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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 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 develop and implement plans to improve instruction and other college services. All colleges 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 102 colleges in 22 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 and 2009, 46 more colleges joined.
When joining the initiative, colleges are expected to evaluate their own student data — overall data as well as data broken down by race/ethnicity and income. They are also encouraged to gather input from their students, faculty, staff, and communities. Using this information, college officials are then expected to 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., Kresge Foundation, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are just a few of the 20 or more foundations that are providing additional funding to help support colleges joining the initiative.
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.
MDRC is also publishing a number of other reports on colleges’ programs, strategies, and progress in Achieving the Dream, including reports on a cost study analyzing colleges’ financial contributions to the initiative, a qualitative study of minority men in Achieving the Dream colleges, a baseline report on colleges in Washington state and Pennsylvania that joined the initiative in 2006, an impact study of a staff-to-student mentoring program, and several case studies on colleges’ strategies and interventions. In the coming years, MDRC will also examine the effects of specific courses or programs that are expected to raise student achievement. Data sources include field visits to the colleges; asurvey of administrators and faculty to measure institutional change; a one-year qualitative study following about 80 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, an interim report on the five-year progress of the colleges that joined Achieving the Dream in 2004 is due out in fall 2010. A final, synthesis report on the overall progress of the initiative is expected at the end of 2012. MDRC will also publish a series of monographs and reports related to the success of colleges’ interventions and lessons from Achieving the Dream during this time period.
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