Accelerating Developmental Mathematics Education: Findings from the AMP-UP Program

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 23. STEM achievement and Persistence

Abstract

Developmental coursework in mathematics constitutes a significant hurdle to student persistence and degree attainment in US Community Colleges. Institutions and states have begun to respond by altering developmental course sequences or by scrapping developmental education altogether. Not all colleges are ready to make drastic changes, and in any case, rigorous research is needed to inform such policy changes. This paper will present two years of findings from an ongoing Randomized Controlled Trial studying the acceleration of developmental mathematics coursework at a community college in the Northeastern US. Results so far suggest that the RCT was well executed, producing equivalent treatment and comparison groups. Further, we find that students in the treatment group – who took an accelerated path through their developmental mathematics course sequences – outperformed their peers in the comparison group. We discuss those findings in the context of current developmental education policy initiatives.

Author

• Daniel Douglas, Rutgers University