In order for a state to improve community college completion rates, it needs clear measures for understanding exactly how its students are performing. Using data of three 8th grade cohorts (1996–1998) in Texas public schools, this report discusses how approximately only 20 percent of those 8th grade students completed a certificate or degree in Texas within six years, and how the indicators for measuring student success are not useful in improving this rate. To that end, this report offers a simple ratio as an unambiguous success indicator for tracking student progression toward improving postsecondary success in Texas.

There is a need for understanding if promising practices that appear to work for the general student population are effective in increasing access and success in postsecondary education for low-income and underrepresented students. This report addresses accelerated learning options and how they might improve rates of college enrollment, persistence, and graduation for underserved students. However, there is a need to improve data collection and data reporting systems across states to understand how underserved students would benefit from accelerated learning programs. Among the recommendations in this report is a call for policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and external funding groups to improve collaboration and evidence-based research to begin efforts to improve student outcomes through accelerated learning options.

This case study describes the progress of the Virginia Community College System’s (VCCS) participation in Achieving the Dream. Using the resources and framework provided by the initiative, VCCS increased their capacity for data collection and analysis across all 23 campuses and used the data to frame conversations with instructors and examination of policies. Based on their experience, VCCS highlights several key factors in their effort, including building a committed and supportive leadership team, the implementation of a strong statewide data system, and making student success the focus of all policy decisions.

The Bridging Research, Information, and Culture (BRIC) Initiative aims to strengthen cultures of inquiry and evidence in the California community college system via three, complementary means: 1. a technical assistance initiative, access to a suite of resources, and dedicated support to institutional researchers and planners. The site includes downloadable resources in several content areas including assessing student learning outcomes.

Our nation’s ability to recover economically and ensure a livable income for low-skilled workers is dependent upon building a more skilled workforce. Postsecondary institutions play a critical role in training and educating individuals for this new workforce, but they need to improve the success rates of these students. According to this policy brief, states need to establish an effective state data system to measure postsecondary student performance and track outcomes, especially for nontraditional students and low-income workers, and to use that data to improve these students’ outcomes. The author examines possible barriers states may encounter, presents ways to assure a K-20 longitudinal data system, and offers recommendations for policy action and next steps for building or reforming a student data system.

Often unaware of financial aid resources and employment services available on campus, many community college students struggle to get the support they need and end up leaving, never attaining their degree or certificate. This documentation study examines how integrated service delivery, specifically the Center for Working Families (CWF) bundled approach, is being implemented at ten community colleges to achieve improved postsecondary outcomes for low-income students. The authors discuss the diverse ways that these community colleges have deployed the CWF approach, while presenting key findings on implementation and lessons related to data tracking, bundling of services, and sustainability. Using case studies and brief descriptions, the report describes each of the ten community colleges’ CWF program or implementation process. 

Complementary information and strategies to the Changing Course planning guide, including a series of self-reflective questions to assist colleges in identifying their own approach to improving college completion.

This toolkit from the U.S. Department of Education provides guidance for state leadership and policymakers as they work to improve college completion rates. It explores why and how to implement seven targeted strategies to increase student success. These strategies impact all phases of the college-going process and cover topics including aligning high school and college standards and using data to drive decision making.

CCSSE’s survey instrument, The Community College Student Report provides information on student engagement, a key indicator of learning and quality of community colleges. The survey, administered to community college students, asks questions that assess institutional practices and student behaviors that are correlated highly with student learning and student retention. The Community College Student Report is a versatile, research-based tool appropriate for multiple uses.

In our nation’s effort to improve our economy by providing a trained and educated workforce, there is significant effort to raise completion rates for students who are college ready and on the path to graduating, but little attention is given to students who left higher education just short of their degree. This brief introduces and elevates the concept of near completion and highlights ways in which institutions serving these students, as well as policymakers, researchers, and employers, can reengage and graduate this population. The brief offers short-term strategies that higher education leaders and other interested stakeholders can implement to keep momentum going.

California postsecondary students are earning degrees at low rates, and degree attainment is even lower for students of color. This report uses cohort data of California Community College students and tracks their progress over six years, modeling how data-driven decision making can increase student success, especially for Latino students, the state’s fastest growing population. While the report describes key findings indicating low completion rates and great racial/ethnic disparities, the authors also present recommendations for improving institutional practices and state policy on data use to track student milestones toward efforts to increase student success.

The dashboard’s purpose is to promote continuous improvement and hold the system and each of its 32 colleges and universities accountable by providing ongoing performance assessment. Currently, the dashboard reports data on six of 10 measures for each college and university and for the system as a whole. They are affordability, student persistence and completion rates, employment rate of graduates, licensure exam pass rates, facilities condition and percent change in enrollment. The dashboard also provides context for interpreting system and institutional performance with trend information, comments and direct comparisons.

