Building Capacity Among Partnership Members Through Transition Course Design Training

REL Pacific
Laura Ostrow
March 25, 2019

Max Altman delivers a second training session on the design of a transition course in the RMI.

Supporting pathways from high school to college and career is a priority area in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Many students in the RMI graduate from high school unprepared for college-level work or success in the workforce. Students in the RMI are not alone. Research shows that up to 60 percent of students exit high school unready for college-level mathematics courses in particular. Therefore, students are often required to enroll into remedial (also known as developmental) courses to prepare them for credit-bearing courses.¹ This process can drastically reduce students' chances of completing a degree and persisting through college.

Through the use of research results, data, and best practices, our partners are committed to increasing college and career readiness and success for their students through the design and implementation of a high school mathematics transition course. Transition courses ease the transition from high school to college so that students enter postsecondary education prepared to take credit-bearing courses. The goals of this course are to help public high school seniors place into and pass credit-bearing math courses upon entry to the College of the Marshall Islands and to keep students on the path towards academic achievement.

Recently, REL Pacific traveled to the RMI to deliver a second training session on the design of a transition course. During this training session, participants were able to establish clear goals for the course, outline the scope and sequence of potential course topics, and discover best practices for designing the transition course. Participants also worked collaboratively to establish a prospective timeline for continuing the course's development through 2019 and, with high hopes, beyond the current academic year.

Through ongoing support and continued follow-up with our partners, REL Pacific aims to ensure that RMI stakeholders have the support they need to successfully design, implement, and evaluate a transition course to improve academic outcomes for their students.

Learn more about the Republic of the Marshall Islands College and Career Readiness and Success (CCRS) Partnership here: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacific/partners-rmi-cc-readiness.asp.

Interested in joining a Partnership, or want to learn more about existing Partnership work? Contact us at relpacific@mcrel.org.

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