Katie Hern was surprised in fall of ’05 when only 55 percent of her remedial English students passed the course. Not that it was a surprising number. “In fact,” she says, “it was pretty typical.” But the students had been part of a “learning community” – in other words, their courses were linked and students stuck together in one cohort across their classes, the goal being to maximize student success and retention — and so Hern had expected atypicality.

“Then I looked back over the data from my students and how they had done over the semester and I found there was a good reason to be surprised – because about half of those who got a [withdrawal] or no credit had shown they could do the work,” says Hern, an English instructor at Chabot College, a community college in California’s East Bay area. The students, she says, had gotten grades of Cs or higher on tests assessing their understanding of books they were reading, for instance, and were able to explain key points and draw connections. “They could write a passing essay and they couldn’t pass the class.”

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