Florida’s Senate Bill 1720 allowed many students to bypass developmental education and enroll directly in introductory college-level courses. We use an interrupted time series design to introductory college-level courses enrollment and passing rates in English and math for three cohorts of college students prereform and three cohorts postreform. Based on a cohort-by-cohort comparative analysis, we find that cohorts after the reform are more likely to enroll and pass introductory college-level courses in their 1st year of college, indicating that the reform may help to accelerate student success in college. Further, we find that Black and Hispanic students experience even greater gains in passing rates than White students, effectively narrowing the racial/ethnic achievement gap.

Big qualitative data (Big Qual), or research involving large qualitative data sets, has introduced many newly evolving conventions that have begun to change the fundamental nature of some qualitative research. In this methodological essay, we first distinguish big data from big qual. We define big qual as data sets containing either primary or secondary qualitative data from at least 100 participants analyzed by teams of researchers, often funded by a government agency or private foundation, conducted either as a stand-alone project or in conjunction with a large quantitative study. We then present a broad debate about the extent to which big qual may be transforming some forms of qualitative inquiry. We present three questions, which examine the extent to which large qualitative data sets offer both constraints and opportunities for innovation related to funded research, sampling strategies, team-based analysis, and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). The debate is framed by four related trends to which we attribute the rise of big qual: the rise of big quantitative data, the growing legitimacy of qualitative and mixed methods work in the research community, technological advances in CAQDAS, and the willingness of government and private foundations to fund large qualitative projects.

Florida passed legislation in 2013 that exempted many students from developmental education, and required colleges to implement new instructional modalities for optional developmental education courses. This paper uses an economic model of remediation to examine how changes in college course taking before and after the reform altered costs to completing introductory college-level courses in math and English for students and institutions, and whether cost savings differ by racial/ethnic subgroup. We also take into account changes in short-term costs relative to course completion rates to examine whether the reform is cost effective overall. We find that the total cost per completer (including costs to both students and institutions) decreased after the reform by $894 in English and $1851 in math. This resulted in efficiency gains of 34% in English and 30% in math. The results from Florida provide promising evidence that statewide developmental education reforms may be an effective mechanism for reducing costs to students and institutions. Reform efforts may also help to reduce racial/ethnic gaps in the costs to gateway completion in both subject areas, which has important implications for equity.

Background/Context Underprepared students at community colleges are often assigned to a sequence of developmental education courses that can substantially delay, or even halt, their progress to degree completion. In 2014, Florida implemented a comprehensive reform under Senate Bill (SB) 1720 that allowed the majority of incoming students to enroll directly into college-level courses, while remaining developmental education courses were offered in new instructional modalities that were designed to be completed more quickly than traditional semester-long courses. Colleges provided extensive advising and academic support services intended to help students succeed while progressing at a more accelerated pace. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study In this study, we examined the impact of Florida's developmental education reform on early momentum. More specifically, we defined early momentum as student success in early outcomes (such as the number of credits attempted and earned), which may set students on a promising long-term trajectory on subsequent postsecondary outcomes. Population/Participants/Subjects Our sample included all first-time-in-college students enrolled in all 28 public state colleges. We included three cohorts of students before the reform and up to three cohorts of students after the reform. Each cohort consisted of approximately 70,000 students. Research Design We used an interrupted time series design to compare student outcomes three years before the reform with those up to three years after the reform. Our outcome variables, measured one and three years following initial college enrollment, represented continuous indicators for the number of college-level credits attempted and the number of college-level credits earned. We also examined whether the data revealed heterogeneity in the reform's impacts by race/ethnicity, family income status, and level of high school academic preparation. Findings/Results We found small positive effects on all outcomes, indicating that the reform accelerated student success in both the short term and longer term. The impacts of the reform were even greater for Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, low-income, and underprepared students (particularly in the first year), thus reducing existing achievement gaps. Conclusions/Recommendations Florida's SB 1720 consisted of a complementary set of reform efforts that may together have a larger impact than any single component alone. The results suggest that initial momentum gains in the first year may have set some students on a more successful long-term trajectory, particularly those most likely to be assigned to developmental education before the reform. Colleges should continue to provide comprehensive student support services to help students succeed while progressing at a more accelerated pace.

Following a major statewide developmental education reform in Florida, we explored institutional transformation among Florida College System institutions. We used statewide survey data to examine lead administrators' perceptions of challenges encountered during the planning process, ways in which colleges engaged in sensemaking (i.e., social processes for developing shared understanding) and organizational learning, and perceptions of the institutional transformation processes and outcomes following the reform. We found that institutions engaged in numerous types of sensemaking and organizational learning practices to promote change. Yet, despite different approaches taken to institutional transformation, almost all respondents reported that the change process was highly collaborative and involved a broad range of stakeholders. Keywords Developmental education. Community colleges. Institutional transformation Community colleges across the nation face increasingly complex internal and external environments, resulting in an increased emphasis on the need for change (Bess and Dee 2012). One area of focus for change is developmental education, given that 68% of students attending twoyear institutions must take developmental (or remedial) courses and that only 28% of these students graduate within eight years (Community College Research Center 2014). Studies have shown that developmental education may have negative impacts on students including delaying time to gateway course completion (Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez 2015) and reducing credit accumulation (Martorell and McFarlin Jr 2011). In a meta-analysis of developmental education studies using quasi-experimental methods, Valentine et al. (2017) found that students assigned to developmental education who were just below college-ready performed significantly worse on the likelihood of degree completion, credit accumulation, and passing college-level courses relative to similar students who were not assigned to developmental education. Additionally, developmental education can impact students negatively through increased costs and debt related to courses that do not provide college credit. Annually up to $7 billion is spent on developmental education expenditures nationwide by students and institutions (Scott-Clayton et al. 2014). In Florida developmental education costs were estimated at $154 million annually, with students paying $73 million through tuition (Underhill 2013).