By Kri Burkander
Overview
California has the largest and most diverse community college system in the U.S., serving more than two million students each year. Since 2017, the state—through Assembly Bills (AB) 705 and 1705—has worked to improve student outcomes across various demographic groups through fundamentally transforming the math and English pathways available to incoming students. While AB 705 focused on equity in access through requiring multiple measures placement, AB 1705 eliminated all developmental education (DE) coursework and streamlined pathways for STEM students.
Research for Action (RFA), in partnership with Lauren Schudde at the University of Texas at Austin, and with funding from the Institution of Education Sciences, conducted a five-year study of the impact, cost, and implementation of these two policies. In this blog series, we will focus on each of these three areas, with the aim of:
- Providing policymakers and community college administrators and faculty with actionable learnings about the role of developmental education reform in promoting student success in community college;
- Offering implications of the California experience for other states that have or may consider similar reforms; and
- Elevating lessons about developmental education reform to funders who have supported or are considering supporting initiatives on this topic.
In this post we draw from our research to emphasize the impact of the policies on student outcomes. We focus on the “top-line” evidence from our work, and you can access our interim reports to go deeper into the data.
What Did We Learn?
In studying the impact of AB 705 and AB 1705, we established three questions:
- What is the impact of transfer-level placement, compared with placement into a prerequisite DE math or English course, on both short and long-term student outcomes?
- What is the overall impact of the AB 705 policy on student outcomes?
- Does the overall policy effect vary across different socio-demographic student groups?
To address these questions, we used data from the Chancellor’s Office Management Information System, which contains longitudinal records for the entire population of California community college students, matched with high school achievement data provided by the California Department of Education. We focused on first-time-in-college (FTIC) students in our analyses, and employed Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) analyses and Interrupted Time Series analyses to estimate effects of the policy.
Here are the highlights of what we learned:
What is the impact of transfer-level placement, compared with placement into a prerequisite DE math or English course, on both short- and long-term student outcomes?
There are consistent and positive associations between early enrollment in transfer-level math and English courses and academic momentum, credential attainment, and transfer outcomes. Controlling for prior academic achievement, students who began in transfer-level math and English were more likely to have better course-level outcomes than their peers in below-transfer-level courses, including a substantially higher probability of passing a transfer-level course. They also posted higher GPAs and accrued more transfer-level credits in both year one and year four after initial enrollment, reflecting broader academic momentum.
In the long-term, enrolling in transfer-level coursework was also associated with significantly improved likelihood of earning a community college credential, earning a certificate, earning an associate degree, and transferring to a four-year university.
What is the overall impact of the AB 705 policy on student outcomes?
Following the implementation of AB 705, transfer-level math and English enrollment and completion rates were higher than the pre-policy trend line, except during the COVID-19 period. Gains in enrollment consistently outpaced gains in completion and effects were more pronounced in math than English, though it’s important to note that English departments had higher transfer-level course enrollment than math departments pre-AB 705 (so math had more room for growth). In addition, for transfer-level course completion, math outcomes improved steadily in each post-policy year studied. Importantly, AB 705 had the most positive and consistent effects on students with middle and low levels of prior academic achievement; these are the students who would have been most likely to be enrolled in DE in the pre-reform period.
Does the overall policy effect vary across different socio-demographic student groups?
We learned that Black and Hispanic students, compared with White students, experienced significantly greater gains in transfer-level course enrollment in both math and English across all three post-AB 705 policy cohorts. AB 705 also helped narrow racial/ethnic gaps in transfer-level course completion, especially in math. In addition, women experienced significantly greater improvements than men in transfer-level course enrollment and completion following AB 705, particularly in math.
Conclusions
We learned that, for the most part, AB705 is operating as intended by enabling greater enrollment in transfer-level math and English courses. By simply increasing access to transfer-level courses, colleges give students the opportunity to pass those courses—and many of them do. It also appears that the reforms may have the greatest impact on students who are traditionally underrepresented in transfer-level courses.
Implications for Future Developmental Education Reform
Based on our experience estimating the impact of these reforms, we’d like to offer several implications for various stakeholders, including policymakers in other contexts and funders (e.g., foundations) considering taking on or investing in developmental education policy reforms and building evidence to improve developmental education.
For policymakers:
- The gradual rollout of the reforms made an experimental design infeasible; institutions began adopting these reforms over time and unevenly, which required a creative approach to identify impacts. Policymakers who are interested in understanding the effect of the policy should be advised that a strict eligibility cutoff or implementation date facilitates the identification of impacts of these reforms.
- The metric of success associated with California’s policy, referred to as “throughput,” is defined as student completion of a transfer-level course within one year of enrollment. In order to isolate the effect of these reforms on college academic outcomes, we restricted our sample to first time-in college students, leaving out a significant number of community college students from our analysis. We advise policymakers to consider success metrics that afford analysis of the impact for all students.
For funders:
- Understanding the implementation context of the reforms supported our impact analysis and helped our team focus on the outcomes that really matter for students. Funders are advised to focus their investments not only on impact studies, but to include funding to examine implementation, which offers critical contextual insights.
Coming Next
In our next piece in this series, we will focus on key findings from the cost study. In the meantime, we invite you to visit the RFA website to access publications about this initiative and learn more about the research process and the findings discussed here. You are also welcome to reach out for a conversation about the impact study; we’d love to hear policymaker and funder perspectives on developmental education reform.
Kri Burkander is a Senior Research Associate at Research for Action