cover image: High Flyers: Policies and Strategies that Boost Developmental Education Success in Florida's Community Colleges

High Flyers: Policies and Strategies that Boost Developmental Education Success in Florida's Community Colleges

In 2010, Jobs for the Future (JFF) contracted BTW "informing change" (BTW) to conduct a study on developmental education (DevEd) practices and policies in the state of Florida. This study was undertaken with two purposes. First, JFF wanted to see what common threads could be identified among the strategies and approaches of community colleges that outperformed their peers in advancing developmental mathematics students into college-level courses. In addition to an interest in the institutional stories themselves, JFF had a second purpose in commissioning this research. JFF has served as the state policy lead for two ambitious multi-institution and multi-state community college improvement efforts in the past few years: Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the Developmental Education Initiative (DEI). This study used focus groups, interviews and supplementary data to explore the extent to which selected colleges exhibit characteristics of DevEd success and how statewide policies may contribute to strong DevEd performance in relation to these characteristics. The first part of this report is a brief on Florida's DevEd policies, as seen from the perspective of state administrators, college leaders and college staff. The second part is a set of case studies on the practices of three community colleges in Florida that were particularly successful in serving students in need of developmental math, compared to other colleges in the state during the years 2002 to 2008. Methodology for Selecting High-performing Colleges is appended. Individual sections contain exhibits and footnotes.

Authors

Ajose, Lande, Bhatt, Ria Sengupta, Kaur, Gagandeep

Authorizing Institution
Jobs for the Future
Education Level
Two Year Colleges
Location
Florida
Peer Reviewed
F
Publication Type
Reports - Research
Published in
United States of America

Table of Contents