Florida's developmental education reform has benefitted most students directly impacted by the reform and has helped to reduce existing achievement gaps by race/ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and academic preparation in short-term outcomes like college course-taking and credit accumulation. Even though the reform was not specifically…

To address local workforce needs and expand access to affordable bachelor's degrees, some states allow community colleges to offer bachelor's degree programs. Despite concerns that community college baccalaureate (CCB) programs will duplicate efforts and cut into the market share of nearby 4-year institutions, extant literature has yet to examine…

Under Florida's developmental education (DE) reform since 2014, recent public high school graduates and active-duty military personnel became exempt from DE and traditional placement tests. The legislation also required colleges to provide accelerated instruction strategies for students remaining in DE and offer enhanced advising and support…

With the developmental education (DE) reform movement at postsecondary still apace, this qualitative study seeks to understand the policy impacts of Florida Senate Bill 1720, major legislation mandating developmental education reform in the state of Florida. The body of literature thus far has focused on quantitative analyses of secondary data…

The "college for all" ethos pervasive in American education, combined with open admission policies at community colleges, has allowed academically underprepared students to persist from high school to college. We ask: how do college advisors help academically underprepared students navigate decisions about their careers and upcoming…

As American teacher educators and teachers are being roiled by restrictive legislation around critical race theory and divisive concepts in some states, our investigation explored the impact of critical communities of practice (CoP) on redesigning and teaching introduction to education courses with a transformative lens. This manuscript details…

School improvement plans (SIPs) have become a central feature of schooling. Educational leaders experience tension between balancing compliance with accountability demands and continuous improvement, and neither of these lenses is centered in the social justice necessary for closing opportunity gaps. We propose a new rubric for assessing the…

This multiple case study examines the extent and ways in which leaders and administrators in Florida College System (FCS) institutions engage in distributed leadership through data sharing with frontline staff. Based on focus groups and individual interviews with administrators, faculty, and staff (659 participants) from 21 state colleges, we…

Objective/Research Question: The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which programs offering community college baccalaureates (CCBs) address access and equity for underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). The study first aimed to understand how administrators described the purpose of CCBs with regard to advancing equity for URMs.…

Community colleges may face challenges supporting the unique needs of language minority (LM) students whose primary language is not English. Florida provides a unique context for examining whether LM students who are considered underprepared for college-level coursework benefit more from traditional developmental education programs in reading and…

When it comes to the creation of higher education policy, state legislators are challenged with addressing the diverse academic needs of college students enrolled across a spectrum of institutions. In this paper, we explore how 203 individuals at five rural-serving colleges in Florida engaged in state-wide developmental education (DE) reform using…

Background: This multiple case study explores the self-determination needs of academically underprepared students. The context for our study was a sweeping redesign of developmental education (DE) in Florida's community colleges, state-level legislation Senate Bill 1720 (SB 1720), which made DE optional for many students. Purpose of Study: The…

Background: This multiple case study explores the self-determination needs of academically underprepared students. The context for our study was a sweeping redesign of developmental education (DE) in Florida's community colleges, state-level legislation Senate Bill 1720 (SB 1720), which made DE optional for many students. Purpose of Study: The…

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon increasingly affecting students and faculty in K-12 through higher education systems. Cyberbullying in higher education negatively affects institutions and their respective stakeholders. The consequences range from faculty turnover to student suicide. Research related cyberbullying in higher education in online…

As racialized institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions educate large portions of racially minoritized students within organizational and policy structures that advance Whiteness. This research considers how the institution-level diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans, produced in response to state-level DEI policies in Florida,…