Rethinking Developmental Education Policy and Practice

Abstract

Due to longstanding social and educational inequities across the United States, scores of students entering postsecondary education systems are identified as “underprepared” and thus required to enroll in developmental education courses. These courses are often noncredit and aim to prepare students for college-level academic work. A constant on college and university campuses, developmental education is alternately upheld and reviled by an educational system that is charged with the task of balancing opportunity with excellence, and to do so with dwindling state resources and often confounding education policies.