Until recently, most colleges required students to pass a college-level algebra course in order to earn a degree. As many as 50 percent to 70 percent of community college students enter college unprepared to take these courses, and fewer than 20 percent of such students ever successfully complete a college-level math course; the rest are…

Originally designed for students who test into at least two levels of developmental education in a particular subject area, FastStart is a compressed course program model launched in 2005 at the Community College of Denver (CCD). The program combines multiple semester-length courses into a single intensive semester, while providing case…

Research on student achievement within the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project (UCSMP) and Core-Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP) at the secondary level is beginning to accumulate, however, much less is known about how prepared these students are for post-secondary education. Therefore this study involving students within one tracked…

The research reported in this paper took place at an Hispanic-serving, public community college and examined the effects of alternative institutional placement policies on student academic success. Results showed that when placement methods considered multiple measures of academic preparedness, students were initially placed into higher level…