Research Publications
ACHIEVING THE DREAM PUBLICATIONS
Investing in Change: How Much Do Achieving the Dream Colleges Spend—And From What Resources—To Become Data-driven Institutions? (Full Report) 
Author: Elizabeth M. Zachry and Erin Coghlan
Date: June 2010
An analysis of the investments made by five Achieving the Dream colleges to implement an institution-wide improvement process found that while they made substantial investments in institutional reform—an average of $6.3 million over five years—it amounted to less than 5 percent of their overall institutional revenues. And while grants from Lumina Foundation for Education were an important impetus for change, they tended to be the smallest resource supporting colleges' spending.
Collaborating to Create Change: How El Paso Community College Improved the Readiness of Its Incoming Students Through Achieving the Dream (Full Report)
Author: Monica Reid Kerrigan and Doug Slater
Report No. 4 in the Culture of Evidence Series
Date: March 2010
Based on research conducted by CCRC, this report describes how El Paso Community College collaborated with the University of Texas at El Paso and 12 local independent school districts in the El Paso area to develop and bring to scale an improved process for helping high school students prepare for entry into college.
Terms of Engagement
Men of Color Discuss Their Experiences in Community College (Full Report)
Author: Alissa Gardenhire-Crooks, Herbert Collado, Kasey Martin, and Alma Castro with Thomas Brock and Genevieve Orr
Date: March 2010
This MDRC study draws on the experiences of 87 African-American, Hispanic, and Native American men who were enrolled in developmental math courses at four Achieving the Dream institutions to find out more about what affects the success of men of color in community college. The fieldwork explored how students’ experiences in their high schools and communities, as well as their identities as men of color, influenced their decisions to go to college and their engagement in school. The students offered their perspectives in their own words in three rounds of focus groups and interviews during the 2007-08 academic year.
Download the Executive Summary.
Guiding Developmental Math Students to Campus Services: An Impact Evaluation of the Beacon Program at South Texas College
Author: Mary G. Visher, Kristin F. Butcher, and Oscar S. Cerna with Dan Cullinan and Emily Schneider
Date: February 2010
Created as part of the national Achieving the Dream initiative, a “light touch” intervention targeting students enrolled in lower-level math courses increased the number of students using campus tutoring and academic services. While the program has not improved math class pass rates or persistence in college overall, it has had positive effects for part-time and developmental students.
Promoting Gatekeeper Course Success Among Community College Students Needing Remediation: Findings and Recommendations from a Virginia Study (Full Report)
Author: Davis Jenkins, Shanna Smith Jaggars & Josipa Roksa
Date: November 2009
This report discusses a CCRC study that examined student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors associated with higher probabilities that students in Virginia community colleges who require remediation will take and pass math and English gatekeeper courses. Download the executive summary.
Building Student Success From the Ground Up: A Case Study of an Achieving the Dream College (Full Report)
Author: Elizabeth Zachry and Genevieve Orr
Date: September 2009
One of the first in-depth studies of an early Achieving the Dream college, Guilford Technical Community College in North Carolina, has been completed by ATD partner MDRC. “Building Student Success From the Ground Up: A Case Study of an Achieving the Dream College” by Elizabeth Zachry and Genevieve Orr “draws from Guilford’s experience implementing Achieving the Dream to highlight what colleges may achieve and the challenges they may face in undertaking a similar process of institutional reform.”
Setting Up Success in Developmental Education: How State Policy Can Help Community Colleges Improve Student Success Outcomes
Author: Michael Lawrence Collins
Date: June 2009
Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to improve student success in community colleges, has taken a multipronged approach to improving outcomes in developmental education. This issue brief describes how the 15 participating states have concentrated their policy efforts on four key areas: Preventative Strategies; Assessment and Placement; Implementation and Evaluation of Program Innovation, and; Performance Measurement and Incentives.
Achieving the Dream Colleges in Pennsylvania and Washington State: Early Progress Toward Building a Culture of Evidence (Full Report)
Author: Davis Jenkins, Todd Ellwein, John Wachen, Monica Reid Kerrigan &Sung-Woo Cho
Date: March 2009
A study by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College and by MDRC found that, while the speed at which 13 Pennsylvania and Washington State colleges were able to institutionalize a culture of evidence varied, Achieving the Dream had positive effects on all of them. As a group, the study found that they were further along a year and a half into the process than were the colleges that joined the initiative two years earlier in the first round.
