New Kentucky research complicates the corequisite course consensus in higher education

In this Brookings Institute article, CALDER experts Zeyu Xu and Benjamin Backes share evidence from their new study on the impact of Kentucky's corequisite model of developmental education for community college students. The study complicates the growing positive consensus around corequisite remediation, which places underprepared students into college-level courses with extra support rather than requiring them to complete a prerequisite sequence first. 

Using a large dataset of nearly around 43,000 first-year students between 2019 and 2024, the researchers compared students receiving corequisite support to similar students who received no remediation. They found modest gains in English and quantitative reasoning math, but no improvement for college algebra. They also found that much of the progress in gateway math completion is driven by students shifting to less demanding math courses rather than from the support alone. For the least prepared students, they found that adding prerequisite courses on top of corequisite support actually lead to reduced enrollment in college-level classes rather than improved outcomes. Overall, while corequisite implementation appears to lead to better outcomes than prerequisite remediation, the benefits are small in comparison to no remediation at all, making it difficult to determine how much help corequisites actually provide. 

As Xu and Backes write, "we know what is harmful, but we have not figured out what is genuinely effective." 

Read the full article below to learn more.