For years, the vast majority of California's community college students had to take remedial courses that slowed down or halted their academic progress. In 2019, Assembly Bill (AB) 705 removed many of these barriers, making it much easier for students to access and complete gateway transfer-level courses in English and math--a key early milestone…

This report is focused on both introducing corequisite support to institutional leaders looking for new approaches to addressing remediation and offering new insights that can deepen practice for those who are already at work implementing the model. Following previous reports on the corequisite model, "No Room for Doubt" outlines a…

Until recently, the vast majority of California's community college students--hundreds of thousands of students each year--started in remedial courses that slowed down or halted their academic progress. Attrition was high, particularly for Latino and African American students. Few students went on to complete the gateway courses necessary to…

This is the technical appendix for the report, "Does Raising High School Graduation Requirements Improve Student Outcomes?" While high school graduation rates in California have increased in the past decade, nearly 40 percent of California high school graduates do not enroll in college; the disruptive impact of the pandemic has…

The abrupt shift to distance learning at the onset of the COVID-19 crisis exacerbated inequalities in California's K-12 system and added urgency to an ongoing discussion about the role of high school graduation policy in promoting equitable student outcomes. More rigorous graduation requirements, particularly in math and science, can improve…

Between 1990 and 2012, the percentage of 13-year-olds (most of whom are 8th graders) taking algebra more than doubled, from 15% to 34% (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). Yet recent education policy changes suggest that this movement to encourage algebra-taking in 8th grade has begun to reverse course. Existing research suggests that…

This issue brief is part of a larger study of California continuation high schools begun in 2007. While the first phase of the study examined various alternative education options throughout the state, this second phase focused on 23 higher performing continuation high schools in California selected based on multiple student outcome measures. This…

Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in April 2009. Using a comprehensive longitudinal data set as an example, poses questions and raises issues around defining a high school curriculum that is related to indicators of college success.

Data from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and achievement tests and from the High School and Beyond Survey were examined to explore: (1) differences among states in the amount of coursework taken by high school students; (2) differences across states in SAT achievement test scores; (3) the relationship between course taking and achievement; and…