Few community college students placed in developmental math ever reach or complete college-level courses (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010). As a result, policymakers and foundations are investing in reforms altering how community colleges deliver developmental math (Rutschow & Schneider, 2011). These alternative models of delivery (MOD) differ from the traditional approach (i.e., semester-long, lecture-based sequence of courses) in that they provide additional academic supports, contextualize learning, or accelerate progress through remediation (Rutschow & Schneider, 2011).

Current studies on alternative MODs fall short on providing insight into how community colleges, absent philanthropic support or a legislative mandate to explicitly change how they structure or teach developmental education, are responding to growing external pressures to use alternative delivery models. Consequently, we know little about which types of alternative MODs these community colleges employ, the extent to which their students have access to alternative MODs, and which types of alternative MODs are gaining traction.

This study focuses on Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) colleges because most have not received explicit support or a state directive to change the way developmental math is delivered. Here, we: 1) identify the alternative models LACCD colleges used to deliver developmental math, 2) examine where LACCD colleges located alternative MODs across the developmental math sequence, and 3) track which alternative MODs have gained or lost traction in LACCD colleges over the past eight years.

We conducted this study by analyzing course schedules from all nine LACCD colleges, which provide descriptions of course sections offered for each developmental math course. Examining descriptions of over 9,000 course sections, we applied Rutschow and Schneider’s (2011) taxonomy of alternative MODs to identify whether any were classified as an accelerated, contextualized learning, or supplemental instruction MOD. We gave course sections that did not fit in this taxonomy new classification labels, which led us to develop a revised alternative MOD taxonomy reflective of developmental math delivery in the LACCD. We used this revised taxonomy to create a dataset, which captured the number of course sections offered for each developmental math course, whether the course section offered an alternative MOD, and if so, which type of alternative MOD was offered. We collected data across all nine LACCD colleges between 2005 and 2013 to provide enough time to examine trends in alternative MOD adoption.      

Results indicate that just 30 percent of course sections employed an alternative MOD. Of these, most provided students with supplemental instruction or extended the amount of time students spent in developmental math. Few course sections accelerated a student’s progress or contextualized learning. Further, community colleges tended to locate alternative MODs in the upper remedial math levels, raising concerns that less prepared students have far fewer opportunities to access models that may improve their persistence and success. On the whole, the use of alternative MODs has marginally increased since 2005 suggesting that scaling up these approaches may require increased technical or financial support, government mandates, or a clear consensus on their effectiveness for promoting student success.