Education Commons^™

Discourses Of Developmental English Education: Reframing Policy Debates, Aaron R. Tolbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the National Educational Longitudinal Study, an estimated 28% of academically underprepared students who take developmental courses (preparatory, not credit-bearing) graduate within 8.5 years (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006), far below the national average graduation rate of near 60% of students for all postsecondary institutions (USDE, 2016). Given these statistics, some conclude that developmental education itself contributes to the low graduation rate of developmental students (Bailey, Jaggars, & Jenkins, 2015). Indeed, the causes of this attainment gap are the focus of vigorous debates by scholars from numerous disciplines, defining whether the problems exist within the organizational structure and …

An Analysis Of The Academic Success Achieved By Five Freshman Cohorts Through A Community College Developmental Education Program., Nancy K. Gray-Barnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The challenge of underprepared students' entering America's colleges and universities is not new. Because of their "open door" policies, community colleges are more likely to enroll students who are not college prepared. This retrospective study focused on the performance of students who had completed required developmental education courses compared to the performance of students without developmental requirements. The study examined developmental education success measures for five cohorts of first-time degree-seeking freshmen each tracked for a six-year period enrolled at Walters State Community College located in Tennessee.

The success measures compared included grade point averages earned in college-level mathematics and English …