Objective: Standardized placement tests remain the primary means by which new community college students are assessed and placed in the hierarchy of math and English coursework. A growing body of evidence indicates that placement tests tend to underestimate students’ likelihood of achieving passing grades in college-level courses, leading to students being misplaced in developmental coursework, slowing their academic progress, and increasing their likelihood of dropping out of college. This article discusses the results of a statewide research effort to improve the accuracy of student placement in math and English in the California Community College system. Method: Decision tree methods were applied to high school and college transcript data to identify key measures of high school achievement that predict performance in nine levels of community college math courses (three developmental and six college level) and four levels of community college English courses (three developmental and one college level). Results: Cumulative high school grade point average (GPA) is the most consistently useful predictor of performance across levels of math and English coursework, and a higher GPA is necessary to signal readiness for college-level coursework in math than is necessary to signal readiness for college-level coursework in English. In addition, cumulative GPA combined with specific indications of progress in the high school curriculum is frequently useful for predicting performance in math among direct matriculants and for predicting performance in both math and English among nondirect matriculants. Conclusion: Drawing on the findings, placement rules that colleges can apply directly in their placement processes are developed and validated.

A strong relationship between article background and educational outcomes fuels a negative inequality cycle. This paper explores the interplay between student socioeconomic status and educational outcomes, and the mediating role of Opportunity-to-Learn (OTL) in high- and middle-income countries. Using data from PISA 2012, we find that the relationship between OTL and mathematics achievement is mostly positive. The magnitude of this relationship is higher in more affluent societies. Our results raise the possibility that unobserved teacher quality, school leadership, or other features of schools in lower-income countries make OTL less productive than in more developed nations. This lends support to the “complementary process” hypothesis and the notion that success (or riches) begets success. The analysis also shows that OTL mediates the effect of individual socioeconomic and cultural background on educational outcomes. This finding lends support for a policy emphasis on classroom-level practices as one key lever for improving learning and upward mobility for disadvantaged students.

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