and what might you change about your current practice in order to achieve different outcomes?


Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.

Take a Load Off

We need to sit back and not let the weight of history determine what we’re teaching. The weight of history plays too much of a role in these courses, more than our own best professional judgment, learning sciences, or the needs of the workforce.
--Uri Treisman

Last week, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning hosted a webinar about the foundation’s work on Statway and Quantway, two new pathways to help take developmental math students “to and through” transferrable college math in one year. Uri Treisman kicked off the webinar:


Uri Treisman - What's the Problem? from Statway on Vimeo.

The structure of the Carnegie design approach emphasizes the importance of networks that can lift up local innovation and expertise, expand thinking to the systems level, and allow for sharing and building on the ideas of others.

Treisman says, “For the first time in a long time faculty are being asked to innovate, they’re being asked to create new solutions for developmental education, but they’re being asked to do it with what they have in their desk drawers. It is time to actually start using modern improvement science, to give people tools respectfully, so they can learn from each other and work from each other and not everyone has to work in a fog of collective amnesia.”

If we are going to shake off the weight of history and emerge from our collective amnesia, building connections between efforts like Statway and Quantway, DEI, and the desk drawer innovators at other colleges is a must. So, here are a few questions to start the conversation:

• If your college is participating in both DEI and Statway or Quantway, how is your institution linking the initiatives?
• If you’re at a Statway or Quantway college, but not participating in DEI, what’s the most important thing you think the DEI network should know?
• If you’re reimagining developmental education with the tools in your desk drawer, Statway or DEI be damned, what are we missing that we need to know about? There’s a comment section below with plenty of room for your answers!

Abby Parcell is MDC's Program Manager for the Developmental Education Initiative.

Hook ‘Em, Horns!

Last week, we had a guest post from Cynthia Ferrell, director of the Texas Developmental Education Initiative state policy team, on integrating state policy and institutional change. Today, we got a dispatch from Cynthia that shows this work in action. This week, Cynthia was asked to testify before the Texas House Higher Education Committee about a couple of bills that involve developmental education. Here’s what went down at the statehouse:

• HB 1244: this bill proposes requiring colleges to offer developmental education online. Cynthia shared some of the findings from a recent Community College Research Center (CCRC) literature review that provides evidence of the ineffectiveness of online education for low-income and underprepared students. Cynthia says, “The committee was very interested in the findings that showed not only the lack of research support for this action, but also the research-based reasons these students are not likely to succeed in online courses.  I suggested that instead, we should support statewide scaling of promising hybrid innovations being piloted and scaled at ATD and DEI colleges.” Cynthia expects that the legislative language will be amended.
• HB 3468: this bill addresses assessment and placement policies. CCRC’s research on assessment (which we’ve posted about previously) was provided to a representative during bill development. According to Cynthia: “The bill, which was very well received by the committee, includes the report's recommendation for the rigorous evaluation of college readiness assessments and a placement model that targets alternative treatments.” And it looks like this bill will be passed!

Thank you, CCRC, for such timely research contributions. And kudos to Cynthia for helping the Texas House make informed decisions about developmental education policy.