Abstract
The College of the Marshall Islands (CMI) places many students into developmental English language arts (ELA) courses, which raises concerns about these students’ likely academic success and persistence to graduation compared with their peers in credit-bearing courses. In an effort to increase the percentage of students who place into and pass credit-bearing ELA courses and persist to a second year of college at CMI, CMI modified its course placement process before the 2021/22 school year. Students now take a revised ELA course placement test that includes multiple-choice and writing components. Additionally, CMI also considers cumulative high school grade point average (GPA) when placing students into developmental courses or credit- bearing courses and into regular or intensive pathways through these courses.
The goals of this study were to evaluate the relationship between the revised ELA course placement process and student outcomes and examine how well CMI’s revised ELA course placement process measures ELA course performance. The study examined ELA course placement, course passing, and college persistence rates among students enrolling at CMI for the first time between spring 2022 and spring 2024, after CMI implemented these changes. The study also evaluated the relationship between CMI’s revised placement process and performance in credit-bearing ELA courses. The study found that 11 percent of students who enrolled at CMI between spring 2022 and spring 2024 initially placed into credit-bearing ELA courses. CMI’s prior placement system had a higher credit-bearing placement rate of 22 percent. Students placed into intensive pathways of credit-bearing courses and higher-level developmental courses in their first year at CMI had the highest passing rates for credit-bearing courses. Additionally, regardless of course level, students placed into intensive pathways had the highest rates of college persistence.
The study also found that the multiple- choice component of CMI’s revised ELA course placement test effectively measured ELA performance, particularly for lower-performing students. The multiple-choice component and high school GPA were similarly able to predict passing credit- bearing ELA courses, while the writing component did not predict any outcomes. Because of these findings, CMI might consider using only high school GPA to place students or weighting high school GPA more heavily and removing the writing component to ensure appropriate and logistically efficient course placement.
Important figures
Figure 3: Students placed into the Level 3 and Level 4 intensive pathways of English language arts courses in their first year at the College of the Marshall Islands between spring 2022 and spring 2024 had the highest passing rates for Level 4 courses on their first attempt
Figure 4: College persistence rates at all three levels of English language arts courses were higher for students placed into intensive pathways in their first year at the College of the Marshall Islands between spring 2022 and spring 2024
Figure 5: Students who would have placed into credit-bearing English language arts (ELA) courses between spring 2022 and spring 2024 based solely on performance on the multiple-choice component of the ELA course placement test were more likely to pass the credit- bearing courses than students who would have placed into developmental courses 
Figure 6: Students who would have placed into credit-bearing English language arts courses between spring 2022 and spring 2024 based solely on high school grade point average (GPA) were more likely to pass the credit-bearing courses than students who would have placed into developmental courses 
Citation
@techreport{Shannon:2026,
title = {Examining the {English} Language Arts Course Placement System at the {College of the Marshall Islands},
author = {Lisa Shannon and Jennifer Gruber and Bradley Rentz and Cheryl Vila and Kristen Erichsen and Jess Nastasi},
institution = {U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific},
year = {2026},
url = {https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/resource-library/report/descriptive-study/examining-english-language-arts-course-placement-system-college-marshall-islands}
}