Placing Students for Success: Florida’s Statewide Reform of Alternative Methods for College Course Placement

ABSTRACT

Each year nearly 70% of community college students nationwide are required to enroll in non-credit developmental education courses because they scored below college-ready on a placement test in reading, writing, and/or mathematics. Yet, prior research has demonstrated that these placement tests tend to inaccurately place students into courses that are not a good fit with their level of college readiness. In response, an increasingly popular reform effort is to use alternative methods such as high school grade point average (GPA) to place incoming students into the appropriate level of coursework. Florida stands at the vanguard of this placement reform movement, as one of the first states making policy changes to authorize systemwide use of alternative methods in lieu of (or in addition to) common placement tests. This study includes a document analysis of institutional website sites and virtual site visits to Florida College System institutions to enhance our understanding of the variation in placement policies used across the FCS institutions, the rationales for these decisions, as well as benefits and challenges encountered during implementation. It concludes with recommendations that can support institutions in Florida and beyond as they develop future plans about how to further reform or modify placement systems.

Plain Language Summary

Florida stands at the vanguard of the placement reform movement, as one of the first states making policy changes to authorize systemwide use of alternative methods in lieu of (or in addition to) common placement tests. During the pandemic the Florida Department of Education issued an Emergency Order permitting state colleges to use alternative methods. New legislation in June 2021 made permanent the option of using multiple measures. This study includes a document analysis of institutional website sites and virtual site visits to Florida College System institutions to enhance our understanding of the variation in placement policies used across the FCS institutions and the rationales for these decisions during the emergency authorization, as well as their plans moving forward. Key findings include:

•Tests and assessments, as well as high school coursework performance, were the most widely adopted alternative methods.

•Institutions considered different factors when selecting alternative methods, including overlap between college and local high school course objectives; feedback from local high school and district staff; methods used by other colleges; prior research on placement measures; institutional data; and feasibility assessments.

•Factors challenging implementation included integration with existing campus information systems, availability of documentation for alternative methods, establishing buy-in, communicating changes to placement procedures, and difficulty determining placement when measures provided conflicting information on college readiness.

•Factors facilitating implementation included collaboration between high school and college personnel, student buy-in, and institutional characteristics such as school size.

•Most institutions planned to continue using alternative methods or even expand to include additional measures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study received an exemption determination from Florida State University’s Institutional Review Board [STUDY00002960].