Improving Developmental
Courses is Not Enough:
Accelerating to a New Paradigm
Lisa Bernhagen
lbernhagen@highline.edu
Wendy Swyt
wswyt@highline.edu
Highline Community College
Our old developmental sequence…
English 30: Writing the Sentence
English 60: Writing the Paragraph
English 91: Writing the Essay
• COMPASS Placement (Score of 0-11 placed in English
71)
• ESL and native students mixed at all levels
• English 71 and 81 were frequently combined in one
course because COMPASS placement was muddled.
• In English 71 and English 81, instructors faced an
unwieldy range of students…they complained it was
hard to teach the course effectively…it was unclear what
the courses were supposed to do and for whom.
We changed the curriculum and placement.
We thought we were fabulous…
English 71
•Paragraph responses
“English For Nonnative •ESL COMPASS Placement
Speakers”
•ReWrit 71: Linked to Reading 71
English 81
“Writing Skills”
English 91
•Multi-paragraph responses
•ReWrit 81: Linked sections for
ESL students to Reading 81
•ReWrit 81: ESL COMPASS
•English 81: Regular COMPASS
• COMPASS and ESL
“College Preparatory COMPASS placement
• ATD intervention
Writing”
2010: We realized that we were not…
 The pipeline effect
 Multiple exit points
 Acceleration
National Data on the Pipeline Effect
Students taking Remedial Reading courses
From Referral, Enrollment, and Completion in Developmental Education Sequences in Community
Colleges (CCRC Working Paper No. 15). By: Thomas Bailey, Dong Wook Jeong & Sung-Woo Cho.
December 2008. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia
University. (Revised November 2009).
Student’s initial
placement
% of students who
successfully
complete college level
gatekeeper
course in subject
One level below college
42%
Two levels below college
29%
Three levels below college
24%
…students who are referred to developmental courses
two or three steps below college-level rarely complete
introductory college courses and are even less likely to
complete degrees.
Bailey, Thomas. (February 2009). Rethinking Developmental
Education. CCRC Brief. Community College Research Center.
Teachers College, Columbia University.
Our pipeline
English 71
•Paragraph responses
“English For Nonnative •ESL COMPASS Placement
Speakers”
•ReWrit 71: Linked to Reading 71
English 81
“Writing Skills”
English 91
•Multi-paragraph responses
•ReWrit 81: Linked sections for
ESL students to Reading 81
•ReWrit 81: ESL COMPASS
•English 81: Regular COMPASS
• COMPASS and ESL
“College Preparatory COMPASS placement
• ATD intervention
Writing”
Exit Points…
 Will the student pass English 71?
 Will the student go on to English 81?
 Will the student pass English 81?
 Will the student go on to English 91?
 Will the student pass English 91?
 Will the student go on to English 101?
 Will the student pass English 101?
 More exit points = less chance of a student making it
to and through English 101.
Our Own Pipeline Data
Initial placement
in developmental
English
Enrolled in English 101
(data shows enrolled)
English 91
67%
English 81
47%
English 71
32%
…the costs of remediation, for both society and student,
outweigh the benefits.
-- Thomas Bailey
Bailey’s recommendations:
 1. Rethink assessment, focusing on understanding what students need
in order to be successful in college rather than simply concentrating on
placement within the sequence of a curriculum.
 2. Abandon the dichotomy between developmental and college-ready
students for a wide range of students above and below current
developmental cutoff scores by opening college level courses to more
students and by incorporating academic support assistance into college
level courses.
 3. For those students whose skills are so weak that they could not be
successful even in augmented college-level courses, explicitly work to
minimize the time necessary to prepare students for entry into those
courses.
Bailey, Thomas. (February 2009). Rethinking Developmental Education.
CCRC Brief. Community College Research Center. Teachers College,
Columbia University
Acceleration Models:
Ways to Shorten the Pipeline
 Mainstreaming
 Place students directly into college level with support
(Baltimore, HCC)
 By-pass dev ed courses
 bridge courses, high school transcript placement, placement
prep/retake (Seattle CC’s)
 Compression
 Offer content of two courses compressed into one quarter
 Curricular redesign
 Change sequence and structure (TCC, Chabot)
 Embedded learning
 Dev ed courses linked to college level “content”, I-BEST
Accelerated Learning Project (ALP)
Community College of Baltimore County
 Students placing into the course below College English are
mainstreamed into a College English class.
 In each ALP section, there are 8 “dev ed” students with 12
“regular” English 101 students.
 Rather than taking English 101 as 3 credits (on a semester
system), the “dev ed” students enroll for 5 credits.
 The 8 students meet separately with the same instructor in
support course each week (2 credits).
 Completion statistics for college level English
 Non-accelerated sequence: 40%
 Accelerated course: 75%
Chabot Community College:
Open Access Developmental English
 At Chabot College in California, any student
scoring below college level English on their
placement exam (Accuplacer) can take an
accelerated four credit pre-college course instead
of the traditional 8-credit two semester sequence.
