"Colleges and state systems are implementing a range of measures to more accurately capture the potential of students to perform college-level work."

PLACED FOR SUCCESS

CLP Brief: Placed for Success

March 26, 2015
A new, practitioner-focused brief released by the Career Ladders Project highlights how community colleges can improve accuracy of placement in English and math courses, reduce remediation rates, and improve student success.

Placed for Success provides a succinct summary of research that casts doubt on the predictive power of standardized placement tests and suggests that using multiple measures — particularly high school GPA and grades — is more accurate for placing students into community college English and math courses.

Placed for Success can help community college faculty and administrators make decisions about how to improve math and English placement by:

  • Synthesizing key research on the value of different measures — particularly high school GPA — for accurately placing students in math and English courses.
  • Providing examples of models currently used — in California and elsewhere — to combine measures such as high school GPA, grades in high school math and English courses, and scores on standardized assessments.
  • Describing how current policy and regulations in California support the implementation of multiple measures for placement.
Improving accuracy in student placement is an important, immediate step community colleges can take to empower more students to complete their educational goals.

To learn more, download the brief here.

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