Browsing by Subject "Developmental education"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Co-requisite support for STEM-bound students at a Texas community college
(2022-07-29) Flores, Kristina Joanne Penfold; Treisman, Uri; Riegle-Crumb, Catherine; Knuth, Eric; Cubbin, Catherine; Schudde, Lauren
This dissertation examines the co-requisite support structure for entry-level mathematics as applied to STEM-bound students, those students who have declared a STEM major but have been deemed underprepared for entry-level mathematics by Texas Success Initiative standards. Using data from a very large community college in Texas, the first study found STEM-bound students differed from STEM students (students who passed Calculus with a C or better) with prior developmental mathematics (DM) by race/ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status, suggesting systems and mechanisms in place to reach Calculus served to reduce the diversity present among STEM-bound students. The study also found that STEM students with prior DM navigated 13 different course sequences within four main sequences before successfully completing Calculus. DM grade point averages were significantly different between the main sequences. The second study utilized propensity score matching to compare: (1) a control group of STEM-bound students enrolled in Elementary Algebra to a treatment group of STEM-bound students enrolled in co-requisite College Algebra (CA) and (2) a control group of students enrolled in Intermediate Algebra to a treatment group of STEM-bound students enrolled in co-requisite CA. After matching, enrolling in co-requisite CA was associated with higher odds of completing DM, earning CA credit, and persisting along the path to Calculus compared to enrolling in Elementary Algebra. There was no statistically significant difference in outcomes for students enrolled in co-requisite CA compared to Intermediate Algebra. The last study utilized generalized hierarchical linear modeling to examine the impact of co-requisite CA course design on student outcomes. The model examined two different course designs: (1) a redesigned CA course with just-in-time (JIT) remediation and (2) a traditional CA course with an emporium lab. The study found that the JIT model increased the likelihood that STEM-bound students completed DM requirements, earned CA credit, and persisted along the path to Calculus, compared to the emporium model, controlling for Level-1 and Level-2 covariates. These findings have practical implications for practice as colleges across Texas are scaling up the use of co-requisite support for STEM-bound students. The studies also create a framework for additional research into this emerging DM intervention.
Developmental students' levels of engagement and student success in two-year institutions : a study of a suburban community college in Texas
(2011-08) Sesay, Marie; Bumphus, Walter G.; Roueche, John; Northcutt, Norvell; Muller, Chandra; Johnson, Dreand
The need for development education for first year community college students is a growing trend and has a variety of solutions. Engagement and retention of these students is vital to the success of the student and the college in which they attend. Taking developmental education courses should not be repetitive hurdles for a college student. This study is to establish the level of engagement of community college students who are enrolled in developmental education compared to students not enrolled in developmental education and their levels of success. The study evaluates administrative practices that engage developmental students in 2-year institutions. This study aims at increasing successful outcomes in developmental education students through research. The study of levels of engagement, retention, successful strategies and academic support may be the determining factor of success of developmental education students and the 2-year institution in which they are enrolled. Quantitative analysis will determine if there are significant differences in the engagement levels among first year developmental education students versus first year viii non-developmental college students within 2-year institutions and what institutional practices or academic support initiatives support developmental students’ engagement in 2-year institutions. The instrument used was the 2009 SENSE (Survey of Entering Student Engagement). This tool assists colleges to focus on the “front door” of the students’ college experience. This study uses an independent sample t-test to analyze the responses of students currently enrolled in developmental education courses versus students enrolled in non-developmental courses. The SENSE Survey was administered to students at 120 member community colleges during the fourth and fifth week of the fall 2009 semester. Fall 2009 was the first national administration of the survey. A 20- year community college system in suburban Houston, TX was specifically examined. This study determines the significance of implementation of successful programs and academic support procedures to enhance the college experiences and performance of students enrolled in developmental education, increases more efficient use of college resources, and assists students to complete developmental courses to persist into college level courses.
Engaging underprepared community college students : practices leading to increased outcomes
(2011-05) Glaser, Erika; Roueche, John E.; Bumphus, Walter G.; Cantú, Norma; McClenney, Kay; Saenz, Victor
In order to close the achievement gaps between traditionally underserved groups and their peers, institutions of higher education must make developmental education a priority by implementing college-wide strategies inside and outside the classroom to help underprepared students succeed. Since community colleges offer educational opportunities to anyone seeking to further their education, and hence serve the majority of underprepared college students, it is difficult to overstate the importance of assessing and strengthening the quality of educational practices for developmental students at these institutions. Assessing the extent to which underprepared college students are actively engaged in meaningful educational experiences, and the relationship between engagement and student outcomes, will help college leaders and policymakers implement research proven engagement strategies to help a population of students that has been historically underserved attain academic success and reap the societal and economic benefits of higher education. Relationships between engagement and three critical outcomes for underprepared college students were investigated: developmental sequence completion, subsequent college-level course performance, and attainment. Similar to studies conducted on the four-year sector, the present study found similar effects of engagement on developmental students attending community colleges. While generally having a positive effect on outcomes, engagement has been proven to have compensatory effects for students which have been typically underserved including minority, nontraditional age, and first-generation students. The present study found that the impact of engagement varies according to student characteristics and level of developmental course need and subject area. Further, the study suggests that certain types of engagement can have greater influence on students which characteristically are least likely to earn a college degree.