Download the executive summary.
Rethinking Developmental Education in Community College
Author: Thomas Bailey
Date: February 2009
This Brief, based on a longer paper, reviews evidence on students who enter community college with weak academic skills, and it summarizes study findings on the effectiveness of developmental education. It suggests that, on average, developmental education is not very effective in overcoming student weaknesses. The Brief concludes with recommendations for a broad reform agenda based on a comprehensive approach to assessment, more research that tracks students through their early experiences at college, a blurring of the distinction between developmental and "college-level" students that could improve pedagogy for both groups of students, and strategies to streamline developmental programs and accelerate students' enrollment in college-level courses.
Faculty and Administrator Data Use at Achieving the Dream Colleges: A Summary of Survey Findings
Author: Davis Jenkins & Monica Reid Kerrigan
Date: February 2009
This report summarizes findings from a study conducted by CCRC and MDRC researchers which examined what specific data college faculty and administrators use in their jobs and the extent to which they use data analysis to design and improve the impact of programs and services. The study is based on a survey on the use of student data by faculty and administrators at 41 community colleges participating in Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. Achieving the Dream is a major national initiative designed to improve educational outcomes for community college students, particularly students of color and low-income students. Twenty-seven of the surveyed colleges joined the Achieving the Dream initiative in summer 2004 (Round 1), and 13 joined in summer 2006 (Round 3). In addition to the surveys, structured telephone interviews were conducted with administrators and faculty at four of the colleges that participated in the survey to explore in greater detail key findings from the survey.
Formative Evaluation of the Student Achievement Initiative "Learning Year"
Report to the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges and College Spark Washington
Author: Davis Jenkins, Todd Ellwein, & Katherine Boswell
Date: January 2009
In September 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 presents findings from an independent qualitative review of the initiative conducted by CCRC during the 2007-08 SAI learning year.
Promising Instructional Reforms in Developmental Education: A Case Study of Three Achieving the Dream Colleges
Author: Elizabeth M. Zachry with Emily Schneider
Date: December 2008
This MDRC report examines the experiences of three of the 83 colleges currently involved in the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count project, an initiative of Lumina Foundation for Education, and their efforts to improve instruction in developmental education classrooms.
Assessing and Improving Student Outcomes: What We Are Learning at Miami Dade College
Report No. 2 in the Culture of Evidence Series. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Author: Joanne Bashford & Doug Slater
Date: January 2008
Told from the point of view of the Miami Dade College (MDC) Office of Institutional Effectiveness, this paper describes how MDC has begun to develop a systematic and data-informed method for assessing and improving student outcomes across its large, eight-campus college.
Building a Culture of Evidence for Community College Student Success: Early Progress in the Achieving the Dream Initiative
Author: Thomas Brock, Davis Jenkins, Todd Ellwein, Jennifer Miller, Susan Gooden, Kasey Martin, Casey MacGregor, and Michael Pih with Bethany Miller and Christian Geckeler
Date: May 2007
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 83 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.
Institutional Research and the Culture of Evidence at Community Colleges
Report No. 1 in the Culture of Evidence Series. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Author: Vanessa Smith Morest and Davis Jenkins
Date: April 2007
This reports presents findings from a study conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) on how well prepared today's community colleges are in moving toward the greater use of data and research to improve student success.
What Community College Management Practices are Effective in Promoting Student Success? A Study of High- and Low-Impact Institutions
Author: Davis Jenkins
Date: Revised October 2006
This study seeks to identify community college management practices that help students succeed. It is based on case studies of six colleges in Florida and analysis of student outcome data from all 28 Florida community colleges.
Paths to Persistence: An Analysis of Research on Program Effectiveness at Community Colleges
Author: Thomas R. Bailey & Mariana Alfonso of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University
Date: January 2005
This paper presents a critical analysis of the state of the research on the effectiveness of specific practices in increasing persistence and completion at community colleges.
Is Student Success Labeled Institutional Failure? Student Goals and Graduation Rates in the Accountability Debate at Community Colleges
Author: Thomas Bailey, David Jenkins, Timothy Leinbach of the Community College Research Center. Teachers College, Columbia University
Date: June 2005.