Students often enter community college without having a clear sense of their educational and career goals. However, data show that success rates decline as students delay their entry into a focused program of study. Using data from a sample of nearly 12,000 first- time community college students, this report provides schools with a model tracking process they can use to monitor student progress toward an academic concentration. In addition, the author includes guiding questions that schools can use to evaluate their policies and an overview of practices to consider when undertaking improvement efforts.

For five years, 15 states — committed to increasing postsecondary education access and improving completion rates at community colleges — participated in the Achieving the Dream initiative. Guiding state planning and decision making, the states identified a student success policy framework constituting five specific policies, described in this report. The framework emphasizes policies related to: a public policy commitment to student success, a strong performance measurement and data system, assessment and placement policies focused on accelerating students, student persistence and completion, and aligned expectations across educational sectors. Additionally, the report presents results of how the states implemented each of the five policies and describes examples of state action for each policy.

This report examines the implementation of Florida’s developmental education policies at three community colleges with high success rates among developmental education students. These colleges exhibit the same characteristics as those identified by the research literature on high-performing colleges: committed leadership, innovative instruction, proactive student support, regular use of data, and professional development. The authors discuss Florida’s statewide mandates in developmental education on issues of assessment and placement, literacy and math competencies, funding formulas, and accountability, and suggest how other states can learn from their policies.

Far too many community college students, especially developmental education students, are at risk of failing, and thus at greater risk of not earning a living wage or advancing through job opportunities. This policy brief examines the challenges of developmental education and the efforts that states can pursue to increase the success of students enrolled in remedial courses, leading to improved rates of transition to credit-bearing courses. The authors recommend that state policymakers consider policy changes affecting data systems, assessment and placement, concurrent developmental and college-level course taking, financial aid eligibility, support services, and funding for new models of delivery. These recommendations are discussed along with brief examples of what a few states have done to increase student transition out of developmental education.

The wide range of educational opportunities provided at community colleges make them an ideal resource for immigrant populations. However, many schools struggle to meet the unique needs of immigrant students. This report identifies common challenges immigrant students face (e.g., language barriers, late entry to postsecondary education, financial hardship, or gaps in cultural or academic knowledge) and offers an 11-point framework schools can use to guide their efforts to better meet students’ needs. For each item described in the framework, the author provides examples of successful implementation.

As the focus on evidence-based education reform has increased, so too has the importance of strong longitudinal data systems to track student progress and achievement. This brief explores the role of data systems and provides recommendations for state-level policies and practices for data collection, management, and analysis, including examples from current state data systems. A summary list provides an at-a-glance guide to the essential characteristics of effective data systems.

The authors analyze data on first-time community college students in Florida to better understand the probability of underprepared students’ successful transfer to four-year institutions. The study pays particular attention to the impact of intermediate outcomes (e.g., passing college-level math, meeting specific credit thresholds, earning an associate degree) on the likelihood of transfer.

This essay uses longitudinal transcript data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to create transcript-based portraits of traditional-age community college students. These portraits focus on academic behaviors, including entry point, attendance patterns, persistence, course selection, and success to identify six basic populations described by age, the type of institution they attend, transfer rates, and educational expectations. The authors present this information through a metaphor that treats the community college as a “town” where students may visit or take up residence.

As states are building more robust K–16 data systems for improving student outcomes, there is a need for a common approach to interpret the data. This report describes a set of key indicators of community college student progression and completion benchmarks intended for practitioners and policymakers to use in their reform efforts to increase student achievement. Developed by the Achieving the Dream Cross-State Data Work Group, the final benchmarks, plus interim indicators, enable states and institutions to track student progress toward college completion. The report discusses how interim indicators can identify students in need of intervention to get them back on track, and how the set of measures makes possible cross-state comparisons for those institutions that are committed to making data transparent.

While there has been much attention to success rates in developmental courses, there has been comparatively little examination of how students perform in higher-level courses that count toward an associate’s degree or transferable credits. In California, only 55% of students enrolled in credit-bearing or transferable math courses earn passing grades. This brief reviews data on course-taking and -passing trends of California community college students and surfaces questions policymakers should be asking to guide future work.

In this era of community college reform, college leaders are focused on increasing student success, but their efforts to create change are not always supported by current policy conditions. Based on the collaboration of California community college chief executive officers and members of their boards of trustees, this report captures their evidence-based recommendations and proposes a new policy agenda that creates conditions conducive to reform. The agenda comprises a breadth of specific recommendations for changes in local policies and practices as well as changes in state policy — given the political and economic climate — that are needed for community colleges to improve student success.

Since higher education funding is based on student enrollment rather than student success, there is little incentive for colleges and universities to improve, much less measure, student outcomes. Aware of the need for higher education to change its focus, this study analyzed the higher education accountability systems of all fifty states to uncover the kind of information a state gathers about its colleges and students, and how it uses the information to make colleges and students more successful. The report describes the current state of higher education accountability — highlighting best practices already in use — and offers a set of guidelines for designing a model state higher education accountability system.

This guide from the Achieving the Dream initiative provides community colleges with a guide to the six steps required for an effective data-use cycle. It includes suggestions of tools and protocols that can be used in each stage to promote institutional reform.

