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Increasing Success Rates in Developmental Math: The Complementary Role of Individual and Institutional Characteristics

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Abstract

This study tracks students’ progression through developmental math sequences and defines progression as both attempting and passing each level of the sequence. A model of successful progression in developmental education was built utilizing individual-, institutional-, and developmental math-level factors. Employing step-wise logistic regression models, we found that while each additional step improves model fit, the largest proportion of variance is explained by individual-level characteristics, and more variance is explained in attempting each level than passing that level. We identify specific individual and institutional factors associated with higher attempt (e.g., Latino) and passing rates (e.g., small class size) in the different courses of the developmental math trajectory. These findings suggest that colleges should implement programs and policies to increase attempt rates in developmental courses in order to increase passing rates of the math pre-requisite courses for specific certificates, associate degrees or transfer.

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Notes

  1. Developmental education is also commonly referred to as remediation or remedial education. These terms will be used interchangeably throughout the article.

  2. For the purposes of utilizing consistent language throughout the article, we describe the ethnic/racial categories as African American, Latino, White and Asian. When previous studies utilize other commonly referred categories like Black and Hispanic, we have changed these to African American and Latino, respectively.

  3. One college was dropped from the analysis because the school lacked data on the multiple measure points employed to place students into developmental math education.

  4. This only applies to having the assessment and placement college match the college in which the student takes their first math course. This was done to ensure that we did not include students who “gamed” the system and had a test score that would have placed them into one level, but because they took the class at another college, were able to enroll in a higher level. Some students placed into arithmetic and enrolled in arithmetic at the same college but then enrolled in pre-algebra at another college; these students are still included in the sample. However, only a small percentage of students take their math courses at multiple colleges.

  5. Computation available upon request from authors.

  6. The traditional manner of measuring successful progression through the developmental math trajectory calculates attempt and pass rates of developmental math students by dividing the number of students who attempt or pass the course by the total number of students initially placed into each level—thus utilizing the entire sample of students regardless of their enrollment in developmental math.

  7. Attempt is defined as enrolling in math and remaining past the no-penalty drop date. When computing the rates for all those who enroll whether or not they remain in the course, the attempt percentages decrease though the pass rates remain stable.

  8. Because of the statistical power in our models, we only discuss findings significant at the p < .01 level. All results are provided in Table 4.

  9. See Appendix Table 6 for results of progression outcomes which used the traditional selection process. These results are similar to Bailey et al. (2010).

  10. In this context, "gateway” courses relate to the highest level of math required prior to enrolling in college-level math, or math that is required for an associate’s degree and/or transfer. While the gateway course for the LUCCD at the time of this study was elementary algebra (requirement changed to intermediate algebra in 2009), this is not always the case.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100381 to the University of Southern California. Additional support was received from an internal grant from the Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (ASHSS) Initiative of the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pullias Center for Higher Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, 701 WPH, 3470 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Kristen E. Fong & Tatiana Melguizo

  2. Los Angeles, CA, USA

    George Prather

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  1. Kristen E. Fong
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  2. Tatiana Melguizo
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  3. George Prather
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Correspondence to Kristen E. Fong.

Appendix

Appendix

Tables and Figures correspond with those in previous analyses, however employ the traditional measurement and sample definition utilized in existing research. See Appendix Tables 5 and 6, Fig. 2.

Table 5 Conceptual model fit in three stages
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Table 6 Odds ratio results from final hierarchical model of each progression outcome
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Fig. 2
figure 2

Percentage of students passing each level of the developmental math trajectory based on initial placement

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Fong, K.E., Melguizo, T. & Prather, G. Increasing Success Rates in Developmental Math: The Complementary Role of Individual and Institutional Characteristics. Res High Educ 56, 719–749 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9368-9

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