A new law, California Assembly Bill 705, is driving dramatic changes in how California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. Beginning in Fall 2019, AB 705 requires the colleges to use students’ high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricts colleges from denying students access to transferable, college-level courses; and gives students the right to begin in courses where they have the best chance of completing the English and math requirements for a bachelor’s degree.

This report—a collaboration of the Campaign for College Opportunity and the California Acceleration Project—analyzes early AB 705 implementation efforts at 47 community colleges in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, and greater Los Angeles. We examine fall course schedules and websites to identify bright spots and problems in implementation, with particular focus on the extent to which college course offerings are aligned with the AB 705 standard of “maximizing” student completion of transfer-level math and English courses.

Recognizing that student proficiency and success rates in mathematics are much lower than desired in Central Texas, as is commonly the case elsewhere, the region’s education leaders decided in 2018 to address the problem directly and established the Central Texas Math Alignment Taskforce (CTXMAT). Less than two years later, changes are underway in K-12, community colleges, and universities that all expect will lead to greater achievement in mathematics for all of their students. Further, this effort serves as an example for the nation in creating a cohesive regional alignment platform to address equity goals and student success.

This brief shares how CTXMAT used collective impact to work towards improving student outcomes. It describes the task force’s goals, process, and initial results, illustrating the value and success of this approach.

In recent years, two reform movements—guided pathways and mathematics pathways—have attempted to ease the burden placed on students across the higher education pipeline. Both pathways movements seek to simplify and clarify the educational pipeline for college students by aligning program-level requirements and learning outcomes with students’ academic and career interests.

Yet up until now, each reform had acted in isolation. Until these two movements are fully integrated, students will continue to suffer unacceptable levels of credential attainment, dashing dreams of upward social and economic mobility.

This brief is intended for policymakers, practitioners, and other education stakeholders who are interested in education reform and want to improve the postsecondary experience for students by predictably aligning students’ academic needs with their career goals. Fully integrating the guided pathways and mathematics pathways movements has the potential to remove barriers to student success and create lasting structural change.

The COVID-19 pandemic put higher education in a state of flux in 2020. Colleges and universities can no longer do “business as usual.” Making sure students are able to reenroll, receive credit for the work they completed before the pandemic, and help displaced workers retransition into the higher education pipeline will be extremely important once the crisis ends. Effective policies around transfer and applicability will need to be a key component of any strategy for how students, faculty, and institutions move forward from this disruption.

This brief summarizes recent work by the Texas Transfer Alliance, a collaboration of universities and community colleges in Texas led by the Dana Center since 2018. The brief further highlights some emerging practices from institutions in the state that show promise in improving student success and social mobility.

The University of North Carolina System (UNC System) Math Pathways Task Force Recommendations Report address both breadth and depth recommendations for UNC System institutions to implement mathematics pathways. The recommendations focus on multiple areas including design of math pathways; student supports; curriculum, pedagogy, and faculty engagement; advising; placement; K-14 partnerships; transfer and applicability; and evaluation.

The Texas 2-year and 4-year transfer inventory guide for AY 2020-21.

This Convening Recommendations document reflects recommendations from the “Math and Statistics Education for Nurses” Convening held by the High-Quality Mathematics Education for Nurses Task Force in October 2019. Its purpose is to illustrate areas of consensus, clarify the seven recommendations for developing improved quantitative education for nursing practice, and offer topics to serve as the focus for further collaboration and research.

In the United States, mathematics is a barrier that prevents many students from reaching their educational goals. Research shows that math is a significant contributor to education equity gaps.1 Students have differential access to quality math curricula and quality teachers, and the mathematics course sequences traditionally offered in schools and colleges fail to serve most students. Too often, mathematics serves as a gatekeeper that negatively affects primarily students who are Black, Latinx, or Indigenous, or who come from low-income backgrounds.

Corequisite remediation, which places students directly into college-level work with additional academic support, has emerged as a robust alternative to stand-alone, prerequisite, developmental education. In 2013, we conducted the first published experimental evaluation of corequisite remediation. Our seven-year outcomes data indicate that the benefits of corequisite remediation with college-level statistics include substantially higher rates of associate’s and bachelor’s degree completion, as well as greater earnings.

The Transfer Partnership Strategy (TPS) was a one-year collaboration that built on the work of the Texas Transfer Alliance. TPS effectively used regional coordinators to facilitate collaboration and communication between community colleges and universities.