Is College Remediation a Barrier or a Boost? Evidence from the Tennessee SAILS Program

Kane, Thomas J.; Boatman, Angela; Kozakowski, Whitney; Bennett, Christopher; Hitch, Rachel; Weisenfeld, Dana

doi:10.1002/pam.22306

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…For example, the Tennessee Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support (SAILS) program moves developmental math courses from college to high school in order to save students time and money in college. There is evidence documenting the positive effects of this program on improving the enrollment rates in college-level math and credit accumulation (Boatman & Bennett, 2021), although a more recent study suggests that co-requisite remediation may be more effective than high school remediation at supporting college math completion (Kane et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Placement in Math Courses at U.S. Community Colleges: Contributing Factors and Impacts on Student Success

Zhao¹,

Park-Gaghan

Mokher

et al. 2023

SAGE Open

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Self-placement in math is becoming increasingly popular in community colleges in the U.S., where students will decide for themselves whether to enroll in non-credit developmental (or remedial) math courses. To fully understand the factors associated with students’ math enrollment choices and the long-term effects of initial math enrollment choices, we use data from all first-time-in-college students in the Florida College System to conduct a multinomial logistic regression analysis and an inverse-probability regression adjustment analysis. We find that most students chose to directly enroll in college-level math, with significant differences by gender and high school math preparation. First-year math enrollment choices were significantly associated with likelihood of passing college-level math and the number of college credits by the third year.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Placement in Math Courses at U.S. Community Colleges: Contributing Factors and Impacts on Student Success

Zhao¹,

Park-Gaghan

Mokher

et al. 2023

SAGE Open

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“…In Tennessee, the transition intervention produced an initial effect of a 30% reduction in developmental math enrollment. But the effect was not the result of improved math skills, as Kane et al (2021) demonstrated using a post-intervention assessment, but due to automatic exemption from DE in college upon successful completion of a transition curriculum in high school. 3 In West Virginia and Florida, transition interventions had no detectable impact on DE enrollment.…”

Section: Existing Evidence On the Effectiveness Of Transition Interve...mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In addition to Kentucky, state-level transition intervention programs have been evaluated in West Virginia (Pheatt et al, 2016), Florida (Mokher et al, 2018), and Tennessee (Kane et al, 2021). Findings in those states, all based on regression discontinuity (RD) designs, are less promising than in Kentucky.…”

Section: Transition Intervention Implementation In Kentucky and Prior...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because most programs do not provide additional school time for these interventions (Fay et al, 2017), they displace other opportunities for students to learn. As documented in the literature, transition interventions tend to crowd out advanced courses like pre-calculus and English IV that high school seniors typically take (Kane et al, 2021). Additionally, because most career technical education (CTE)-oriented high school students tend to score in a narrow range around college readiness benchmarks (Michaels & Liu, 2020), transition interventions may also compete with career technical education.…”

Section: Transition Intervention Implementation In Kentucky and Prior...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Transition Intervention in High School on Pathways Through College

Backes

Goldhaber

2023

Community College Review

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Objective: In 2009, the Kentucky General Assembly found unacceptable and costly the ongoing high numbers of high school students requiring remediation once they enter higher education. The state passed legislation to better align secondary and college education, establishing a diagnostic cycle that would become its Targeted Interventions (TI) program. Using 11 years of panel data, this study tracked college progression of seven cohorts of students in order to estimate the impacts of this program. Method: Using student-level administrative data from the state of Kentucky that tracks students from high school through college, a difference-in-regression-discontinuity design was used to compare how students just below college readiness benchmarks fared relative to those just above once TI was implemented. Results: The TI program significantly increased the likelihood that students took at least 15 credits during their first term, a key predictive measure for college completion. However, these early effects did not translate into detectable impacts on the likelihood of earning enough credits to graduate from college or likelihood of transfers from a 2-year to a 4-year college. One possible explanation for this pattern is that TI appears to have crowded out other core courses in high school, especially in math, without increasing total instructional time. Findings suggest that the standards used by high schools to judge student progress toward college readiness may be consistent with the skills needed to place out of developmental courses, but not sufficient to better prepare students for college-level instruction. Contributions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore how TI shapes longer term college outcomes. The transition curriculum, while helping students avoid the need for college developmental courses, did not help a measurable share of students develop necessary skills to progress through college relative to what they would have otherwise taken. A possible explanation for these findings is that high school-to-college transition interventions that do not increase total instruction time do not sufficiently move the needle on the college preparedness among high school graduates. For states concerned with the number of students entering college deemed not college ready, it appears that high school-to-college transition interventions that supplant instead of supplement regular high school curriculum have a limited scope for impact on long-run college success.

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“…18 See Teixeira et al (2013), Hoxby and Bulman (2015), and Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner (2010). 19 For example, Bahr (2013;2016) and Carrell and Kurlaender (2016) for California; De Vlieger, Jacob, and Stange (2017) for University of Phoenix; Kane et al (2021) and Boatman and Long (2018) for Tennessee; Liu, Belfield, and Trimble (2015) for North Carolina; and Xu & Dadgar (2018) for Virginia. 20 See Cellini and Turner (2019), Stange (2012), andScott-Clayton andRodriguez (2015) for the United States; Melguizo and Wainer (2015) for Brazil; Shavelson et al (2016), , Saavedra (2009), and Barrera-Osorio and Bayona-Rodriguez (2019) for Colombia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes a Program Good? Evidence from Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Diaz¹,

Ferreyra²,

Urzúa³

et al. 2021

Policy Research Working Papers

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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

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Is College Remediation a Barrier or a Boost? Evidence from the Tennessee SAILS Program

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Self-Placement in Math Courses at U.S. Community Colleges: Contributing Factors and Impacts on Student Success

Self-Placement in Math Courses at U.S. Community Colleges: Contributing Factors and Impacts on Student Success

The Impact of Transition Intervention in High School on Pathways Through College

What makes a Program Good? Evidence from Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean

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