AB705 USC/LACCD Research-Practice Partnership | Background | Convenings | Funder | Research Team | Reports
The AB705 USC/LACCD Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) is a project that strives to understand the institutional barriers that are common in developmental education, document their consequences, and work with educators to change practice. Utilizing mixed-methods research, we aim to evaluate AB705’s initial successes and challenges, and to support LACCD’s faculty, staff and leaders to remediate the institutional inefficiencies that have deterred minoritized students from fulfilling their academic potential.
Background
The California Community Colleges (CCC) constitute the key entry point to college for the large majority of Black, Latina/o/x, and Indigenous populations as well as low-income students. As such, it is critical that they provide high-quality instruction along with a robust set of academic and wrap-around supports necessary for the students to fulfill their educational potential and goals. As has been documented nationally, a major roadblock for student success is placement in a long sequence of developmental education math and English courses.
After more than a decade of trying to tackle this problem through basic skills-related initiatives, task forces, and programs, California passed Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) in 2017, arguably one of the most ambitious higher education reforms in community colleges to date. Starting in Fall 2019, 116 colleges throughout the state replaced standardized tests with multiple measures of high school performance to determine college “readiness,” which resulted in most students being placed directly into transfer-level courses. Through these changes in placement, along with curricular and student support reforms, each college is expected to maximize the probability that entering students complete transfer-level English and math courses in one year’s time.
Since 2019, Pullias Center’s Tatiana Melguizo, along with Dr. Federick Ngo (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Dr. Cheryl Ching (University of Massachusetts Boston), postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral students have continued the USC-LACCD RPP. With the support of the Spencer Foundation, the RPP is performing a mixed-methods study that examines how community college practitioners and faculty are engaging in the implementation of AB705, and whether implementation relates to educational outcomes.
Convenings
2022 Convening — Watch the Video
and read the EdWorkingPapers article: “Mandating Multiple Measures and Encouraging Student Supports: Evaluating a New Approach to Developmental Education in California’s Community College,” and the working paper, “The Logics that Keep Developmental Education Alive in an Age of Reform.”
2021 Convening – Watch the Video and read the Report
2020 Convening – Watch the Video and Read the Report
2019 Convening – Watch the Video and read the Report
Funder
The Spencer Foundation has been a leading funder of education research since 1971 and is the only national foundation focused exclusively on supporting education research.
Research Team
Tatiana Melguizo
Professor
Federick Ngo
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Cheryl Ching
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Elise Swanson
Pullias Research Associate
Deborah Harrington
LACCD
Elif Yücel
Research Assistant
Reports
AB705 Implementation in the Los Angeles Community College District: Results from a District-Wide Survey
Tatiana Melguizo, Federick Ngo, Cheryl Ching, Elif Yücel, Elise Swanson, Deborah L. Harrington
Pullias Center for Higher Education (2022)
The Pullias Center for Higher Education, as part of the USC-LACCD Research-Practice Partnership (RPP), is conducting a mixed-methods evaluation of Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) focused on how community college practitioners are implementing this landmark policy, which directs all 116 community colleges in the California Community College (CCC) system to maximize the probability that students complete transfer-level math and English courses in one year’s time. This report describes the findings of a survey completed by 486 administrators, faculty, and staff in the 9 LACCD colleges during Spring 2021. The survey asked about: (a) respondents’ policy knowledge; (b) the guidance received and changes made in response to AB705; and (c) respondents’ beliefs about the policy goals and student capacity.
Categories: AB705, Equity for Community College Students
Equity for Community College Students laccd AB705
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Progress and Potential: Considering the Question of Racial Equity in CA AB705
Melguizo, T., Cooper, S., Kurlaender, M., Bensimon, E.M.
Pullias Center for Higher Education (2020)
California’s movement toward ending remedial education in community colleges through Assembly Bill 705 employs the power of policy as a means for racial justice. It is amply documented that Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students have for many years been disproportionately placed in remedial English and Mathematics courses. For generations of racially minoritized students, remedial non-college credit courses have blocked their ability to earn college degrees that would have provided access to well-paying jobs. Just as red-lining policies prevented Blacks from accumulating wealth through home ownership, placement in remedial education denied thousands of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders and their descendants the economic, health, and social benefits derived from higher education degrees.
This brief is motivated by our optimism that AB 705 can repair the harms done by more than 50 years of consigning racially minoritized students to remedial education courses—non-credit courses that have contributed to the very high rates of withdrawal that have characterized enrollment patterns in community colleges for too long.
Categories: Math Equity, AB705
AB705 math equity
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AB 705 in the Los Angeles Community College District: Results from Fall 2019
Melguizo, T., Ching, C. D., Ngo, F., & Harrington, D.
Pullias Center for Higher Education (2021)
This report describes early outcomes of AB705 implementation in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), one of the largest community college districts in the country. Using data on first-time-in-college (FTIC) students from Fall 2017, Fall 2018, and Fall 2019, the report describes differences in math and English course enrollments, course passing rates, and one-term throughput (i.e.,the number of completions of math and English transfer-level courses for each entering cohort) before and afterAB705 implementation.
Categories: College Access, STEM Reform, Student Success, Math Equity
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