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Nationwide, community colleges struggle with how to improve the poor outcomes of students referred to developmental education. Based on a case study of an urban community college system, this paper sets forth an opposing forces framework to help diagnose the underlying issues that may thwart colleges' efforts to improve developmental outcomes. [The authors] identify three sets of opposing forces: system-wide consistency versus institutional autonomy; efficient versus effective assessment; and promotion of student progression versus enforcement of academic standards. Within each set, both goals are important and worthy, but they also tend to work in opposition to one another, creating confusion, frustration, and other barriers to meaningful reform. [The authors] describe how each of the three tensions shape developmental policy and practice. [The authors] also provide suggestions on potential reforms that could bring these apparently opposing forces into alignment and, thus, create a developmental education system that works to meet all its stakeholders' goals.

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Several colleges participating in Achieving the Dream piloted small-scale developmental education reforms with promising results. Fifteen such colleges were selected to participate in the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI) with the goal of expanding innovative strategies to a large scale across a three-year period. This report uses qualitative and quantitative data to examine the implementation of these strategies. The authors also identify factors that facilitated or hindered scale-up and assess the broader impact of the DEI on participating institutions. Across the DEI colleges, student participation in developmental education reforms rose from 18 per cent in fall 2009 to 41 per cent in fall 2011. A rigorous impact study was not part of the evaluation, but analyses suggest that most often, there was no significant difference between outcomes for reform participants and nonparticipants. However, when there was such a difference, students who participated in DEI strategies tended to have stronger outcomes than those who did not.

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This paper presents the findings from a quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County's Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). Under ALP, students placed into upper-level developmental writing are 'mainstreamed' into English 101 classes and simultaneously enrolled in a companion ALP course (taught by the same instructor) that meets in the class period immediately following the English 101 class. The aim of the ALP course, which has only eight students, is to help students maximize the likelihood of their success in English 101. Our results suggest that among students who place into the highest level developmental writing course, participating in ALP is associated with substantially better outcomes in terms of English 101 completion and English 102 completion, the two primary outcomes ALP was designed to improve. However, we found no evidence that ALP students' greater likelihood of completing English 101 and 102 correlates with increased rates of college persistence or passing other college-level courses. Looking at the costs of ALP in relation to our findings on its effects, we found that ALP is a more cost-effective pathway through the required college-level English courses than the traditional developmental English sequence as measured by cost per successful student ($2,680 versus $3,122). A rough cost-benefit analysis finds that the benefits of ALP are more than double the costs.

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To support the long-term success of underprepared students, many community colleges are experimenting with accelerated developmental education models, which allow students to complete remediation and enroll in college-level math and English within a shorter time frame. This study examines three developmental acceleration programs, including two in English and one in math. Overall, students on accelerated pathways were more likely than a set of matched peers to successfully complete the relevant college-level course within three years. However, to help maintain strong student performance within subsequent college-level courses, accelerated pathways may need to incorporate rigorous content, systematic faculty development, and targeted student supports.

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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.

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