 “Open Access” college prep
 Completion statistics for college level English
 Non-accelerated sequence: 28-34%
 Accelerated course: 52-57%
Highline CC: What we are doing
 English 101 combined with extra support in 10-credit
course.
 Though students get 10 credits and a grade in 101 and 91
at the end, this is not a compression model.
 Students work on English 101 assignments and readings
 Support time is used for just-in-time remediation: what
do students need to do the readings and assignments?
 Completion statistics for college level English
 Non-accelerated sequence: 56%
 Accelerated course: 79%
In our own context
What allowed us to do this:
 AtD intervention
 Supportive administration: pilots are encouraged, institutional
researcher on board
 Faculty experienced in both pre-college and college level writing
What challenges we face:
 Placement
 Historical political structures: a separate reading department
 Some instructors who teach 71 and 81 are wedded to the 3-level
pipeline, despite the data about attrition.
 Our computer system (registration, transcripts, degree audit)
In your context…
Questions to address in your small group:
1.
What conversations need to happen on your campus
to make acceleration work?
2. What are the strengths on your campus that might
help with implementing acceleration?
3. What are the challenges you will face in shortening
the pre-college pipeline at your own institution?
Our results so far…
 Instructors are challenged, excited, galvanized
 Students are passing English 101 at a higher rate than
“regular English 101 students” (79/100 versus 76/100)
 We are rethinking our entire sequence
Out of every 100 students …
90 retained
in 091
•(90% retention rate) LOSE
79 pass 091
(2.0+)
10%
•(88% pass rate)
67 enroll in
101 within 3
years
•(85% enrollment rate) LOSE
60 retained
in 101
15%
•(90% retention rate) LOSE
56 pass 101
(2.0+)
Office of Institutional Research, x3205
7/31/2012
10%
• (93% pass rate)
Accelerated Pedagogy: Eng 101 with support (10 credits;
one quarter).
92 retained in
101 with
support
•(92% retention rate)
83 pass the
support
(2.0+)
•(90% pass rate)
79 pass Engl
101 (2.0+)
Office of Institutional Research, x3205
7/31/2012
•(86% pass rate)
Pipeline
100 start in
English 91
No Pipeline
100 start in
Eng 101 with
support
41% increase in the college
course pass rate (23
percentage points).
56 pass Eng
101 (2.0+)
Modified 10/10/12 from the Office of
Institutional Research, created
7/31/2012
79 pass Eng
101 (2.0+)
How did students do in gatekeeper
courses after Eng 101?
41% MORE students
make it into
gatekeeper courses
from Eng 101 with
support than 91, 101;
5.3% MORE than
from Eng 101.
Eng 091, then 101
(n=2,815) (56%
complete)
Eng 101 (n = 10,293)
(76% complete)
Eng 101 with support
(n=340) (79%
complete)
COMM 101
ENGL 205
PSYC&100,
PSYCH100
SOC 110, SOC
101
Median
Median
Median
Median
2.9
2.7
2.1
3.5
3.1
3.0
2.5
3.4
2.5
3.1
2.1
3.2
Acceleration exposes and undermines many
assumptions of developmental instruction:
 Placement, though not perfect, correctly indicates
where students “belong” in the sequence of pre-college
courses.
 We must front-load skills before students get to the
college level stuff – e.g. they first need to write clear
sentences, then paragraphs, then essays.
Acceleration: Big ideas
 High challenge, high support.
 Meaningful and integrated with college content
 Outcomes measure college-readiness, not next-step
readiness.
 Acceleration doesn’t mean “faster”; it means deeper
and better.
Principles for Accelerated Pedagogy-Katie Hern, Chabot College
#1: Engages students in intellectually challenging experiences that
develop the most essential skills and ways of thinking required in
college.
#2: Attends to the affective issues that get in the way of students’
learning and success.
#3: Facilitates an ongoing metacognitive conversation with
students about what they are learning, why they are learning it,
where the process breaks down for them, and how they can
successfully approach it.
#4: Recognizes that mastery doesn’t happen all at once – celebrates
emerging strengths, maintains a constructive, non-shaming
orientation toward problems in student work, focuses on growth.
(“College-readiness” ≠ Mechanical perfection)
Accelerated Pedagogy Activity
 What do assignments in our accelerated English 101 Plus
look like?
 How are they different from what has been traditionally
done in pre-college writing courses?
In your small groups, look at the two assignments we’ve
passed out:
1.
How do these assignments differ?
2.
How does one more clearly reflect the pedagogy of
acceleration?
What we want you to leave with…
It doesn’t matter how successful individual
developmental courses are; we must shorten the pipeline.
2. Acceleration takes many forms. Each institution must
work with their structures, advantages, and challenges to
develop what works.
3. Acceleration is not tied primarily to a curriculum
“model”; pedagogy must also be accelerated.
4. We need to consciously and intentionally work against
placement and traditional textbooks, both of which limit
developmental curriculum and do not effectively address
college readiness.
1.