Developmental Education Aligned to the Common Core State Standards: Insights and Illustrations

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), implemented in 44 states and the District of Columbia, are pegged to a set of college and career readiness standards, creating a potential opportunity to improve the alignment between the secondary and postsecondary sectors. In the current exploratory study, the authors draw on interview data to examine whether faculty and college leaders are considering or undertaking reforms of developmental education informed by the CCSS. The study reveals a spectrum of awareness about, and interest in, incorporating the CCSS into developmental education. The authors identify some states and localities that were taking the CCSS into account when developing or changing their developmental education curricula. In some states, this was done widely due to state policy requirements; in other settings, this work has been driven by individual faculty interests and concerns. However, interviewees indicated that most college stakeholders do not know about the CCSS or believe that the standards have implications for postsecondary practice

Enhancing Rigor in Developmental Education

How can instructors prepare students for college-level courses and beyond when many students enter the classroom in need of significant support to develop their academic skills and knowledge? This issue of Inside Out, a publication of CCRC’s Scaling Innovation project, addresses this question by describing how community college faculty are working to increase rigor within reformed developmental education classrooms. The authors focus on three strategies instructors have utilized to create a more rigorous curriculum and new instructional approaches, and they describe faculty and student experiences with these strategies in developmental courses

How Can We Improve Teaching in Higher Education? Learning From CUNY Start

Despite the growing evidence on promising approaches to postsecondary instruction—and particularly on the benefits of student-centered, conceptually oriented instruction for underprepared students—there has been limited investment in supporting these approaches’ widespread implementation. Most postsecondary instructors have limited training in pedagogy, and broad-access colleges have relatively few resources to invest in improving instruction and building high-quality curriculum. Moreover, the field has few documented models of scalable professional development that results in demonstrated improvements in teaching and student learning. To help address this gap in the literature, this paper describes the professional development model used in CUNY Start, a program developed at the City University of New York to support entering students identified as academically underprepared in literacy and mathematics. Using interview and survey data collected as part of a larger random assignment evaluation of CUNY Start, the paper explores how CUNY Start’s multifaceted, coordinated system of professional development supports postsecondary instructors in enacting a student-centered, conceptually oriented instructional approach. CUNY Start’s professional development model has several notable features: a staffing approach that values instructional expertise, an apprenticeship for new hires, coaching through classroom observations, and cross-college meetings. While this model is distinct from traditional approaches to professional development in higher education, elements of it can be applied in other higher education settings. The paper concludes by discussing how colleges and departments might structure professional development around a set of student learning goals, offer a system of ongoing supports, and create a staffing model that supports the development of instructional expertise

Becoming College-Ready: Early Findings From a CUNY Start Evaluation

CUNY Start, a pre-matriculation program developed by the City University of New York, seeks to help the lowest placed developmental education students become college ready in just one semester. The program targets incoming students who are assessed as needing remediation in math, reading, and writing by providing intensive instruction for one semester while students delay enrollment in college. It uses a conceptual student-centered curriculum and instructional delivery method and provides a robust approach to staffing and training that allows instructors to learn to implement these strategies while under the tutelage of experienced teachers. It also provides advising, tutoring, and a weekly seminar that teaches students skills they need to succeed in college. Students pay only $75 for the program and do not use financial aid. This report describes the early findings of a random assignment evaluation and implementation study of CUNY Start by CCRC, MDRC, and CUNY. After following CUNY Start and control group students for three semesters, the researchers found: CUNY Start was implemented as it was designed, and the contrast between the program and the colleges’ standard developmental courses and services was substantial. During the first semester in the study, program group students made substantially more progress through developmental education than control group students. Control group students earned more college credits than program group students, as predicted by CUNY Start’s designers. During the second semester, program group students enrolled at CUNY colleges either in CUNY Start or in non-CUNY Start courses at a higher rate than control group students. A final report will look at CUNY Start students’ persistence in college, college credit accumulation, and graduation rates. Another paper will detail CUNY Start’s math curriculum and pedagogy, and a brief will focus on CUNY Start’s staff recruitment, induction, and professional development. CUNY will also create a CUNY Start “Practice Guide.

The Changing Landscape of Developmental Education Practices: Findings from a National Survey and Interviews with Postsecondary Institutions

