As part of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Scaling and Sustaining Success (S3) Grant project, Texas State Technical College in Waco, TX implemented a new corequisite approach to remedial education with the goal of accelerating students through the developmental sequence and reducing time to degree.
With over 40% of the college’s incoming students placing into non-credit bearing math courses and high course repeat rates, developmental education had become overpopulated and often created a road block for students to graduate.
The new grant course streamlined developmental students alongside college-ready students into one credit-bearing course consisting of 4 weeks of Intermediate Algebra instruction followed by 10 weeks of College Algebra instruction and a final exam.
The course employed team teaching, an additional scheduled lab hour, mastery based Hawkes courseware, and just-in-time remediation in the form of peer tutors, supplemental instruction, online notes, and videos.
Using both direct and indirect measures of data from the inaugural cohort, TSTC found that it was possible to successfully accelerate developmental students into a college level curriculum and that students with initial academic deficiencies could still succeed in a credit bearing course alongside college ready students.
