Community colleges nationwide are looking for solutions to help students complete developmental (remedial) math — a known barrier to graduation. Some are offering computer-assisted, modular developmental math courses that allow students to earn credits incrementally and move through the curriculum at their own pace.

One of these modularized courses, ModMath, was created at Tarrant County College (TCC) near Fort Worth, Texas. It reorganizes the content of TCC’s two semester-long developmental math courses into a set of six modules, each of which is five weeks long. The four primary components of the ModMath intervention are: a diagnostic assessment that places students in a starting module; individual registration into three modules per course section each semester; computer-based instruction delivered online through an instructional software program; and personalized, on-demand assistance in class from an instructor and class aide.

MDRC is evaluating ModMath’s implementation and its effects on students’ academic outcomes using a randomized controlled trial. This report contains implementation findings and some findings on early impacts for the first three semesters of students enrolled in the study:

- ModMath was well implemented and differed from traditional developmental math courses in both the nature of its instruction and its credit-earning structure.

- After one semester in the program, students randomly assigned to ModMath (the program group) were, on average, closer to completing the developmental math sequence than were students randomly assigned to traditional, lecture-based courses (the control group). This relatively greater progress was the result of program group students getting credit for completing one or two modules but not the equivalent of an entire course.

- However, this advantage did not translate into other measures of progress. For example, program group students were not more likely to pass the halfway mark in the developmental math sequence than the control group. More than 70 percent of the students in the study, in either group, were unable to pass this benchmark in the first semester.

- ModMath had a small negative effect on the percentage of students who completed the developmental math sequence during their first semester (0.4 percent of program group students compared with 1.9 percent of the control group).

ABSTRACT: Developmental summer bridge programs are a popular strategy for increasing college readiness among recent high school graduates. Aimed at providing an alternative to traditional developmental education, these programs provide accelerated and focused learning opportunities in order to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed for college success.

The current study uses an experimental design to evaluate the outcomes of eight developmental summer bridge programs offered in Texas during the summer of 2009. At each college, students who consented to participate in the study were randomly assigned to either a program group that was eligible to participate in a developmental summer bridge program or a control group that was eligible to use any other services that the college provided. Based on a program model developed by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the developmental summer bridge programs in this study included four common features: accelerated instruction in developmental math, reading, and/or writing; academic support; a “college knowledge” component; and the opportunity to earn a $400 stipend.

After two years of follow-up, these are the main findings of this study:

- The programs had no effect on the average number of credits attempted or earned. Program group and control group students attempted the same number of credits (30.3). Students in the program group earned an average of 19.4 credits, and students in the control group earned an average of 19.9 credits; the difference in their outcomes is not statistically significant.

- The programs had an impact on first college-level course completion in math and writing that was evident in the year and a half following the program but no impact on first college-level course completion in reading during this same period. On average, students in the program group passed their first college-level math and writing courses at higher rates than students in the control group during this period. By the end of the two-year follow-up period, however, the differences between the two groups are no longer statistically significant.

- There is no evidence that the programs impacted persistence. During the two-year follow-up period, students in the program group enrolled in an average of 3.3 semesters, and students in the control group enrolled in an average of 3.4 semesters, a difference that is not statistically significant.

Financial aid plays an essential role not only in allowing many students to enroll in college but also in supporting them in attaining completion and success. Often, however, the total amount of aid does not come close to covering the cost of attendance for full-time students. As a result, the majority of students enrolled at two-year public institutions report feeling financial stress related to paying for school. Students often work while attending college to cover the full cost of attendance, but time spent working can have a negative impact on their academic success.

MDRC launched Aid Like A Paycheck to test whether changes to the timing of student aid disbursement could help students stretch their financial aid to cover their expenses throughout the term, and whether such a policy could improve students’ academic and financial outcomes. Most colleges distribute financial aid refunds to students in one or two lump sums during the term. Aid Like A Paycheck tested an alternate approach, in which financial aid refunds were disbursed biweekly, with the goal of helping students better budget their existing financial aid.

MDRC conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of incremental financial aid disbursements at two community college systems in and around Houston, Texas, and at a third system in California’s rural Central Valley. At the two institutions in Texas, the study included a randomized controlled trial that gathered data from nearly 9,000 students and tracked them for up to two years. The final findings from the study indicate that biweekly disbursements do not result in substantial impacts on student outcomes:

- Students assigned to receive biweekly disbursements and those assigned to receive their aid in the standard way received the same total amount of financial aid.

- Biweekly disbursements reduced students’ debt to the college in the first semester, but this reduction in debt was no longer evident at the end of the fourth semester.

