Faculty leadership is key to reforming developmental ed

“About 40% of community college students take at least one remedial prerequisite course during their academic careers. While these courses are meant to prepare students for college-level work, for many students, they become a detour from which they never return. Over the past decade, however, many colleges have begun shifting away from this model, embracing a different approach that enrolls students directly into college courses while offering additional instruction and support alongside them. While the evidence is increasingly clear that students under this model persist and complete at higher rates, the momentum has started to slow. This is not because the approach is flawed, but because the hardest part of reform has little to do with course structure and everything to do with who leads the work. Grassroots work Reforming developmental education must start with the people closest to the classroom: faculty. In English, much of my work involves helping students rebuild confidence that has eroded over years of schooling. Of course, that erosion is rarely the result of intentional harm. K-12 teachers are asked to meet countless, often competing demands, which can make it difficult to consistently nurture every student’s confidence and skills. As a result, students arrive in college having been told, implicitly or explicitly, that they can’t write, that their ideas don’t matter or that their voice isn’t welcome in academic spaces. As an instructor, undoing that damage is deeply rewarding. But it is also slow, nuanced work. It cannot be designed from an administrator’s conference room or imposed through a memo. I learned this early in my career. Fresh out of graduate school and working as an adjunct faculty member, I was assigned a standalone developmental English course just days before the semester began. The class filled immediately with students who had registered at the last possible moment. Only two of the 25 students passed. I remember thinking, with genuine panic, that I simply wasn’t cut out for teaching. A department chair later told me that I had been set up to fail by a system that concentrated students with the greatest needs into a single course without providing the instructional time, support or flexibility required for them to succeed. Time and space That experience has stayed with me. Years later, now teaching corequisite courses that integrate additional support alongside college-level English, I’ve experienced something very different. These classes give me more time with students, greater flexibility in how I teach and the ability to meet students where they are. The courses are built around the acknowledgement that learning takes time and that students do better when instruction is responsive rather than punitive. What makes the courses successful is that they were crafted by faculty based on real classroom experience. At my institution, every meaningful reform has been faculty-led. Administrators give us room to experiment, revise and occasionally even make a mess. That messiness is not a bug but a feature. We try things, reflect on what works and what doesn’t, and adjust accordingly. Because these ideas originate within the faculty, others are far more willing to engage. Top-down change often struggles to take hold. When reform is positioned as a directive, faculty may eventually and begrudgingly follow, but genuine ownership does not. Leadership’s role Lasting change is rooted in trust, shared governance and a willingness to let faculty shape solutions that make sense in their classrooms. When faculty are invited into the process as partners, buy-in follows more naturally. Strong leadership in higher education requires cultivating a culture of trust, which takes time. Leaders must create psychological safety so faculty feel empowered to make decisions, share ideas and even fail without fear. That starts with listening, showing enthusiasm for their insights and giving them real autonomy. After all, everyone in higher education shares the same goal: helping students succeed. Innovation is essential to making that happen. For college leaders, the lesson is quite simple: let faculty lead. Institutions should set clear priorities, align advising and placement practices, and protect time for collaboration, but they must resist the urge to dictate every detail. When faculty are trusted to figure out what works for their students, the results are stronger and more durable. Corequisite education ultimately requires trust: trusting students and their ability to grow when given the opportunity and support. It also requires trusting faculty and their abilities to design learning environments that make that growth possible. When institutions embrace that mindset, developmental education reform looks and feels less like a mandate and more like a shared commitment to student success. The post Faculty leadership is key to reforming developmental ed first appeared on Community College Daily .

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