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Each year, more than a million high school students nationally take college dual enrollment courses, which have been shown to increase college access and success among participants. Yet racial/ethnic and other equity gaps in dual enrollment participation are widespread. To broaden the benefits of dual enrollment, the state of Ohio passed legislation in 2017 establishing the Innovative Programs (IP) policy, allowing waivers to test-based eligibility requirements - a frequently identified barrier to equitable access - for specific high school-college partnerships providing expanded outreach and support for students underrepresented in the state's dual enrollment program. This paper describes a multiple methods study of IP we conducted to examine how these partnerships were implemented to address the needs of underrepresented students and to evaluate whether the partnerships were successful in broadening access to and success in dual enrollment, as measured by course participation, pass rates, and college matriculation after high school. We find that the IP increased participation in dual enrollment among Black and Hispanic students. And while the implementation of the policy broadened access without changing course outcomes, the impacts on college enrollment after high school were mixed. Our results underscore the importance of pairing increased access to dual enrollment with adequate financial, advising, and academic resources to promote student success in and beyond dual enrollment courses.

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While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, the authors' difference-in-differences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

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Performance funding is a method of funding public institutions based not on inputs, such as enrollments, but on outcomes, such as retention, degree completion, and job placement. The principal rationale for performance funding has been that performance funding will prod institutions to be more effective and efficient, particularly in a time of increasing demands on higher education and increasingly straitened state finances. Critics of performance funding have warned that it could potentially provide state officials with an excuse to cut back on the regular state funding of higher education and at the same time provide college officials with an incentive to raise their retention and graduation rates by becoming more selective in their admissions. This report examines in detail the origins of state performance funding in six states: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington. These states were chosen for analysis because they have considerably different state performance funding systems and histories as well as higher education governance arrangements, political systems, political cultures, and social characteristics - all of which enables the authors to look at the formation of state performance funding systems from a wide variety of angles. Interestingly, analysis reveals that there are striking similarities among these six states, particularly in terms of who were the main supporters and opponents, what beliefs animated them, and what political openings allowed policy entrepreneurs to put performance funding on the decision making agendas of state governments. This analysis yields some important lessons for policymakers, which are discussed at the conclusion of this paper.

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This working paper describes demography as opportunity, which is a simple idea grounded in a commitment to affirm the worth of the students who attend community colleges by being responsive to their life circumstances. As the demography of the nation changes - the United States is predicted to be majority minority by 2045 - human capital investment in students from racial and ethnic groups, many of whom are first-generation college goers and low-income, is critical to the nation's vitality. Demography as opportunity marries the racial and ethnic shifts underway in the country and in higher education with equity perspectives on historically disenfranchised populations. It is a constellation of policy and practice that abides by implementation principles common to well-executed change efforts. It attends to both people and place and aspires to strengthen communities and the nation by investing in the increasingly diverse population of college goers. Community colleges are the ideal venue for demography as opportunity not only because of who they serve but also because of what they do.

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Does extra financial aid for the summer lead to gains in completion and earnings? Despite being the largest source of financial aid to low-income college students, the traditional Pell Grant has had one major limitation: If students enroll in two semesters full-time, they will not have any tuition support for the summer term of the same academic year. The year-round Pell (YRP) was implemented in the academic years 2009-10 and 2010-11 to provide a second Pell Grant to students who enrolled in more than 24 credits prior to the third semester and in at least six credits during the summer term.

This paper employs a difference-in-difference approach to examine the credit, credential completion, and labor market outcomes resulting from the YRP using a state administrative dataset from a community college system. The study finds that for each $1,000 of YRP grant funding per YRP-eligible student, the likelihood of summer enrollment among YRP-eligible students increases by 27 percentage points and the likelihood of associate degree completion increases by 2.2 percentage points, with these gains primarily benefitting adult students who enrolled at age 20 or above. Given that the federal government is currently reinstating the YRP, this research is timely in providing insight into the efficacy of the YRP.

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The expansion of the American community college has not been matched by the rapid, or even consistent, progress of all entering students toward postsecondary credentials. Instead, a significant proportion of students enrolled in community colleges appear ‘stuck’ on the road to completion. This lack of progress is due to the complex ways in which social and educational inequalities affect specific students and the institutions of higher education designated to serve them. As a result, policymakers and practitioners face significant challenges in their efforts to promote academic momentum. In the first part of this literature review, the sources of these challenges are located in student characteristics as well as in state and institutional practices and policies. It is argued that there exists an interaction of sorts between the actions of community colleges and the attributes of their students. Acknowledging the myriad complexities in efforts to improve the progress of all two-year students toward goal or degree completion, the second part of this paper examines empirical research to identify opportunities for improvement.

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For developmental education students, rates of developmental math course completion and persistence into required college-level math courses are particularly low. This literature review examines the evidence base on one potential means for improving the course completion and learning outcomes of developmental mathematics students: reforming mathematics classroom pedagogy. Each study examined for this review was classified into one of six sets according to the main instructional approach focused on in the study. The six sets are: student collaboration, metacognition, problem representation, application, understanding student thinking, and computer-based learning. Because most of the studies across the sets did not employ rigorous methods, the evidence regarding the impact of these instructional practices on student outcomes is inconclusive. An analysis of the studies that did employ rigorous designs suggests that structured forms of student collaboration and instructional approaches that focus on problem representation may improve math learning and understanding. This paper concludes by making a number of methodological recommendations, proposing several needed areas of research related to developmental math pedagogy, and suggesting instructional practices that may improve the outcomes of developmental math students.

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A growing number of institutions undertaking 'guided pathways' reforms are rethinking how students select programs of study, choose courses, and make other program-related choices. One primary aim is to help students make thoughtful decisions about their programs early on as a means to encourage faster and more satisfying college completion. The City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) has been undertaking a guided pathways reform effort for several years. Based largely on student interviews, this paper describes how degree-seeking students at CCC make choices about their programs in their first year of enrollment, focusing especially on how they interact with advisors and how they use college-based resources in program selection and program planning. The authors find that the complex process of program selection and planning is undertaken differently by students with greater or lesser tolerance for ambiguity, and that inconsistent or conflicting information about program details is particularly frustrating for some students. The authors recommend that institutions engaging in guided pathways reform efforts clarify advising processes and materials to reduce contradictory information and confusion.

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Community college students invest considerable time and money into attending college, but too few of them complete their programs of study. This paper discusses how the development of an overall framing vision for student success, the implementation of evidence-based practices, and the establishment of a culture that is both committed to student success and conducive to innovation are useful, complementary approaches that colleges can pursue to improve student outcomes.

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For many students at community colleges, finding a path to degree completion is the equivalent of navigating a shapeless river on a dark night. While academic preparation and financial supports are critical components of student success, subtle institutional features may also play an important role. This paper thus reviews the evidence for what is called the structure hypothesis: that community college students will be more likely to persist and succeed in programs that are tightly and consciously structured, with relatively little room for individuals to unintentionally deviate from paths toward completion, and with limited bureaucratic obstacles for students to circumnavigate. This review of the literature inside and outside of higher education suggests that the lack of structure in many community colleges is likely to result in less-than-optimal decisions by students about whether and how to persist toward a credential. Though there is no silver-bullet intervention to address this problem, this paper highlights several promising programs and suggests directions for future experimentation and research.

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