Equity for Community College Students | Final Report | Research Team | Background & Goals | Funder
Final Report
Assessment and Placement Policies and Practices in Developmental Math: Evidence from Experimentation in a Large Urban Community College District in California
Tatiana Melguizo and Pullias team (2015)
This report examines assessment and placement policies used to assign students to developmental education in California and summarizes findings from seven studies related to key decisions throughout the process. We discover how colleges place students impacts persistence and transfer, that there are various ways to improve placement policies, and that students will benefit from additional support to bolster their math confidence when they enter college. To conclude, we outline steps that policymakers and practitioners can take to improve the process.
Categories: STEM Reform, Math Equity, Policymaking
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Research Team
Principal Investigator
USC Pullias Center
Co-Principal Investigator
American Inst. for Research
Co-Principal Investigator
L.A. Community College District
Research Assistants
Graduate Research Assistants
- Kristen Fong, USC Pullias Center
- Holly Kosiewicz, USC Pullias Center
- Federick Ngo, USC Pullias Center
- Bo Min Kim, USC Dornsife Department of Economics
- Will Kwon, USC Dornsife Department of Economics
- Amber Hroch, USC
- Lindsay Poland, American Institute for Research
- Nicholas Mills, American Institute for Research
Undergraduate Research Assistants
- Samantha Castillo
- John Hernandez
- Dorothy Le
- Janet Nhan
- Robert Raad
- George Wu
Background and Goals
Every year, more than half the students in the Los Angeles Community College District are placed into basic skills mathematics courses. This often requires students to take a number of developmental courses before being allowed to enroll in college-level courses—a requirement that significantly extends these students’ community college careers and incurs high costs for the school district.
But do these placement policies truly benefit students on their educational careers? What are the effects of these placement decisions on the educational outcomes of community college students? To answer these questions, the two-year Math in Community College study was begun in 2010, funded by a $546,452 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Research.
This study evaluated the effect of basic math skills education on the course-taking patterns of community college transfer students. Researchers conducted a secondary analysis of transcript data from 158,000 students placed in basic skills math courses between 2001 and 2006 in the nine community colleges that comprise the Los Angeles Community College District.
The main goal of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of developmental math placement policies on student success in community college. Researchers compared students who received relatively similar scores on math placement tests but were placed at different levels because they were ether just above or just below placement cut-points. This allowed researchers to evaluate the longer-term effects that placement had on students’ college persistence, degree attainment and transfer rates to four-year colleges.
In addition, the study explored how assessment and placement policies are designed and implemented, noting that the decentralized nature of the governance structure of the LACCD gave each college in the district the discretion to set its own assessment and placement policies—resulting in very different policies in each of the nine colleges.
Community College Sites
East Los Angeles College (ELAC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles City College (LACC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles Harbor College (LAHC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles Mission College (LAMC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles Southwest College (LASC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles Trade Technical College (LATTC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
West Los Angeles College (WLAC)
- Assessment and placement policies
- College profile: PDF | Powerpoint
Funder
This study was funded by a $546,452 Institute of Education Sciences grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Research. The official title of the grant is “Evaluating the Effects of Basic Skills Mathematics Placement on Academic Outcomes of Community College Students.”
The contents of this webpage were developed under Grant #R305A100381 from the U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.