This paper explores different views on whether graduation rates are a fair and valid measure of community college effectivenes.
Community College Student Success: What Institutional Characteristics Make a Difference?
Author: Thomas Bailey, Juan Carlos Calcagno, Davis Jenkins, Gregory Kienzl, and Timothy Leinbach of the Community College Research Center. Teachers College, Columbia University
Date: September 2005.
This paper, co-authored by several researchers at the Community College Research Center, uses econometric modeling to explore the institutional characteristics that affect the success of community college students.
ACHIEVING THE DREAM POLICY BRIEFS
It's Not About the Cut Score: Redesigning Placement Assessment Policy to Improve Student Success (Full report)
Author: Michael Lawrence Collins
Date: July 2008
Placement assessment policy, which governs how colleges assess the academic skills of entering students and place them in courses that are appropriate for their skill levels, can be an important lever for increasing student success in community colleges. A coherent policy would indicate which students must be assessed, specify assessment instruments, set cut score standards, and articulate procedures to be used uniformly across a state. Well-designed placement assessment policies also can help increase student success in a number of ways, and they can be used to help improve the college readiness of incoming students.
Six States Pilot Better Ways to Measure and Compare Community College Performance (Full report)
Author: Jobs for the Future
Date: July 2008
Across higher education, there is growing interest in strengthening state data and performance measurement systems that track and make visible student progress and success. The goal is to improve student results, particularly at community colleges and non-selective four-year institutions. The strategy is to identify at-risk students early and provide them with supports that can help them stay in school and graduate.
A Supporting Role: How Accreditors Can Help Promote the Success of Community College Students (Full report)
Author: Radha Roy Biswas
Date: October 2006
To what extent can the accreditation process drive significant improvement in student persistence and completion at institutions that undergo the peer review process, particularly for students from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education? Because this inquiry was prepared for Achieving the Dream, a national initiative on community college student success involving nine states and fifty-seven community colleges, the particular interest is accreditation as it plays out in the community college sector.
Money on the Table: State Initiatives to Improve Financial Aid Participation (Full report)
Author: Heath Prince
Date: October 2006
Increasing the numbers of students who participate in financial aid programs has become a critical issue for many state systems. Reasons for the low rates of financial aid uptake vary, from lack of awareness among students to the many and complex types of aid available to inadequate capacity at the institutional level for conducting outreach to students and processing financial aid applications. This brief highlights the activities of four states to address this issue, which is central to Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to help more community college students succeed, particularly low-income students and students of color. It draws on experiences in three states that later joined Achieving the Dream-Connecticut, North Carolina, and Texas-as well as California.
Making Performance Accountability Work: English Lessons for U.S. Community Colleges
Author: Ozan Jaquette
Date: February 2006
In the United States, efforts to use performance accountability as a way to drive improvement in public higher education institutions and systems have yielded mixed results. A more encouraging story has unfolded in England. There, a nationwide accountability system for further education colleges—England’s community-college counterparts—has led to impressive increases in student outcomes since it was implemented in 1992. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds have made particularly large gains. Making Performance Accountability Work takes a detailed look at the policy innovations in England. For U.S. policymakers, they provide both reason for caution and guidance for designing and implementing better performance measurement and funding systems.
State Systems of Performance Accountability for Community Colleges: Impact and Lessons for Policymakers
Author: Kevin Dougherty and Esther Hong of the Community College Research Center , Teachers College, Columbia University
Date: July 2005
This brief looks at trends in performance accountability in state higher education systems, focusing on the five Achieving the Dream states (Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia) and four other states (California, Illinois, New York and Washington). The brief describes three different types of performance accountability systems: performance funding; performance budgeting; and performance reporting. It assesses the reasons behind the modest impacts of performance accountability in the nine states. The authors document problematic unintended consequences as well. The report proposes a series of design changes that can help institutions and states avoid problems of current performance accountability systems.
Standardization vs. Flexibility: State Policy Options on Placement Testing for Developmental Education in Community Colleges
Author:Heath Prince, Jobs for the Future
Date:April 2005
Many students entering community colleges are academically unprepared to succeed in college-level courses, and about one-third of community college students nationally take at least one developmental education course. Given the importance of remediation—as well as its costs and often disappointing results—states are exploring ways to improve developmental education in community colleges. This policy brief describes some of the options and tradeoffs that states encounter as they try to systemize decisions about which students must enroll in developmental education courses. The brief documents variation in policies around mandatory testing, cut scores, and placement in the Achieving the Dream states and several other states.
