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Policy Framework
Community colleges enroll almost half of all U.S. undergraduate students, yet the majority of these students leave without earning a degree or certificate or transferring to another institution to continue their studies. As a result, they risk losing the opportunity to learn and to earn a livable wage.
Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count is a multiyear national initiative to help more community college students succeed. The initiative is particularly concerned about student groups that traditionally have faced the most significant barriers to success, including low-income students and students of color.
Achieving the Dream works on multiple fronts, including changes in the institutional practices and policies at participating colleges; research into effective practices at community colleges; public policy work; and outreach to communities, businesses, and the public. MDRC is one of many partner organizations involved in the initiative.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
Through Achieving the Dream, participating colleges will undertake a careful examination of student transcripts and other data to identify factors that may contribute to or impede students’ academic success. From this analysis, they will develop and implement plans to improve instruction and other college services. All colleges will closely monitor students’ progress and share their findings with other participants in the initiative. Achieving the Dream focuses on improvements in measurable outcomes, such as completion of developmental (remedial) courses, semester-to-semester retention, and graduation, and it places special emphasis on performance among low-income and minority students. Other national partners are working to support the colleges’ efforts by advocating for public policies that may lead to higher student achievement and by building public support for community colleges.
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
Achieving the Dream includes 83 colleges in 15 states. The original 27 community colleges, which began working with the initiative in 2004, are located in five states: Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. These states were chosen because they have community colleges that enroll large numbers of low-income students and students of color — student groups that traditionally have faced the most significant barriers to success. These states have also demonstrated interest in implementing policies that promote access to and success in community colleges. In 2005, eight additional colleges from Connecticut and Ohio joined Achieving the Dream. In 2006, another 22 colleges in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington State became part of the initiative. And, in 2007, 24 more colleges joined.
Colleges will evaluate their own student data — overall data as well as data broken down by race/ethnicity and income. They will gather input from their students, faculty, staff, and communities. Using this reliable data-rich information, college officials will adopt strategies to create real changes in specific practices, such as a sharper focus on effective developmental education, as well as less tangible shifts in attitudes and approaches, such as strengthening institutional research capacity.
The national partners were selected to bring diverse strengths to the common goal of helping community colleges serve their students. Achieving the Dream’s fundamental premise is that the initiative’s scale, scope, and structure will add to its overall impact: The partners will reinforce each other’s work, and the whole will be worth more than the sum of its parts.
Lumina Foundation for Education provided funding for the initiative’s startup and is providing ongoing funding for many of the participating colleges as well as for other elements of the work. College Spark Washington, The Heinz Endowments, Houston Endowment Inc., KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and Nellie Mae Education Foundation are providing additional funding to help support colleges that joined the initiative in 2005 and 2006.
Starting in late 2005, MDRC began studying program implementation at the 27 Round 1 colleges. In 2006, MDRC and its partners visited the Round 1 colleges, documenting the reforms that each college has undertaken and conducting interviews with administrators and faculty to measure changes in attitudes and practices at the colleges. Qualitative data from these visits were combined with baseline student performance indicators, with findings summarized in a first-year report released in May 2007. In the coming years, MDRC will also examine the effects of specific courses or programs that are expected to raise student achievement. Data sources will include field visits to the colleges; two rounds of surveys to administrators and faculty to measure institutional change; a one-year ethnographic study following about 30 students; and analysis of the student outcome data that the participating colleges are collecting as part of the initiative. MDRC is partnering with the Community College Research Center at Columbia University on these studies.
What's Next
Building on the baseline data presented in the first-year report, a series of monographs and reports on emerging findings and lessons from Achieving the Dream will be published in 2008-2009.
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Featured Publication
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Building a Culture of Evidence for Community College Student Success
Early Progress in the Achieving the Dream Initiative
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Funder
Lumina Foundation for Education
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National Partners
American Association of Community Colleges
Community College Leadership Program, University of Texas–Austin
Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University
Jobs for the Future
KnowledgeWorks Foundation
Lumina Foundation for Education
MDC, Inc.
MDRC
Nellie Mae Education Foundation
Public Agenda
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