Success Is What Counts

National initiative promotes change to improve student success at community colleges

OPPORTUNITY IS A STARTING POINT, BUT CERTIFICATES AND DEGREES CHANGE LIVES

Achieving the Dream is a multiyear national initiative to help more community college students succeed (earn degrees, earn certificates or transfer to other institutions to continue their studies). The initiative is particularly concerned about student groups that have faced the most significant barriers to success, including lowincome students and students of color. Achieving the Dream acts on multiple fronts, including efforts at community colleges and in research, public engagement and public policy. Community colleges are open-enrollment institutions that enroll almost half of all U.S. undergraduate students. But access alone isn’t enough. Too many students are leaving community colleges without attaining their goals. As a result, they risk losing the opportunity to learn and to earn a livable wage. When community college students fail to meet their academic goals, our country loses opportunities. However, when community college students succeed, they improve their own lives and benefit the nation

WE MUST HELP MORE COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS SUCCEED — IT CAN BE DONE

Educating a competitive workforce, stimulating local economies and helping individuals improve their lives all depend on maximizing educational success — for everyone. This is the critical work of community colleges.

Community colleges educate students who are likely to face academic, personal and financial challenges. These students often are the ones who were not well served by their previous education and therefore have the greatest academic need. They include adults returning to education after a long period of time and traditional college-age students. They are individuals who work, care for dependents and juggle other commitments.

Achieving the Dream supports colleges’ efforts to help students overcome these challenges, stick with their studies and reach their academic goals.

Using data to drive change. Achieving the Dream focuses colleges and others on understanding and making better use of data.

In the Achieving the Dream model, every decision made at a college — from setting educational strategies and allocating resources to scheduling classes and organizing student services — is grounded in data about student outcomes.

Central to this work is being open and forthright about current performance; setting measurable goals that consider outcomes of all students; and making lasting, institutional change to achieve them. Because there are disparities in student outcomes at community colleges, this work includes disaggregating student achievement data — breaking it down by race, age and other demographic characteristics — to better understand and begin to close performance gaps.

While many colleges look at data at single points in time, Achieving the Dream colleges track cohorts of students over a period of time. The 2003 cohort, for example, includes students who started college in fall 2003. This approach makes it possible to accurately assess students’ progress and outcomes and to identify gaps in achievement.

The initiative also collects this data from the colleges (without any information that identifies individuals) and assembles it in the Achieving the Dream database — the only known database that allows researchers to assess the progress of a group of community college students. Achieving the Dream researchers are analyzing the progress of cohorts of all Achieving the Dream students.

Strategies for improvement. Participating col- leges are identifying practices that will help more students — particularly students of color and low-income students — continue their studies and earn certificates and degrees.

For example, colleges are putting a sharper focus on developmental education. Close to half of community college students (and in some settings, significantly more) need developmental education. When these students successfully complete their developmental education sequences, they have at least the same chances of completing a degree or transferring as their peers who began their studies in college-level courses.

Other strategies aim to increase student engagement with instructional techniques, such as collaborative learning, paired classes and learning communities; student success courses, which teach critical skills, such as time management and study skills; advising services because students need to set goals in order to meet them; and greater involvement of faculty, staff and community members in improving student outcomes.