- On average, there is no evidence of biweekly disbursements improving students’ key academic outcomes.

- There is little evidence that the participating colleges or the government saved money by implementing biweekly disbursements.

- Implementation of the policy was costlier than — and not as simple as — expected, even when implemented without the constraints of the randomized controlled trial design.

Overall, the study suggests that incremental disbursements neither hurt students nor substantially improve their academic or financial outcomes.

Community colleges now serve over one-third of our nation’s postsecondary students each year. Because they have open admissions and are relatively low cost, they enroll larger percentages of low-income students than four-year institutions. Unfortunately, as enrollment in these colleges has increased, students’ success rates have not kept pace. One of the major barriers for academically underprepared students is the need to pass developmental (or remedial) math classes. These classes do not offer college credits, and rates of completing and passing them are low. Learning communities are a popular strategy for moving students through the developmental math sequence. They enroll a cohort of students in two classes and often incorporate shared assignments and curricula, collaboration between faculty teaching pairs, and connections to student support services.

Queensborough Community College and Houston Community College are two large, urban institutions that offer learning communities for their developmental math students, with the goals of accelerating students’ progress through the math sequence and of helping them to perform better in college and ultimately earn degrees or certificates. They are two of six colleges participating in the National Center for Postsecondary Research’s Learning Communities Demonstration, in which random assignment evaluations are being used to determine the effects of learning communities. At Queensborough, classes in all levels of developmental math were linked primarily with college-level classes, and at Houston, the lowest level of developmental math was linked with the college’s student success class, designed to prepare students for the demands of college. A total of 1,034 students at Queensborough and 1,273 students at Houston entered the study between 2007 and 2009. The key findings presented in this report are:

- Both Queensborough and Houston began by implementing a basic model of a one-semester developmental math learning community; the programs strengthened over the course of the demonstration by including more curricular integration and some connections to student support services.

- Learning community students attempted and passed their developmental math class at higher rates at both colleges.

- In the semesters following students’ participation in the program, impacts on developmental math progress were far less evident. By the end of the study period (three semesters total at Queensborough and two at Houston), control group members at both colleges had largely caught up with learning community students in the developmental math sequence.

- On average, neither college’s learning communities program had an impact on persistence in college or cumulative credits earned.

With these results, a pattern is beginning to emerge in the experimental research on learning communities: Linked classes can have an impact on students’ achievement during the program semester, but this effect diminishes over time.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) seeks to improve student outcomes by promoting a variety of student success efforts. These efforts include direct programs with well-defined target populations and program participants, offering specific student support services following a program model, and indirect programs aimed at providing faculty and staff members professional development or at improving campus facilities. MDRC led an implementation study of student success programs across the state that were funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Education Stabilization Fund Program Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER II) Fund. This fund was a COVID-19 recovery initiative, allowing recipients great flexibility in the use of grants, evident in the findings below. A total of nearly $12 million in grants was disbursed to 59 institutions of higher education in Texas.

This report presents implementation research findings from the 59 institutions; highlights research findings from previously conducted, rigorous evaluations of student support programs; and offers recommendations for future research and practice.

Colleges and universities used grant funds on a diverse array of programs that directly support student success or indirectly support success by improving institutional practices. Direct student support programs were implemented by 22 grantees. Indirect programs included campus-wide initiatives implemented by 34 grantees, and technology and infrastructure programs implemented by 5 grantees. Direct and indirect efforts varied widely in their approaches to supporting students’ success.

- The way the grant was administered had important implications for the ways grantees developed, implemented, and evaluated student support programs. Delays in grant funding made it difficult for many institutions to begin implementing their initiatives and delayed some programs’ start dates. Grantees described feeling rushed to spend the funds within the condensed timeline. Delays also had implications for the execution of the implementation research.

- Of the 59 grantee institutions, 19 sent MDRC outcome data for their programs from the spring 2023 semester. Of those 19 institutions, 12 are categorized as direct student support programs and 7 as indirect campus initiatives. A higher proportion of students in the indirect program sample completed the semester successfully (82 percent) than did students in the direct program sample (76 percent), possibly because direct programs targeted students most in need of additional support, whereas indirect efforts were more general and often targeted all students.

- Thirty-one grantees shared their costs for the spring semester. Estimated personnel costs averaged $71,240 for direct programs and $87,960 for indirect programs.

- The 22 direct student support program grantees were analyzed to observe similarities between their components and components shown to have evidence of effects on student outcomes in other studies and reviews of studies. Several grantee colleges used components supported by the evidence base, including providing comprehensive programs that may induce greater use of advising.