The Pioneer Prep Model: A Programmatic Approach to Removing Barriers and Improving Persistence for Students

Abstract

In response to soaring developmental education enrollments in Texas, the Pioneer Prep Program at Texas Woman's University (TWU) was designed as an alternative pathways-to-placement program for students who neither passed the Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA) nor met other college-readiness benchmarks needed to enroll in college-level English and mathematics courses. We hypothesize that our developmental enrollments have remained manageable or trended downward in recent years due to a series of interventions provided by the Pioneer Prep Program, and in this article, we offer a profile of Pioneer Prep as an effective model for student success in developmental education via multiple intervention pathways that accelerate placement into English and mathematics courses. Through our analysis of secondary data, we found that one-year persistence rates for students who successfully completed one of the interventions provided via Pioneer Prep were comparable to students who entered college ready, with only one exception. In all cases, students who successfully completed one of the interventions out-persisted students who were not college ready and did not participate in an intervention. A cost-benefit analysis of the retention of these students indicates a significant financial benefit for our institution.