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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This paper presents an overall educational philosophy of working with students underprepared for college-level work, which we term “a pedagogy of preparation.” We consider how instructors scaffolded instruction to foster college readiness in students who were now able to enroll in college-level work regardless of academic preparation after state-level legislation (SB 1720) that dramatically altered the delivery of developmental education in the Florida College System (FCS). We also consider how collaboration increased among campus personnel after the legislation to foster college readiness in students underprepared for college-level work.

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).

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically threatened the post-secondary education setting. It is crucial to understand the factors that potentially affect college students' COVID-19 responses, such as risk awareness, knowledge of the disease, and pandemic preparedness. However, there is insufficient literature on whether family characteristics contribute to students' COVID-19 responses. Leveraging the data from self-administrated survey – titled College Students' Epidemic Preparedness in the Post-COVID-19 Era (CSEPPCE), we find that students from high-income families were more likely to have a greater awareness of risk and better knowledge of COVID-19. Additionally, students whose parents were employed by the government had a higher probability of knowing COVID-19 symptoms and wearing masks. However, the relationships among risk awareness, knowledge, and family income did not meaningfully vary by sex or ethnicity. Implications and future directions are discussed.