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Who Places into Developmental Education and Why

Having garnered national attention, high failure rates in developmental education present a significant barrier to state and national policymakers’ goals of increasing the percentage of adults who earn a college credential. However, a majority of the research fails to consider why students place into developmental education. This piece examines a sample of recent high school graduates in Texas who placed into developmental education with the goal of gaining a more nuanced understanding of why these students required remediation. We find that rather than simply blaming the students for their failure to learn basic skills, there are concrete and actionable steps that policymakers and practitioners can take to help students avoid remediation, important actions that would increase students’ chances of earning a postsecondary credential.