The efficacy of developmental education reforms for integrated reading and writing (inrw) for reading-based and writing-based co-requisites at houston community college for african-american males and hispanic males

Developmental education focuses on addressing the needs of underprepared, diverse
student populations seeking a postsecondary education. However, developmental education
has received much criticism for its perceived incongruence between expenditures allocated for
developmental education programs and sustainable student success outcomes.
With a large percentage of entering community college students being considered
underprepared and students of color, this translates to an ever-expanding number of this
population being relegated to remedial or developmental education programs. Of the
aforesaid, African-American students and Hispanic students oftentimes comprise much of the
remedial or developmental education program’s population. Moreover, traditional remedial or
developmental courses are comprised of lengthy course sequences designed to scaffold
learning in deficit areas as identified through institutional placement assessment tools. The
completion of these course sequences is required prior to students’ eligibility for enrollment
into college-level courses, which results in less than encouraging rates of developmental
education students’ completion, especially for African-American males and Hispanic males.
To address this circumstance, many states have turned to developmental education
reform efforts. These efforts include approaches such as accelerated remediation models.
Accelerated remediation models are designed to fast track developmental program sequences
through mechanisms such as co-requisite remediation models.
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Co-requisite models are intended to improve student success outcomes and completion
rates for developmental education students. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine
the efficacy of the developmental education reforms for Integrated Reading and Writing (INRW)
as they pertain to African-American males and Hispanic males placed into reading-based and
writing-based co-requisites at Houston Community College. Data were re-examined from a
previous study of the college’s co-requisite implementation, which includes interviews,
observations, and a review of documents.
Results of the study indicated that reading-based and writing-based co-requisites
potentially offer effective outcomes. The results were analyzed to provide recommendations to
improve the college’s co-requisite efforts.