State Data Systems and Privacy Concerns: Strategies for Balancing Public Interests
Author: Jack Mills, Jobs for the Future
Date: February 2005
Better institutional systems for collecting and reporting student outcome data could help institutional, state, and national policymakers improve student outcomes, yet the collection of data confronts a powerful public interest: individual privacy. This policy brief explores how states can balance the interests of accountability and privacy. It describes how states have addressed the collection and use of student record data within the limits and constraints set by federal privacy laws, with particular reference to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Some states stuck a good balance between preserving individual privacy and using individually identifiable data records to drive institutional improvement. Some states have created “data warehouses” and have the analytic capacity to identify inequities in educational outcomes for students from different population groups. The lessons from these states and their approaches can be helpful to other states as they try to address the need for more student outcome data in a time of great concern about individual privacy.
Access to Community College for Undocumented Immigrants: A Guide for State Policy Makers
Author: Radha Roy Biswas, Job for the Future
Date: January 2005
Faced with a growing number of undocumented immigrant students graduating from their high school, many states—including the first five Achieving the Dream states—are assessing and revising their policies related to access and affordability of higher education for undocumented students. Some states have passed laws to clarify policies on enrollment, tuition, and financial aid in order to expand opportunity for these students. Others have taken steps in the opposite direction, reducing access and opportunity in response to political opposition against granting public benefits to undocumented immigrants. In some states, community colleges have pre-empted state action and taken proactive steps to increase access. Others are waiting for clear federal and state guidance. This brief explores being taken by states and institutions, and provides guidelines for policymakers contemplating the politics and policy options around serving undocumented students.
STATE POLICY AUDIT
This report gives the results of a 50-state survey of state policies affecting community college practices in three main areas: student access, student success, and performance accountability. In the case of access, the report examines how states differ on community college tuition, state student aid, and outreach through dual enrollment programs. With respect to student success, the report examines state policies affecting remedial and developmental education, transfer of general education credits, and baccalaureate granting by community colleges. Finally, the report examines state policies toward performance accountability, particularly whether state appropriations to community colleges are allocated on the basis of institutional performance (in the form of performance funding) and whether state bodies and community colleges are using performance outcomes to devise new access and success policies.
Kevin Dougherty of Teachers College, Columbia University has been conducting a national audit of state policies that affect students’ access to and success in community college. The audit includes case studies of the first five Achieving the Dream states and a survey of all 50 states. The first set of reports on the first five Achieving the Dream states is now available. The full report, "State Policy to Achieve the Dream in Five States," provides detailed policy audits of Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, as well as a chapter and detailed tables providing cross-case analysis of patterns across the five states and recommendations for future state policy. "Five States of Policy" provides a condensed summary of the full report.
Achieving the Dream in Connecticut & Ohio: State policies affecting access to, and success in, community colleges for students of color and low-income students by Kevin J. Dougherty, James Marshall, and Andrea Soonachan (2006). The reports were commissioned by Lumina Foundation for Education as part of a series of policy audits of the states involved in Achieving the Dream. Lumina is the primary funder of the initiative.
ONGOING RESEARCH
Study of Institutional Research Capacity and Use of Data at Community CollegesAs part of the Achieving the Dream initiative, the Community College Research Center is conducting a study of institutional research (IR) at community colleges. The study, which began in September 2004, is exploring the roles of research in colleges’ decision-making and policy analysis relating to student outcomes. It is examining how IR is positioned within institutions; the capacity of college staff, to conduct research; and the responsibilities typically assigned to institutional research staff.
RELATED RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
Lumina Foundation for Education, a primary funder of Achieving the Dream, is a private, independent foundation that strives to help people achieve their potential by expanding access and success in education beyond high school. The foundation funds research and evaluation related to college access, student success, and adult learners. Recent reports include the following:
Community College Research Center (CCRC), a national partner in Achieving the Dream, conducts research on community college issues including access and equity; the high school-to-college transition; institutional mission and governance; programs and practice; and workforce education. CCRC’s recent reports include the following:
Student success courses are designed to help students develop good study habits, learn about campus resources, and form goals for education and careers. While such courses are growing in popularity nationwide, little research has been conducted on their effectiveness. A recent study undertaken by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) sought to better understand the impact of student success courses on student outcomes, including credential completion, persistence, and transfer. CCRC Brief No. 36 reports on the apparent effects of student success courses in Florida, both for those students who did and those who did not enroll in remedial courses.
