Marisol Cuellar Mejia, research fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center, testified before the Assembly Higher Education Committee in Sacramento today (February 18, 2025) in an oversight hearing on the implementation of AB 1705. Here are her prepared remarks.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. My name is Marisol Cuellar Mejia and I am a research fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center. PPIC is a nonpartisan, independent research organization that does not take positions on legislation. My comments are based on research that my team and I have conducted over the last nine years on the impact of developmental education reforms on California’s community college students. To reach our conclusions, we relied on student-level data from all 115 colleges in the system.

It has been six years since the deadline for statewide implementation of AB 705, landmark legislation that fundamentally transformed placement and remediation in California’s community colleges. This legislation was aimed at ensuring that students were not placed into remedial courses—which often delayed or deterred their educational progress—unless evidence suggested that they were highly unlikely to succeed in a transfer-level course. At the time AB 705 was signed into law (2017), a growing body of literature, including our own, showed that even though the vast majority of students entering community colleges were placed in remedial courses, only a small portion of those students eventually completed transfer-level English and/or math courses. Moreover, the data also showed that Latino and Black students were disproportionately placed in remedial courses.

Let me start by summarizing what the implementation of AB 705 has meant for students’ access and success in gateway transfer-level courses. In the interest of time, I will focus on math for these remarks but we have found similar results for English.

As of fall 2023, which is the latest term of data available, practically all students were able to enroll directly in a transfer-level course (less than 300 students across the system enrolled in a course below transfer level). This is a staggering change compared to the situation in fall 2017—the year AB 705 was signed into law—when only 30 percent of students taking math for the first time were able to enroll directly in a transfer-level course.

As a result of this dramatic increase, the share of first-time math students successfully completing transfer-level math in one term—known as the one-term throughput rate—increased 17 percentage points, rising to 40 percent during the first term of systemwide implementation in fall 2019. This share continued to grow, even throughout the pandemic, reaching 53 percent in fall 2023.

Let me put this in terms of number of students. Prior to the implementation of AB 705, each fall about 30,000 students completed a transfer-level course in their first term of math enrollment. After implementation, this number doubled—reaching 62,000 students in fall 2023.  And in the case of Latino and Black students the numbers have almost tripled. In addition, we have seen improvements among successful completers in the representation of Latino and Black students, although these students remain underrepresented compared to their white and Asian peers.

Getting to this point has certainly not been easy. Initial implementation of AB 705 was uneven across colleges and groups of students, especially in math.  In the fall of 2019, at one in five colleges a third or more of first-time math students were still either required or allowed to enroll in below-transfer-level courses—even though many of these students had already taken such courses in high school and had often passed. Moreover, not all students who could benefit from effective and well-designed corequisite courses—additional concurrent academic support for transfer-level classes—were accessing them. These conditions prompted additional legislative action (AB 1705) aimed at ensuring that the AB 705 reforms could reach all students.

The importance of the improvements brought about by AB 705 should not be overlooked: early completion of transfer-level courses significantly boosts students’ chances of reaching their academic goals. Our research shows that transfer rates are significantly higher among students who successfully complete transfer-level math early in their community college career. AB 705 implementation has enabled many more students to do just that. Among students who started in community college in fall 2022, 34 percent successfully completed transfer-level math in their first year in college—10 percentage points higher than the completion rate among entering students in fall 2017.

In a recent report we did on the transfer path, we found another positive trend that coincides with the implementation of AB 705: increasing shares of successful transfer students are taking two years or less to transfer. In 2017–18, only 22 percent of students who transferred did so within two years of initial enrollment. By 2021–22, this number jumped to 31 percent. I should note that that the number of students in this case is not large, since only 10 percent of all transfer-intending students transfer within two years. Nevertheless, the trend is promising.

Overall, we see a marked contrast in terms of four-year community college outcomes—including persistence, unit accumulation, degree attainment, and transfer—among those who completed transfer-level math in their first year and those who did not.

Celebrating this remarkable progress does not mean that the work is over. Increases in direct enrollment have, thus far, been the main driver of improvements in successful transfer-level course completion. To further advance student success—and to see meaningful reductions in persistent racial equity gaps—colleges will need to determine how to better address students’ diverse academic and non-academic needs. Our research finds that students who are not successful within the new system are often struggling with more than subject specific content—in comparison to successful students, they tend to have lower GPAs and earn a lower proportion of the units they enrolled in. These findings suggest that additional supports—far-reaching, high-touch, and holistic—are needed to increase student retention and success.

Corequisites have been a key component of AB 705 implementation—as noted earlier, these are additional academic supports for transfer-level courses. However, completion rates among corequisite students vary widely across colleges. Some colleges are seeing great success but there is still much room for improvement. Indeed, we find a 20-percentage point gap between colleges with the lowest and highest completion rates. These disparities also shed light on the variation in approaches taken in corequisite offerings and enrollment. The $64 million one-time funding that the system received to better support a comprehensive and equitable implementation of AB 705 holds the promise to support colleges in the design of well-designed, effective and equitable corequisites.

Let me finish my remarks by saying that based on the evidence that we and many others have produced over the last decade, we believe that the solution to the challenges that remain is not a return to relying on pre-requisite remedial or below transfer-level courses but to continue building on the progress made. As noted, the chances of completing a transfer-level course are low for those who first start in courses below transfer level. Our research finds that only one third of students in these courses subsequently enroll in a transfer-level course and only one fifth successfully complete that course as of the next fall. Transfer-level completion for students starting in corequisite courses is significantly higher—by 31 percentage points—than it is for students who start in a course below transfer-level. Moreover, fall-to-fall throughput rates for students who started in a transfer-level course but did not successfully complete it on the first try are 7 percentage points higher than for students who started in a course below transfer level.

In closing, let me emphasize this: on average, when students start directly in a transfer-level course they have better chances of successfully completing—even if they do not pass on their first try—than if they start in a course that is below transfer level.

Thank you for the opportunity to share PPIC’s research with you today.