Seven years after the California Community Colleges began implementing placement and remediation reforms, almost all students are enrolling directly in transfer-level math—a key milestone on the path to college completion. In a virtual briefing last week, Marisol Cuellar Mejia outlined the findings of a new report that examines the impact of these reforms and answered audience questions.

Assembly Bill (AB) 705 requires the state’s community colleges to maximize the chances that students take and complete transfer-level courses in math and English within a one-year time frame. Before AB 705 implementation, most students were placed in remedial courses and many dropped out without ever taking a transfer-level course.

“Completion rates have increased consistently since AB 705 took effect,” said Cuellar Mejia. She noted that initial increases were driven mostly by expanded access, but a 7 percentage point improvement from 2022 to 2024—when almost all students were starting in transfer-level math—indicates that changes in the classroom have recently played a major role.

The report found uneven improvement across demographic groups; it also found that students taking statistics and liberal arts math (SLAM) have seen more improvement than those taking college algebra, precalculus, and trigonometry. Cuellar Mejia noted that this gap could be related to timing: “Because colleges worked on SLAM reforms first, they have had more time to finetune their practices compared to the more recent changes in STEM classes.”

Another key focus was on success rates in corequisite courses. “In corequisite remediation,” Cuellar Mejia explained, “students enroll directly in transfer-level courses and receive academic support alongside the regular classes.” While corequisite success rates may seem relatively low in some colleges, she pointed out that most students in corequisites would have been placed in remedial courses, significantly reducing their chances of ever taking transfer-level math.

What about longer-term outcomes? “Successful completion of introductory transfer-level courses is a very important milestone, but the ultimate test of the impact of AB 705 is whether it has helped more students achieve their long-term academic goals.”

The report finds that transfer rates and degree attainment have risen since AB 705 was implemented. These rates are still relatively low—for example, from 2019 to 2022, 11% of students transferred within two years of initial enrollment—and there are gaps across demographic groups. However, the overall rate represents a 4.5 percentage point gain over the average rate from 2015 to 2018. “These are improvements that we haven’t seen before,” said Cuellar Mejia.

Another important takeaway is that expanded access to introductory transfer-level courses has not worsened longer-term outcomes, as some had feared. “Critics have suggested that the more diverse student body had forced instructors to dilute content, leaving students unprepared for more advanced coursework,” said Cuellar Mejia. “Our findings show that this does not seem to be the case.”

Cuellar stressed that improvements in long-term outcomes are not solely attributable to AB 705: “Both the California Community Colleges and four-year institutions across the state have launched policies, programs, and initiatives to streamline transfers and to boost associate degree attainment.” She also highlighted a recent $64 million state investment aimed at helping colleges improve corequisite models and other components of AB 705 implementation. “We are hopeful that interventions in recent years are going to translate into bigger increases,” she said.