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AB 705 continues to drive large-scale changes in placement and remediation in California’s community colleges. The law requires colleges to rely on high school grades for placement and restricts them from requiring remedial courses if they do not improve students’ timely completion of math and English requirements for transfer to a university.

In November 2021, citing extensive research on the impact of AB 705, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office determined that AB 705 standards require colleges to place and enroll the vast majority of students into transfer-level English and math/quantitative reasoning courses, with limited exceptions. In a memo that “resets California Community Colleges work to fully implement AB 705,” colleges were instructed to reach this goal by fall 2022.

While California’s community colleges have made progress in reducing remedial math course offerings, inequities in access to credit-bearing courses continue, says this brief from the California Acceleration Project. The report gauges AB 705 by analyzing the fall 2022 class schedules across 115 California community colleges.