- Is Student-Right-To-Know All You Should Know? An Analysis of Community College Graduation Rates by Thomas R. Bailey, Juan Carlos Calcagno, Davis Jenkins, D. Timothy Leinbach & Gregory S. Kienzl (2005)
- The research reported here has two related goals. One goal is to work towards strengthening the ability to assess and compare institutional performance. The paper thus presents a model that can be used to adjust simple graduation rates for institutional characteristics, such as student composition, college resources, size, and location, all of which might influence those rates. A long-term goal is to understand how to improve student outcomes, so the paper also uses the model to measure the effect of those institutional characteristics on graduation rates.
MDRC a national partner in Achieving the Dream, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being of low-income people. Its research and demonstration programs address issues of education, children and families, work, welfare and barriers to employment. MDRC’s recent publications on strategies to increase student success at community colleges include the following:
More Guidance, Better Results? Three-Year Effects of an Enhanced Student Services Program at Two Community Colleges by Susan Scrivener and Michael J. Weiss, with Jedediah J. Teres (August 2009).
In this program, low-income students received enhanced student services and were eligible for a modest stipend for two semesters. The program improved academic outcomes in the second semester and registration in the semester after that, but these effects did not persist in subsequent semesters.
The Learning Communities Demonstration: Rationale, Sites, and Research Design; Working Paper, Published with the National Center for Postsecondary Research by Mary G. Visher, Heather Wathington, Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, and Emily Schneider,with Oscar Cerna, Christine Sansone, and Michelle Ware (May 2008).
Launched in 2007 by MDRC and the National Center for Postsecondary Research, the Learning Communities Demonstration is testing models of this promising approach in six community colleges in five states. This report describes the research design, including information about the colleges and their models, the random assignment process, data sources, analysis plans, and reporting schedule.
A Good Start: Two-Year Effects of a Freshmen Learning Community Program at Kingsborough Community College by Susan Scrivener, Dan Bloom, Allen LeBlanc, Christina Paxson, Cecilia Elena Rouse, and Colleen Sommo, with Jenny Au, Jedediah J. Teres, and Susan Yeh (March 2008).
Freshmen in a “learning community” at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, moved more quickly through developmental English requirements, took and passed more courses, and earned more credits in their first semester than students in a control group. Two years later, they were also somewhat more likely to be enrolled in college.
The Opening Doors Demonstration is designed to show how community colleges can help more low-income students remain in school and improve other outcomes, including degree attainment, labor market success, and personal and social well-being.
Opening Doors Learning Communities, a program serving mostly low-income freshmen at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY, improved course and test pass rates, particularly in English.
Jobs for the Future, a national partner in Achieving the Dream, directs another national initiative called “Double the Numbers” that aims to advance public policies that can significantly increase the number of low-income young people who enter and complete postsecondary education. Double the Numbers has produced several research reports, including the following:
This report, based on JFF’s 50-state survey of state higher education plans, looks at which states have set numerical targets for college enrollment and completion and how states set, measure, and publicize these goals to institutions, the public, and policymakers.
Nellie Mae Education Foundation , a partner in Achieving the Dream, supports research on college access and success. Recent reports include the following:
- Head Start on College: Dual Enrollment Strategies in New England 2005.
- This study commissioned by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and released by Jobs for the Future as part of its Double the Numbers initiative, explores the potential of dual enrollment programs as a way of expanding the pipeline of traditionally underserved students who enter higher education institutions in New England. To evaluate the degree to which secondary and postsecondary institutions in the six New England states are implementing dual enrollment, Head Start on College profiles 19 dual enrollment partnerships that have achieved various measures of success.
- To read the report online, please visit www.nmefdn.org and click on Research.
Developmental Education - The August 2005 Achieving the Dream Policy newsletter includes summaries of several recent studies on developmental education policies and practices by Dolores Perin, Eric Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, and others. View summaries.
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