Many students enter community college unprepared for college-level academic studies and need to complete a basic skills or developmental program in order to succeed in college-level coursework.

EdSource's study, Course-taking patterns, policies, and practices in developmental education in the California Community Colleges, examined remedial course-taking patterns in the community colleges and the correspondence between those patterns and various student outcomes. (This study was done at the request of the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.)

Among the 122,427 first-time students identified for the EdSource study, 60,783 students—nearly 50%—enrolled in at least one for-credit course in a remedial writing, reading, and/or mathematics sequence at some point between fall 2002 and spring 2009.

In all, 41% (49,997) of the cohort enrolled in a course in a remedial mathematics sequence (intermediate Algebra/Geometry or lower), 32% (38,672) took a course in a remedial writing sequence, and 11% (13,052) took a course in a remedial reading sequence. A great deal of overlap existed among these three groups, with slightly more than half taking a remedial course in more than one sequence. The venn diagram below illustrates those numbers and relationships.

 

Data: Student course enrollment records provided by CCC Chancellor's Office Management Information System (COMIS) matched with course listings, descriptions, and prerequisites from the 2002–03 through 2008–09 course catalogs of the colleges. Includes only courses taken for credit.

EdSource 6/10