Each year, states participating in the Developmental Education Initiative complete a self-assessment to identify their progress in developing policies that promote innovative reforms to improve the delivery of developmental education. This brief uses the data from these assessments to explore what policies have been put into place in each of the areas defined by the Initiative’s framework and what steps states are taking to ensure lasting change.

Using data on 35,000 first-time students in Florida community colleges, this research brief explores the factors impacting academic outcomes of traditional and older students. The authors specifically focus on student outcomes from enrollment in developmental course pathways and earned-credit milestones (i.e., completing 20 credits or 50% of a program). Findings suggest that students of different age groups are impacted differently by enrollment pathways and credits earned, and the authors note ways support services can take these differences into account.

As part of their efforts to improve the success rates among underprepared students, the Virginia Community College System enlisted the Community College Resource Center (CCRC) to investigate the factors associated with students completing remediation and passing college-level math and English. CCRC used student tracking data to study the progress patterns of first-time students who received referrals to developmental courses in reading, writing, and math, whether or not they enrolled in the recommended courses.

This report examines how schools can use intermediate milestones to inform and improve student completion rates. The authors describe frameworks for examining milestones, highlighting key differences and features. They then review 11 cases of organizations using intermediate measures, describing the types of data gathered and principal use.

As large proportions of students arrive to college — especially community colleges — unprepared for the rigor of college-level coursework, states are turning to assessments as a critical tool for increasing college readiness. This report describes how Florida’s Division of Colleges partnered with K–12 using the state’s rich K–20 longitudinal student data to design and implement a new 11th grade college placement test that simultaneously places students in remedial or college-level courses and measures high school students’ college readiness. Based on interviews conducted for this case study, the author discusses the changes made at both the secondary and postsecondary levels statewide, reflecting an alignment of standards, ownership of the issues by faculty, and a collaboration across these two sectors to reduce remediation and accelerate developmental instruction.

Researchers and practitioners needing to understand student course-taking patterns and programs of study at community colleges don’t have an easy task given that students don’t declare a major and often take a diverse selection of courses. This paper explores the development of a tool that would assist in understanding course-taking activity of community college students at the college system or individual institution level. The authors explain a methodology involving college transcripts and a clustering algorithm that clusters similar patterns of course taking to understand demographics, and completion and transfer rates in different programs of study.

Incorporating key elements of the El Paso Collaborative’s work to date, including content standards and a K-16 focus, the aim of the Mathematics Alignment Initiative was to align mathematics content, performance and assessment standards and courses, K-16. The site includes an overview of the initiative, tools & products, and student data demonstrating impact.

In the past twenty years, many school reform models have been initiated to improve college preparation, access, and success for underserved students. This paper examines the predictors of college-going behavior and how they have been addressed within the high school reform movement. The authors review and analyze a variety of school reform initiatives including AVID, Talent Development High Schools, International Baccalaureate, Project GRAD, and GEAR UP, among others. The authors extrapolate promising practices from existing reform initiatives and make recommendations for addressing the predictors of college-going behavior. Among the predictors, the authors find that academic rigor and strong social and academic support are the most crucial predictors of a student’s successful enrollment in, and completion of, postsecondary education.

The Completion by Design initiative supports four states — Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — in developing and implementing a completion-focused policy agenda informed by data on student outcomes. This publication describes how Jobs for the Future (JFF) is helping the lead organization in each state change its college-completion state policy and capacity-building efforts. In addition to discussing JFF’s three-part change strategy for how it helps these states accelerate institutional change efforts, this publication presents an overview of key policies supporting the Completion by Design framework as well as the Completion by Design state policy calendar.

Fast Facts about postsecondary complied from various reputable sources.

Currently, students who transfer institutions before earning a degree are reported as dropouts by their first institution, reinforcing an assumption that there is little mobility among college students. Using student-level enrollment data, this report examines the transfer behavior over five years of all students who began postsecondary education in the U.S. in 2006, and reveals that, in fact, postsecondary student enrollment, transfer, and persistence across all sectors of higher education is complex. The authors discuss the transfer patterns and findings, suggesting that with the realization that one-third of all students transfer before earning their degree, new approaches and metrics can be used to better support students on their educational pathway to degree attainment.

In order to better serve California’s community college students, it’s helpful to understand their postsecondary intentions and experiences. This brief, the second of a series on the outcomes of California community college students, examines the transfer patterns of two groups of students—students who met transfer requirements at a CCC but did not transfer to a four-year college or university, as well as students who had transferred but without having met the requirements. The authors discuss the characteristics and course-taking patterns of these two groups.

Improving the success of college completion and transfer rates requires new innovations aimed exactly at those efforts. This report profiles five California community colleges that have implemented practices or programs focused on completion and transfer to a four-year university or the workforce. Additionally, this report presents four commonalities, based on the work of these community colleges, that serve as a framework for any effort to improve student success: information matters, working together, supporting students outside the classroom, and college leaders are key.