Reforming English Pathways at California’s Community Colleges

California’s community colleges are in the midst of numerous reforms to improve developmental (also known as remedial or basic skills) education. Developmental education is supposed to help prepare students for college work, but it has long been an obstacle to student success: most students in developmental courses never go on to complete a college-level course in English or math. In this report, the authors focus on reforms to developmental English pathways at California’s community colleges. They examine different approaches to reform and their prevalence, and present new evidence on the effectiveness of one of the most common reforms, one-semester acceleration.