National Student Success Coalition Urges State Policymakers to Advance Developmental Education Reform

13 national experts and organizations endorse Strong Start to Finish's updated Core Principles to remove barriers to first-year success through developmental education reform, united around an ambitious new 2040 goal

DENVER, Jan. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Strong Start to Finish—a national network dedicated to ensuring students complete gateway math and English in their first year of college and an initiative of Education Commission of the States—today released an updated set of Core Principles for Transforming Developmental Education, with support from a broad coalition endorsement from 13 leading organizations across the higher education landscape. Spanning research institutions, technical assistance providers, faculty engagement, and student success experts, the new publication reflects one of the most extensive efforts to date around a unified approach to developmental education reform.

"More than a decade after states, systems, and institutions began advancing serious developmental education reform, the evidence is clear: these proven practices work. But sustaining and expanding those gains requires redesigning the infrastructure we have built to provide learning support for students and rethinking curricula and instruction to reflect the skills students need in today's workforce," said Victoria Ballerini, Ph.D., director of Strong Start to Finish. "This work reflects a broad coalition of national and state leaders rallying behind a unified agenda for reform and a shared North Star: ensuring every student begins college on a clear path to success."

GO DEEPER: View the full report, Core Principles for Transforming Developmental Education: Essential Strategies for Achieving First-Year Momentum.

Nationally, more than a million students each year are placed into remedial classes that don't count toward a degree, even though fewer than 1 in 10 will ever complete a gateway math or English course through traditional remediation.

Study after study continues to show that developmental education reform is one of the most powerful levers available to state leaders and policymakers to improve student success and college completion. Tennessee's reforms have led to a two- to three-fold increase in students completing gateway math and English in their first year. Louisiana's changes to college placement have significantly reduced remediation while increasing success in credit-bearing courses. In California, placing students directly into transfer-level math and English with support has significantly increased completion rates at many colleges within just a few years, rising 15 percentage points in English and doubling completion rates in math since Fall 2016.

The report, Core Principles for Transforming Developmental Education: Essential Strategies for Achieving First-Year Momentum, arrives at a moment when completion rates are stagnating, enrollment remains unstable and public confidence in higher education continues to erode.

Against this backdrop, the publication brings together a rare coalition of organizations that, despite varied focus areas, coalesced around a set of reforms proven to remove barriers to student success in the first year of college. The organizations also endorsed Strong Start's ambitious North Star goal: that by 2040, every state will put every student on track to graduate after their first year. The endorsing organizations include Achieving the Dream, Bruce Vandal Consulting (College Success Strategies), Complete College America, the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, the Gardner Institute, MDRC, Morley & Associates, Inc., Motivate Lab, Sova Solutions, Student-Ready Strategies, WestEd, Dr. Judy Marquez Kiyama, and Dr. Sheridan Wigginton.

"As someone who experienced the very real barriers within our traditional system of developmental education during my own career, I know how important this work can be — and how it can help level the playing field for hard-working students seeking opportunity," said José Muñoz, president of the Education Commission of the States. "States have a pivotal role in ensuring every student begins their postsecondary journey on strong footing. Advancing these reforms is essential for any state striving to meet ambitious attainment goals and respond to urgent workforce needs."

Rooted in rigorous evidence and over a decade of field learning, the updated Core Principles outline 10 strategies to drive first-year momentum, from supported gateway course enrollment to continuous improvement and centering student voice, reflecting the collective expertise of the endorsing organizations. For the first time, the publication offers evidence-based recommendations on the sequencing and prioritization of reform efforts, providing practitioners with confidence about what to do and where to focus first.

The report calls on states and systems to move beyond campus-by-campus reform and establish policies that make college-level placement the default, align gateway math and English with students' programs of study, and scale evidence-based teaching practices that meet the needs of diverse learners. It urges institutions to redesign the first year in areas such as placement, learning support structures, and math requirements and commit to data-informed continuous improvement at scale to ensure every student builds first-year momentum.

To learn more about the Core Principles, visit StrongStart.org.

About Education Commission of the States: Education Commission of the States (ECS) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for attaining education excellence for all by helping state leaders identify, develop and implement public education policy that addresses the current and future needs of a learning society. Learn more at ecs.org.

About Strong Start to Finish: An initiative of the Education Commission of the States, Strong Start to Finish (Strong Start) partners with a network of experts, researchers, advocates and funders to implement and scale evidence-based practices that ensure every college student has equal opportunity to succeed in the first year of college—and beyond. As a trusted convener, funder, connector, and amplifier of evidence-based reforms, Strong Start champions a three-pronged approach by redesigning college placement, expanding access to corequisite learning support, and aligning math pathways with each student's program of study. With Strong Start's support, states and institutions have reduced wasted costs, increased student enrollment and persistence, and expanded pathways to career and economic mobility.

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SOURCE Strong Start to Finish