Over the years, trauma-informed practices have been integrated into public schools. The purpose of these practices is to assist students dealing with trauma. Current literature supports the use of practices and reports various forms of success. There is a plethora of trauma-informed resources that school district leaders have access to. However,…

During the shift to online learning in 2020, the disruption to students and families was nearly universal, but the causes--and effects--varied. In this time, a shocking number of students did not attend school regularly, or at all. The work of the intervening years has been largely twofold: ensure that students reengage with learning and help them…

Adult college students face unique challenges that can derail their dreams of completing a degree or certificate program. The problem addressed in this study was that, although postsecondary institutions in Tennessee have been tasked with equipping at least 55% of adult residents with a college degree or certificate by the year 2025, some college…

Since the early 2000s, federal, state, and local lawmakers and educators have worked to combat the "wait to fail" mentality and support higher student grade level academic achievements. Educators were tasked with finding teaching methods that better served academically struggling students, some of whom had specified learning…

This causal-comparative research project is a study examining a Tennessee community college's institutional services and programs designed to support African American students compared to those students' persistence to graduation. The results of this causal-comparative study employing mixed-methods of data collection revealed no significant…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a method for providing academic support to students and for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Using interrupted time series and hazard models, we examined if statewide RTI adoption in the U.S. state of Tennessee was associated with changes in rates of SLD and first-time SLD identification in…

The article describes enrollment, retention, and institutional expenditures on instruction, academic support, and student services at community colleges in Tennessee and Oregon after these states implemented Promise scholarship programs. This article highlights that college attendance and choice among recent high school graduates changed after the…

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted several states to adopt or scale new placement methods, since many test-based placement metrics were unavailable. In April 2020, the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) approved a pilot to add high school GPA as a placement method at Tennessee community colleges alongside other measures included in TBR's learning…

Underserved students, such as African Americans, first-generation, or those with low-income backgrounds, often face more obstacles when it comes to postsecondary education. In response, many colleges now offer supplemental support programs to increase their chances of success. This study examined two groups of underrepresented students at a…

College can be a challenging time for freshmen students; but for freshmen college students with disabilities, there are additional challenges to overcome. The purpose of this case study was to analyze freshmen students' perceptions of the various student support programs available for college students with mental or cognitive disabilities and the…

Community colleges in Tennessee, either directly or indirectly, experienced unprecedented change as a result of Tennessee Promise. The present study explored how student support service administrators at three community colleges responded to organizational change as a result of the Tennessee Promise legislation. Investigators selected community…

Amid rapid growth in the higher education movement, access to inclusive higher education for students with intellectual disability (ID) remains limited. This study used "community conversations" to explore how stakeholders in three communities envisioned the inclusion of students with ID on their local college campus and the supports…

Far too often, today's college students find themselves wandering through their academic experiences, choosing from a dizzying array of majors, courses, and out-of-classroom learning experiences. And while this smorgasbord of options is often portrayed as beneficial to the student experience, more than a decade of research suggests that too many…

This paper contends that, although there is much to commend in the remediation reform movement, it is unlikely to attain its goals. These goals include the Lumina Foundation's target of having 60% of Americans attain a degree or certificate, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's goal of doubling the number of low income students who earn a…

Guided pathways reforms require colleges to rethink how they teach and support students. The case studies in Part 2 of this practitioner packet examine how colleges at the forefront of these reforms are transforming their programs and support services by implementing three key guided pathways practices: (1) meta-majors (clusters of programs in…