Research suggests that far more students are referred to developmental education courses than necessary, and that developmental education presents a barrier to students’ success. As a result, many in the field have called for reforms to developmental education to address these challenges. This CAPR report documents developmental education practices used in broad-access two- and four-year colleges across the country based on a 2016 survey of public two- and four-year colleges and private, nonprofit four-year colleges as well as interviews with institutional and state leaders. It examines practices in assessment, placement, instruction, and support services and finds that many colleges are experimenting with changes to traditional developmental education. A growing number of public colleges are using measures in addition to standardized tests, such as high school grades, to assess college readiness. Additionally, many colleges are implementing instructional reforms. The most prevalent of these are compressing developmental courses into shorter periods, offering diverse math courses that align with students’ careers, allowing students to determine their own learning pace, and integrating developmental reading and writing instruction into one course. However, while widespread, these reforms typically reach less than half of students at the colleges. Key findings: Most two-year and four-year public colleges offer developmental courses, though they are more prevalent at two-year colleges. Multisemester prerequisite sequences make up a substantial proportion of these courses. Most colleges use standardized tests to assess students’ college readiness. However, since 2011, there has been a 30-percentage-point increase in the proportion of colleges using multiple measures to assess students’ college readiness. The most popular additional measure used is high school performance. Many colleges, particularly two-year colleges, are experimenting with different instructional approaches in developmental education; however, these approaches tend to make up less than half of colleges’ overall developmental course offerings

Dual Enrollment for College Completion: Findings from Tennessee and Peer States

In early 2012, a consortium of stakeholders, including the Committee for Economic Development, the Kresge Foundation, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Tennessee Business Roundtable, the Tennessee College Access and Success Network, and the Tennessee State Board of Education, commissioned the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct a study of dual enrollment in Tennessee and a sample of peer states. Motivated by Tennessee’s college completion agenda and a belief that helping high school students gain access to college coursework can set them on a path to postsecondary credential completion, the Chamber aimed to (1) develop an understanding of the potential benefits to dual enrollment, (2) gain information about and generate lessons from peer states’ dual enrollment experiences, and (3) present possible modifications to Tennessee’s current dual enrollment policies. This report presents finding from the first phase of the study, an examination of dual enrollment research and peer state policies. In Tennessee, dual enrollment refers to an arrangement in which high school students enroll in college courses and earn college credit that is recorded on a regular college transcript. Dual credit refers to an arrangement in which high school courses are aligned or articulated with college courses at a specific postsecondary institution; students who successfully complete the high school version and enroll in the partnering college may subsequently be granted college credit. In this report, we refer to both arrangements by the more general term, dual enrollment

Strengthening Developmental Education Reforms: Evidence on Implementation Efforts From the Scaling Innovation Project

In this paper, the authors draw on empirical data from the Community College Research Center’s Scaling Innovation project to examine trends in developmental education instructional reform and outline a framework for reform adoption and adaptation. The paper’s findings are based on two qualitative data sources: a scan of developmental education reforms that involved changes to curricula, course structure, and/or pedagogy; and fieldwork conducted at 11 colleges working to replicate highpotential instructional innovations developed at other colleges. The data suggest that colleges tend to enact developmental education reforms in ways that may unintentionally undermine their potential benefits. The authors present a framework for engaging practitioners in activities that will increase the impact of their developmental education reforms while strengthening institutional capacity

The ABC130 barrel module prototyping programme for the ATLAS strip tracker

For the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS Detector, its Inner Detector, consisting of silicon pixel, silicon strip and transition radiation sub-detectors, will be replaced with an all new 100 % silicon tracker, composed of a pixel tracker at inner radii and a strip tracker at outer radii. The future ATLAS strip tracker will include 11,000 silicon sensor modules in the central region (barrel) and 7,000 modules in the forward region (end-caps), which are foreseen to be constructed over a period of 3.5 years. The construction of each module consists of a series of assembly and quality control steps, which were engineered to be identical for all production sites. In order to develop the tooling and procedures for assembly and testing of these modules, two series of major prototyping programs were conducted: an early program using readout chips designed using a 250 nm fabrication process (ABCN-25) and a subsequent program using a follow-up chip set made using 130 nm processing (ABC130 and HCC130 chips). This second generation of readout chips was used for an extensive prototyping program that produced around 100 barrel-type modules and contributed significantly to the development of the final module layout. This paper gives an overview of the components used in ABC130 barrel modules, their assembly procedure and findings resulting from their tests.Comment: 82 pages, 66 figure

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged jet production in root s(NN)=2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions

We present measurements of the azimuthal dependence of charged jet production in central and semi-central root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV Pb-Pb collisions with respect to the second harmonic event plane, quantified as nu(ch)(2) (jet). Jet finding is performed employing the anti-k(T) algorithm with a resolution parameter R = 0.2 using charged tracks from the ALICE tracking system. The contribution of the azimuthal anisotropy of the underlying event is taken into account event-by-event. The remaining (statistical) region-to-region fluctuations are removed on an ensemble basis by unfolding the jet spectra for different event plane orientations independently. Significant non-zero nu(ch)(2) (jet) is observed in semi-central collisions (30-50% centrality) for 20 <p(T)(ch) (jet) <90 GeV/c. The azimuthal dependence of the charged jet production is similar to the dependence observed for jets comprising both charged and neutral fragments, and compatible with measurements of the nu(2) of single charged particles at high p(T). Good agreement between the data and predictions from JEWEL, an event generator simulating parton shower evolution in the presence of a dense QCD medium, is found in semi-central collisions. (C) 2015 CERN for the benefit of the ALICE Collaboration. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe