Comparing California Community College Faculty Perceptions of Student Success with Trends in Administrative Data

• In Event: Statewide Developmental Education Reform in California: Lessons From A Five-Year Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

Most research on DE reform analyzes its impact on student outcomes, with evidence suggesting that DE reforms support college-level course completion in both English and math (Boatman, 2012; Cho et al. 2012; Jenkins et al. 2010; Logue, Watanabe-Rose, & Douglas 2016; Logue, Douglas, & Watanabe-Rose 2019; Ran and Lin 2022). However, studies have begun to explore faculty experiences with DE reforms, because faculty have the most proximal contact with students and have the potential to support or undermine reform efforts. Martirosyan and colleagues (2025) find that faculty buy-in for reforms is associated with their perception of the experiences and success of their students. Other researchers have found that faculty perceive weaker student skills post reform (Schrynemakers et al., 2019) and indicated that faculty report feeling powerless and alienated by reforms imposed on them (Nix et al., 2023). This paper focuses on the experience of faculty during the implementation of AB 705, identifying faculty perceptions of how the law shaped transfer-level course enrollment, pass rates, and progression, and comparing these perceptions with descriptive statewide data on the same trends.
Data is drawn from in-depth case study fieldwork in 2022-23 and 2024-25 at 15 California community colleges. Interviews were conducted with math faculty (n=55), English faculty (n=50), and deans and departmental chairs (n=61). We also derived statewide trends from analyses of administrative data for first-time-in-college (FTIC) students (n~94,000 to 105,000) from the full sample of California community colleges from academic years 2014-15 through 2022-23.
We find that California math and English faculty perceived increased enrollment in their transfer-level courses in response to the reforms as leading to a wider range of skills among their students. Faculty expressed concern and feeling overwhelmed about this change, calling students “woefully underprepared” and indicating that “there [are] topics that [they] just can’t get to” due to needing to spend additional time supporting students with the material. Our analyses of administrative data confirm that enrollment in transfer-level English and math have increased following the reform.
Faculty also report decreased pass rates and feeling “demoralized” by increased student failures, as well as expressing concerns that students will not retake the courses and will instead switch majors or drop out: “We are losing STEM students because they take that first math class and realize that they’re unprepared.” Indeed, administrative data analyses indicate that pass rates have decreased in transfer-level math and English courses. However, the metric associated with the law is “throughput” – the proportion of students who complete transfer-level English and math within one year – which has increased; this reveals a critical disconnect for faculty, as they do not observe throughput, only the pass rates for their courses.
We similarly find alignment between faculty’s perceptions of student persistence and those trends in the administrative data. Together, these findings validate faculty concerns about the impacts of these reforms and highlight the need for institutional researchers to partner with their faculty to support increased use of student success data—illuminating improved throughput and overall success—on their campuses.

Authors

• Kri Burkander, Research for Action

• Taylor Stenley, Research for Action