Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness

06/09/2025

Using nine terms of outcomes data, a CAPR article published in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness presents findings from an impact study on multiple measures assessment at seven State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges:

Using nine terms of outcomes data, this CAPR working paper presents findings from an impact study on multiple measures assessment at seven State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges.

03/07/2025

📣 New blog post! 📣 MDRC’s Intervention ROI tool is a free interactive web application that allows community college administrators to estimate the costs and revenues associated with implementing an intervention at their college, including two studied by CAPR.

This blost post introduces MDRC's new tool which helps estimate the costs and revenues associated with implementing reforms at colleges.

02/26/2025

Informed by a recent project to scale MMA throughout the state of Arkansas, a new CAPR brief describes the state’s policy context, summarizes adoption efforts, and presents five strategies for other states that want to scale assessment reform.

This brief describes the state’s policy context, summarizes adoption efforts, and presents five strategies for other states that want to scale assessment reform.

02/13/2025

Direct college placement—enrolling students in college-level courses instead of developmental classes—leads to better outcomes, according to a recent CAPR study. The study compared traditional standardized testing with multiple measures assessment, also known as “MMA,” which factored in high school GPA. Students placed directly into college-level courses through MMA performed much better than those placed in remedial courses, according to the findings.

“MMA was successful because it increased the number of students placed into college-level courses, not because it was better at targeting which students should be in college-level courses,” the report says.

Direct college placement leads to better outcomes, according to a recent study by the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness.

01/29/2025

Even for students with the lowest standardized test scores, the chances of completing a gateway math course within the first year rose by 15 pp under the corequisite approach, writes Florence Xiaotao Ran for the Mathematical Association of America.

Check out a related Q&A with Dr. Ran on findings from her study on corequisite support in Tennessee community colleges: https://postsecondaryreadiness.org/new-evidence-low-placement-scores-corequisite/

By Florence Xiaotao Ran Over the past decade, developmental education has experienced major changes. More than 20 states and higher education systems have moved away from traditional prerequisite models to adopt corequisite remediation. This innovative approach enables students to enroll directly in...

01/28/2025

A recent analysis finds that placing students directly into college-level courses, rather than using a more precise placement system, is key to learners’ success.

A recent analysis finds placing students directly into college-level courses, rather than a more precise placement system, is key to learners’ success.

01/17/2025

A growing number of states and colleges are using multiple measures assessment (MMA) to determine which students are ready for college-level courses and which students may need some remediation. In a new CAPR blog post, three state leaders discuss Arkansas’s adoption and scaling of MMA. Their stories provide informative examples for other states considering doing the same.

State leaders discuss Arkansas’s adoption and scaling of multiple measures assessment and provide examples for states doing the same.

01/03/2025

A new CAPR synthesis of two RCTs of multiple measures assessment and placement systems suggests that it's more important to refer more students directly to college-level courses than to try to design a system that better predicts success in college-level courses. Colleges should consider lowering the requirements for direct placement into college-level courses or implementing other policies that place more students in college-level math and English instead of developmental courses.

CAPR is MDRC and the Community College Research Center.

This report synthesizes findings from two studies comparing the effects of traditional test-only course placement to MMA course placement.

01/02/2025

Corequisite courses in Tennessee community colleges increased gateway course completion by more than 20 percentage points overall. Moreover, students across the entire placement test score distribution, including those farthest away from the college readiness threshold, completed gateway and subsequent college-level courses at higher rates. But a recent analysis by Florence Ran, a professor at the University of Delaware and a Community College Research Center affiliate, also found that students with the lowest math scores were more likely to drop out of college than similar students in prerequisite courses. Read more in a new CAPR Q&A.

After more than a decade of developmental education reform, questions remain about whether students get enough help from corequisite courses.

11/25/2024

In the 2019–20 academic year, there was a notable departure from the longstanding trend of increasing enrollment in remedial courses, writes Tiffany Thai of New America on the CAPR blog. After nearly two decades of growth, the percentage of community college students enrolled in remedial coursework dropped from 23% in 2015–16 to 16% in 2019–20. The period from 2016 to 2020 coincided with a great deal of reform to remediation that likely contributed to this decline.

Research shows declining enrollment in remedial courses. In this blog post, New America's Tiffany Thai provides insight into whether this decline has been experienced equally among racial demographics and how recent developmental education reforms affect specific student populations.

09/23/2024

Students earned more credits at first, but graduation rates didn’t increase at Tennessee’s community colleges