Is Developmental Education Helping Community College Students Persist? A Critical Review of the Literature

Abstract

There is considerable debate about the effects and benefits of developmental/basic skills/remediation education in college. Proponents argue that it enables poorly prepared high school students to attain the necessary preparation to succeed in college while critics contend that the benefits of remediation are not clear. The main objective of the article is to provide a critical review of the literature on the impact of developmental math on the educational outcomes and persistence of community college students. The authors first describe three types of summative quantitative evaluations. The authors then review a number of studies that have used these techniques to evaluate the impact of developmental math on a number of educational outcomes of community college students nationwide. In the last section, the authors propose the use of regression discontinuity (RD) design as a feasible evaluation tool that institutional researchers at community colleges can use to identify the level (i.e., number of levels below college level courses), subpopulations (i.e., gender, race/ ethnicity, and age), and institutions (i.e., multicampus district) that are doing a better job in teaching the developmental courses needed to persist in college.