Developmental Education: From Catch-Up to Speed-Ahead

Astrid arrived at her community college to pursue a nursing degree with a high school diploma, a part-time job, and a plan. She was told she needed two semesters of noncredit remedial math and English courses before taking classes that counted toward her credential.

She never made it to the anatomy course.

Astrid is not a real person, but her story is. She represents the unspoken student story of American higher education’s developmental—or remedial—education system.

Strong Start to Finish reports that 40% of two-year college students and 25% of four-year students take at least one remedial course, an estimated 3.4 million students.

The result is predictable.

Students in remedial sequences, especially in math, have low odds of reaching and passing a gateway college-level course, according to Complete College America. Roughly 17% of students in multi-course remedial sequences complete a credential.

Remedial courses add semesters before students can enroll in credit-bearing courses, increasing cost, delaying momentum, and creating exit points where students drift away.

They are a detour, or worse, a dead end. Good intentions do not guarantee good results.

“A body of research shows, in fact, that remedial or ‘developmental’ education does not significantly improve students’ abilities to tackle college-level work,” concludes one analysis.

The remediation problem is not only structural. It’s about how the pipeline sends fragmented signals across K–12 and higher education.

Students graduate from high school with diplomas that signal achievement. The message shifts abruptly when they encounter college placement exams that tell them they’re not prepared.

A FutureEd analysis shows that college placement exams often misassign students into remediation who could succeed in credit-bearing coursework, especially when compared with their high school grade point average (GPA) and coursework. This over-placement into remediation, which extends the time to completion and increases dropout risk.

Policy analyst Anne Kim describes developmental education as a Bermuda Triangle. Students enter the system, but many never emerge with a degree.

None of this suggests that students can’t learn. Rather, it suggests that delay makes learning harder, especially when students need early wins most.

Many colleges now place students directly into credit-bearing courses with structured academic support.

Acceleration, not delay, is the more equitable path.

Developmental education doesn’t have to function as an academic detour. Strong evidence supports corequisite instruction, which involves enrolling students directly in credit-bearing math or English while providing academic support alongside the course.

Instead of remediate, then enroll, the model becomes enroll, then support. Acceleration is the guiding design principle. Students build skills while earning credit, so progress and preparation happen at the same time rather than in sequence.

FutureEd documents the growth of corequisite models, with more than 20 states either replacing remedial courses at public colleges with corequisites or giving students a choice between the two. When corequisite models are implemented well, results are striking.

Tennessee is often cited as an example of this approach. After statewide reform, gateway completion in math and English rose sharply as students were placed directly into credit-bearing courses with support. Texas has followed a similar path, using statewide policy to move institutions away from multi-semester remedial pipelines.

Many colleges are also adopting multiple-measure assessment and placement.  Two rigorous studies of this approach show that “student outcomes improve under multiple measures assessment as compared to status quo placement based on test scores alone.” 

National initiatives are translating these reforms into practical guidance. Strong Start to Finish emphasizes multiple-measure placement, alignment of math pathways with programs of study, academic supports, and accountability for gateway completion.

Math pathways reforms, including Carnegie Math Pathways and Dana Center models, reinforce the same logic by aligning quantitative requirements to students’ fields of study rather than funneling everyone into algebra. The goal is not to lower standards. It is to ensure students complete relevant math early.

Other models, such as CUNY’s ASAP, demonstrate how structured schedules, advising, and financial supports can dramatically increase completion by treating time and early credits as central—not peripheral—to student success.

If developmental education is to become a springboard rather than a holding pen, reform cannot rely on isolated campus experiments. Here are four decisive shifts that function as a design principle—shaping how colleges structure the student experience—and as a governance lever—turning reform into systemwide practice through state policy. They move remediation from delay to momentum.

Rethink placement. Placement should rely on multiple measures, especially high school GPA and coursework, rather than a single standardized test score. Placement is not a neutral sorting exercise. It’s a high-stakes decision with lasting consequences. Institutions should redesign intake systems so that more students enroll in credit-bearing coursework. States should mandate multiple-measure placement, establish guardrails, and require transparent reporting so colleges don’t default students into remediation.

Embed support in credit-bearing courses. Students should build skills while earning credits, not before. Corequisite instruction enrolls students directly into gateway math and English while providing structured support alongside courses. States and systems should default students into corequisite models and treat traditional prerequisite sequences as the exception. When acceleration becomes the norm, momentum increases at scale.

Align high school and college expectations. The cleanest solution to developmental education is not better remediation, but less need for it. Graduation standards, senior-year coursework, and placement expectations should align. Expanding dual enrollment and early college options allows students to demonstrate readiness before graduation.

Make momentum the accountability metric. Institutions should stop asking whether students completed remediation and instead ask whether they completed gateway math and English in year one. Early gateway completion strongly predicts persistence and credential attainment. States can reinforce this shift by funding colleges in part on progression outcomes and publicly reporting those metrics. What gets measured and funded shapes behavior.

These shifts rebuild the pipeline around progress rather than delay.

The old model treated remediation as rescue. Fix students before allowing them to proceed. The emerging model treats support as momentum. Enroll students, support them, accelerate them. Acceleration is not the opposite of rigor. It is the opposite of delay.