Florida’s Senate Bill 1720 allowed many students to bypass developmental education and enroll directly in introductory college-level courses. We use an interrupted time series design to introductory college-level courses enrollment and passing rates in English and math for three cohorts of college students prereform and three cohorts postreform. Based on a cohort-by-cohort comparative analysis, we find that cohorts after the reform are more likely to enroll and pass introductory college-level courses in their 1st year of college, indicating that the reform may help to accelerate student success in college. Further, we find that Black and Hispanic students experience even greater gains in passing rates than White students, effectively narrowing the racial/ethnic achievement gap.

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We explore institutional change and organizational learning in higher education in the context of a large-scale reform of developmental education in Florida. We use statewide survey data to examine administrators' perceptions of the use and effectiveness of accountability metrics, methods to identify solutions to improve student outcomes, and challenges responding to data. We find that institutions most commonly use accountability data to track their own performance, but find it less effective for making comparisons across colleges. Institutions use a variety of methods to identify solutions for improvement; with the most common method being presentations at professional association conferences. The greatest challenges in reviewing and responding to data are finding resources to implement solutions and understanding underlying problems affecting student outcomes. We conclude with implications for policymakers and state agency staff designing large-scale reforms in order to encourage organizational learning and promote meaningful change. Institutional change in higher education can be very difficult to implement, particularly when large-scale changes must occur quickly due to a new policy, mandate, or piece of legislation. Policy development in higher education tends to occur as incremental change over time instead of rapid and large-scale reforms (Mintrom & Norman, 2013). Deviating from the typical method of implementing changes can make rapid, large-scale reforms more difficult and can increase the amount of resistance from those affected by these changes. This resistance stems from institutions and individuals that feel pressured to preserve the status quo and many of the difficulties associated with making large-scale changes. The larger the scale of a change and the more people and institutions it involves, the harder it is for all parties affected to coordinate changes at the institutional level, particularly for those with different motivation, capacity, and work settings (Leithwood, Jantzi, & Mascall, 2002). Accountability systems are one mechanism intended to improve institutional effectiveness. Accountability systems play a role in the institutional change in a variety of ways, but an increasingly common method among public colleges is the use of performance funding. The intention of using performance funding is to incentivize institutions to improve student outcomes by tying a portion of appropriations to different performance indicators. While the use of performance funding as an incentive is widely used in higher education, research has not demonstrated a clear indication of its effectiveness. For instance, Dougherty et al. (2016) found little evidence that institutions can respond effectively. The few published studies that have found some positive effects tend to be part of broader mixed results. For example, Tandberg and Hillman (2013) found that few states demonstrate positive gains after adopting performance funding policies, and in the few states that did have a positive effect, the effects did ...

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Following a major statewide developmental education reform in Florida, we explored institutional transformation among Florida College System institutions. We used statewide survey data to examine lead administrators' perceptions of challenges encountered during the planning process, ways in which colleges engaged in sensemaking (i.e., social processes for developing shared understanding) and organizational learning, and perceptions of the institutional transformation processes and outcomes following the reform. We found that institutions engaged in numerous types of sensemaking and organizational learning practices to promote change. Yet, despite different approaches taken to institutional transformation, almost all respondents reported that the change process was highly collaborative and involved a broad range of stakeholders. Keywords Developmental education. Community colleges. Institutional transformation Community colleges across the nation face increasingly complex internal and external environments, resulting in an increased emphasis on the need for change (Bess and Dee 2012). One area of focus for change is developmental education, given that 68% of students attending twoyear institutions must take developmental (or remedial) courses and that only 28% of these students graduate within eight years (Community College Research Center 2014). Studies have shown that developmental education may have negative impacts on students including delaying time to gateway course completion (Scott-Clayton and Rodriguez 2015) and reducing credit accumulation (Martorell and McFarlin Jr 2011). In a meta-analysis of developmental education studies using quasi-experimental methods, Valentine et al. (2017) found that students assigned to developmental education who were just below college-ready performed significantly worse on the likelihood of degree completion, credit accumulation, and passing college-level courses relative to similar students who were not assigned to developmental education. Additionally, developmental education can impact students negatively through increased costs and debt related to courses that do not provide college credit. Annually up to $7 billion is spent on developmental education expenditures nationwide by students and institutions (Scott-Clayton et al. 2014). In Florida developmental education costs were estimated at $154 million annually, with students paying $73 million through tuition (Underhill 2013).