Objective: Standardized placement tests remain the primary means by which new community college students are assessed and placed in the hierarchy of math and English coursework. A growing body of evidence indicates that placement tests tend to underestimate students' likelihood of achieving passing grades in college-level courses, leading to…

This paper discusses the result of a statewide research effort in California to improve the accuracy of student placement in math and English in the California Community College system. We apply decision tree methods to high school and college transcript data to identify key measures of high school achievement that predict success in ten levels of…