Can High School Assessments Predict Developmental Education Enrollment in New Mexico?
Thousands of Americans enter postsecondary institutions every year and many are under-prepared for college-level work. Subsequently, students enroll in or are placed in developmental courses in preparation for the rigor of college-level classes. Numerous studies have looked at the impact of developmental course work on student outcomes, but few focus on predictors that could identify students who are likely to need developmental education. The potential for early prediction (and therefore possible intervention) is less understood. This study addresses this gap by examining the connection between high school assessments and subsequent developmental courses enrollment in college. Using longitudinal data from New Mexico this project estimates how well math and reading scale scores from the eleventh grade New Mexico Standards Based Assessment (NMSBA) predict an individual student's remedial course enrollments in English, math or both upon entry to college. This is possible due to a state level system in which a student's high school assessment and college enrollment data are captured. Therefore, unlike previous studies, this study examined the potential for existing assessment data, with a wide range of students (N = 7,233), to predict which students are likely to enroll in remedial education. Using logistic regression techniques, odds estimates for math and English enrollment based on scale score, gender, and ethnicity predictors are provided. The results indicate that the higher the test scale score, the less likely it is that a student enrolled in remedial college courses. This study revealed gender and ethnic variation in the strength of prediction. Women enroll in remediation significantly more than men given equivalent NMSBA scores. Native Americans and Hispanics enroll significantly more than Whites. This work also adds to the literature examining the efficacy of high school exams, specifically, these results suggest that high school assessments have potential as an important indicator of academic college readiness.'
Developmental, Remediation, Assessment, College Ready, High school, College, New Mexico
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