As of fall 2019, the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office required all California community colleges (CCC) to be in compliance with Assembly Bill 705 (AB 705). CCC were required to implement multiple measures placement policies for math and English that would maximize the likelihood that students with an educational goal of degree or…

California's Assembly Bill 705 has affected the way that English learners (ELs) access English and English as a second language (ESL) coursework, requiring that degree- or transfer-seeking students have the right to enroll in English or ESL courses, and community colleges are responsible for implementing initial placement practices and designing…

California Assembly Bill (AB) 705 authored by Irwin and passed on October 13, 2017, requires colleges to "maximize the probability that a student will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a one-year timeframe" and use high school background data in placement processes. To implement this new law and…

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…

The RP Group's Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) produced this technical report as part of a series on how California's community colleges can ensure more English learners (ELs) successfully complete "gateway" English coursework -- courses that satisfy the English writing requirements for completion of an associate's degree as…

The COVID-19 pandemic required that virtually all in-person instruction move suddenly to an online format. Given the unprecedented nature of this disruption, the California Community Colleges (CCC) issued an emergency regulation allowing all students to drop spring 2020 courses without incurring a withdrawal or "W" notation on their…

In this paper the author investigates how the one-year math throughput rate of community college students varies according to the highest level of math completed in high school, with a particular focus on the implications of successfully completing Algebra 2 while in high school. Community college math throughput rates for students with different…

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…

In community colleges, English Language Learners (ELL) comprise several subgroups of students, each of which has a distinct background and data profile. Among these subgroups, three clearly emerge, each of which interact with placement systems and curriculum in distinct ways based on their prior educational experiences and contexts. These three…

The 1999-2000 Transfer Velocity Project (TVP) cohort of 147,207 community college students is used to develop both a college-level endogenous model, appropriate for applied research and guidance for campus action, and a student-level model. Survival analysis (Cox regression) is employed to evaluate the relative contribution of 53 student-level…