Building a Culture of Evidence for Community College Student Success: Early Progress in the Achieving the Dream Initiative

Achieving the Dream is a multiyear, national initiative, launched by Lumina Foundation for Education, to help community college students stay in school and succeed. The 82 participating colleges commit to collecting and analyzing data to improve student outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color. This baseline report describes the early progress that the first 27 colleges have made after just one year of implementation

Formative Evaluation of the Student Achievement Initiative “Learning Year”

In 2007, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges launched the Student Achievement Initiative (SAI), a system-wide policy to reward colleges for improvements in student achievement. This report lays out results of CCRC’s qualitative review of SAI during its first year (2007-08). The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the extent of awareness and understanding of the initiative among college personnel and examine the initial responses to it by the colleges

Achieving the Dream Colleges in Pennsylvania and Washington State: Early Progress Toward Building a Culture of Evidence

In 2003, Lumina Foundation for Education launched a bold, multiyear, national initiative called Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, to help students stay in school and succeed. The initiative is focused particularly on students who have faced the most barriers to success, including low-income students and students of color. Initially, 27 colleges in five states joined the initiative; there are now over 80 institutions in 15 states. Participating colleges commit to using data to improve programs and services in ways that lead to increased student success — a process known as “building a culture of evidence.” Specifically, colleges mine transcripts and gather other information to understand how students are faring over time and which groups need the most assistance. Based on a diagnosis of the problems in student achievement, they design and implement strategies to improve academic outcomes. Participating colleges receive a $50,000 planning grant followed by a four-year$400,000 implementation grant, along with assistance from coaches hired by the initiative. This report describes the progress made by the 13 Pennsylvania and Washington State community colleges that comprise Round 3 of the Achieving the Dream initiative after planning and one year of implementation. The findings from this study will be compared with follow-up research that CCRC and MDRC will conduct in two years to evaluate the progress of the colleges at the end of the five-year project period