Nearly two-thirds of students require some form of remediation before taking college-level classes, and community colleges have become increasingly important in providing this education. Unfortunately, relatively few students complete the developmental courses required to make a transition to college-level work. Based on a three-year study of over…

Basic skills courses are designed to teach students certain basic academic competencies they have not mastered. However, very little research has examined the quality of instruction inside basic skills classes. This paper presents preliminary findings from observations in 13 California community colleges. The clearest finding is that…

A previous working paper argued, that, to understand basic skills education, it is necessary to observe classrooms to see what the "instructional triangle" involving the instructor, students, and content is like. This working paper presents the results of observing classes in 13 community colleges. It starts with a conceptualization of…

Chaffey College, a three campus college with approximately 20,000 students located California's Inland Empire, has become the destination of many community college practitioners from around the country. The reason why? Over the past ten years, the college has become nationally-known as an institution with a "risk tolerant change-oriented…

Discusses the problems associated with remediation in vocational education and job training and argues for the need to reform the current system. The authors explain that reform would require the coordination and referral mechanisms familiar to policymakers as well as pedagogical reforms that have rarely been considered. (GLR)

The 1990 amendments to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984 require the National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) to evaluate integration of academic and vocational education. NAVE's study has three integration goals: (1) to examine the themes and research issues; (2) to identify data and data gaps; and (3) to address…

This first volume of a sourcebook presents a framework for identifying best practices of integrating career preparation into the community college. An introduction identifies seven domains of competency critical for postsecondary students: foundation academic competencies, education for citizenship, job specific/technical skills, career…

This second volume of a sourcebook is a collection of 46 examples of innovative practices colleges and technical institutes are using to impart the seven domains of career preparation described in volume I. A table of contents in chart format provides this information: page, identification (model and description, college), academic level (transfer…

A need for remediation has been increasingly apparent within vocational education and job-related skill training. The current debates about basic skills and literacy reveal ambiguities in the definition of the problem and the focus of the concern. Telephone questionnaires and program visits provided information about remedial offerings within…