CAPR 2.0: The Next Generation of Developmental Education Reform and Research

By Susan Bickerstaff and Dan Cullinan

When CAPR was established in 2014, the biggest problem with developmental education was clear: Long developmental course sequences were slowing students down and sometimes discouraging them enough to leave college, with negative outcomes disproportionately concentrated among low-income students and students of color. The number of students who were able to successfully complete multi-course, multisemester developmental sequences was simply too low to argue for maintaining the system as it was.

A clearer picture of how to reshape developmental education was also emerging. Though they had yet to take hold in many colleges, evidence was beginning to build for corequisite remediation, math pathways, multiple measures placement, and other reforms. Since then, the evidence base around some of these reforms has grown, and the field has begun to turn to considerations of where, when, for whom, and under what conditions reforms can propel students toward their college and career goals.

Over half of states now mandate or recommend that broad-access colleges reform the way they assess students’ college readiness or change the sequencing and structure of their developmental courses. Policymakers and practitioners face myriad decisions about how to enact these reforms in their unique contexts, but they still have limited research-based guidance on course design, costs, and implementation supports. These challenges have been amplified by the COVID-19 crisis and the rapid shift to online testing, instruction, and services.

Current Questions on Developmental Reform

The first six years of CAPR—initially funded as a research and development center by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)—yielded rigorous evidence that multiple measures placement and math pathways can accelerate students’ progress into college-level courses and improve their success rates in those courses. To help colleges around the country implement these programs and to continue building knowledge on what works for students, the center has been extended with new grants from IES and private funders. CAPR will work closely with state systems to use lessons extracted from the first phase of research to enable colleges across the country to adopt and scale effective course placement practices, adapting these reform strategies to local contexts. The implementation tools developed by CAPR researchers will become resources for colleges around the country.

This work with colleges will, in turn, support new research, contributing to our understanding of how the lessons can be applied in the real world to maximize impact and informing new questions relevant to the issues the field now faces. We have organized these questions into three broad areas.

First, we seek to learn which developmental education reforms work for whom. When studied rigorously, which reform strategies have positive impacts for Black, Latinx, and low-income students, as well as those considered the least likely to succeed in college? We will look to understand approaches to developmental education reform that address racial inequity. How can we ensure that the progress being made in developmental education is benefiting Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students?

Second, we will investigate what new practices colleges are adopting to place students into courses. Which models, such as directed self-placement, are being implemented, and which show the most promise?

Third, we plan to examine policies and practices that support the implementation and scaling of reforms. How can implementation be strengthened through proactive data sharing, professional development, and instructional design? What are the costs associated with the reforms?

Across all three areas, CAPR will engage with the field and build evidence to support the implementation of promising practices in real time. We will partner with networks and organizations to improve collaboration among educators, policymakers, and postsecondary researchers.

CAPR’s Suite of Projects

New funding is already supporting fresh CAPR projects and the expansion of existing projects. CAPR is continuing to assemble a portfolio of research to move the field forward and help colleges apply the lessons we’ve learned.

IES has funded an extension of CAPR’s multiple measures and math pathways projects so we can track students for longer and explore the impacts of these reforms several years out. In addition, a new IES grant is supporting a synthesis of the current evidence on promising strategies. The synthesis will inform tools and resources for educators and policymakers embarking on reform. CAPR will also work to improve collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and educators through webinars and other engagement activities.

Another project will further expand our work on multiple measures assessment. While colleges have made progress in adopting multiple measures for developmental placement, interviews with representatives from more than 30 states, colleges, and intermediary organizations over the summer of 2020 revealed uneven implementation and design problems such as strict placement criteria for math, which artificially limits the numbers of students who can be helped by the reform. Moreover, the pandemic is forcing colleges to experiment with new and untested practices, such as directed self-placement and the use of diagnostic tests to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses.

Funding from Ascendium Education Group will allow CAPR to assist colleges and states nationwide in the adoption and full-scale implementation of multiple measures assessment. It will also allow us to explore how multiple measures, in combination with other reforms such as corequisite courses and equity-focused advising, can improve the outcomes of Black, Latinx, and low-income students, as well as students who have not yet benefited from colleges’ developmental education reforms. CAPR researchers will work closely with two states, providing individualized technical assistance to facilitate full-scale adoption of multiple measures assessment in all their colleges. We will undertake cost and implementation studies in these states to examine the upfront costs for establishing multiple measures systems and the institutional conditions that support their adoption in diverse college and state environments.

Additionally, funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting another project to help colleges implement reforms. CAPR will investigate how institutions can design corequisite courses to close gaps in opportunity and outcomes by race and income. The Co-Requisite Design Collaborative, an initiative of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is a two-year project to design and field-test supports for corequisite reforms centered on the student experience. The collaborative will develop an equity-minded, holistic, corequisite course model and implement it at four colleges. CAPR will collect data on the model and its development to provide information on implementation strategies, stakeholders’ experiences, and ways colleges can make racial and economic equity a core part of their developmental education reform work.

Together, these and future projects will advance our knowledge of how developmental education reform can propel students into college and bring that knowledge to colleges hungry for evidence-based solutions.

Susan Bickerstaff is a senior research associate at CCRC. She is also a member of CAPR’s senior research staff. Dan Cullinan is a senior research associate at MDRC. He is also a member of CAPR’s senior research staff.