Essays on inference and education economics
(2022-05-10) Meiselman, Akiva Yonah; Linden, Leigh L., 1975-; Kline, Brendan; Murphy, Richard; Schudde, Lauren
This dissertation examines several policies in secondary and tertiary education and improves on existing methods of inference in settings that are salient for policy evaluation. In the first chapter, I propose a hypothesis test for clustered samples. This test is exact in samples with few clusters, few ever-treated clusters, cluster size outliers, or treatment intensity outliers; these features cause previous tests to over- or under-reject true hypotheses. I derive my test by inverting the distribution of the test statistic under a standard assumption about the errors, so that critical values can be selected from a distribution that matches the test statistic. I use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate where this adjustment is most impactful in achieving exact tests compared to previous hypothesis tests, and I apply my test to an empirical setting from the literature. The second chapter, previously published in Education Finance and Policy and co-authored with Lauren Schudde, examines the impact of a developmental education (dev-ed) reform for community colleges. Dev-ed aims to help students acquire knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college-level coursework. The traditional prerequisite approach to postsecondary dev-ed—where students take remedial courses that do not count toward a credential—appears to stymie progress toward a degree. At community colleges across the country, most students require remediation in math, creating a barrier to college-level credits under the traditional approach. Corequisite coursework is a structural reform that places students directly into a college-level course in the same term they receive dev-ed support. Using administrative data from Texas community colleges and a regression discontinuity design, we examine whether corequisite math improves student success compared with traditional prerequisite dev-ed. We find that corequisite math quickly improves student completion of math requirements without any obvious drawbacks, but students in corequisite math were not substantially closer to degree completion than their peers in traditional dev-ed after 3 years. The third chapter, coauthored with Anjali Priya Verma, examines students who were removed from their regular instructional environments for disciplinary reasons and sent to disciplinary schools. We study the long-run effects of disruptive peers on educational and labor market outcomes of students placed at these institutions. The existing literature documents that students who are removed from their regular instructional setting and placed at disciplinary schools tend to have significantly worse future outcomes. We provide evidence that the composition of peers at these institutions plays an important role in explaining this link. We use rich administrative data of high school students in Texas which provides a detailed record of each student’s disciplinary placements, including their exact date of placement and assignment duration. This allows us to identify the relevant peers for each student based on their overlap at the institution. We leverage within school-year variation in peer composition at each institution to ask whether a student who overlaps with particularly disruptive peers has worse subsequent outcomes. We show that exposure to peers in the highest quintile of disruptiveness relative to lowest quintile when placed at a disciplinary school increases students’ subsequent removals (5-8% per year); reduces their educational attainment--lower high-school graduation (6%), college enrollment (7%), and college graduation (17%); and worsens labor market outcomes--lower employment (2.5%) and earnings (6.5%). Moreover, these effects are stronger when students have a similar peer group in terms of the reason for removal, or when the distribution of disruptiveness among peers is more concentrated than dispersed around the mean. Our paper draws attention to an unintended consequence of student removal to disciplinary schools, and highlights how brief exposure to disruptive peers can affect an individual’s long-run trajectory.
Orchestrating effective practices in developmental math : redesign in developmental education within an academic success center
(2014-12) Levine-Brown, Patricia Anne; Cantú, Norma V., 1954-
Developmental mathematics courses are intended to help underprepared students but often are a barrier for hundreds of students who fail these courses. High failure rates prevent students from achieving their academic goals, therefore; educational institutions are looking for methods to increase success in these courses. Such was the case at Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ), where high failure rates in developmental mathematics presented problems to the institution and its students. To increase pass rates in developmental education courses, a college-wide redesign initiative introduced in 2009 led to the implementation of a research-based model for developmental education. This model would be implemented in the form of Academic Success Centers (ASC) incorporating practices tailored to increase student success and persistence. To examine success rates of students taking developmental education courses in the ASCs, the College conducted a longitudinal predictive analytics study known as the Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID). The CHAID analyzed student success and retention of 10,051 developmental mathematics students over two academic terms. Additionally, the CHAID identified highly successful developmental mathematics teachers. These teachers, and the environment in which they taught (ASCs), became the basis of this qualitative study. The purpose of the study was two-fold. First, it focused on identifying pedagogical practices of highly successful developmental mathematics faculty who taught in the Academic Success Centers at FSCJ. Second, it focused on the areas of impact of the ASC as an environmental factor in student success. Data collected through observations, interviews, and documented analysis, along with the use of text mining, revealed that patterns emerged among participants in which they shared common beliefs about the importance of communicating with students, forming relationships with students, lecture and lab practices, the availability of physical resources, and the availability of academic support services within the environment where they interacted with their students. The intent of using the evidence from the key findings is to provide community college leaders with insight into pedagogical practices shared by highly successful developmental mathematics teachers and the role the learning environment serves in meeting students’ educational needs.
Student achievement in developmental mathematics and effective practices in developmental education: a study of an Urban Community College District in Texas
(2009-12) Alcorta, Lisa Salinas; Roueche, John E.
Success rates for students in developmental education are dismal. The greatest need for developmental education instruction occurs in mathematics, where high numbers of underprepared students generate great concern and the need for substantial changes in higher education institutions. With higher rates of students requiring remediation in the community colleges, the identification of effective policies and practices in developmental education is necessary to increase the achievement rates of developmental education students, and more specifically developmental mathematics students. This study explored the relationship between developmental mathematics student performance and developmental education programs of the Urban Community College District colleges. In addition, this study set out to identify institutional characteristics between colleges whose developmental mathematics students met state mandated academic outcomes at higher rates than their sister colleges.
Successful movements in higher education : lessons learned and applied to developmental education
(2009-12) D'Orazio, Dana M.; Treisman, Uri; Osborne, Cynthia
Developmental education is a vital component to the transition from secondary to post-secondary education and has been the subject of much discussion related to current challenges faced in the changing academic environment. Through examination of three successful movements in higher education, the service-learning, Open Educational Resources (OER) and sustainability movements, attributes of effective reform will be discussed and analyzed. Levers for transformative change in post-secondary education will be discussed and applied to developmental education in an attempt to resituate developmental education and provide proactive suggestions for reform.