Improving Community College Student Success
Six Achieving the Dream colleges in Washington have spent more than 5 years building a culture of evidence and inquiry, examining student data, implementing strategies to close achievement gaps, and evaluating the impact of these strategies.
Interventions that were abandoned due to disappointing results included optional out-of-class interventions that garnered low participation rates; overbroad strategies that didn't produce tangible results, like resource fairs and poorly defined diversity committees; and interventions that were developed with insufficient faculty input.
Interventions that are having the greatest impact on student achievement for the greatest number of students include those focused on pedagogy (professional development, curriculum redesign, or embedding academic and student support services in certain classes) and well-designed orientation programs and student success courses that are mandatory for students that place below college-level. Collectively these strategies are moving the needle on student success.
Want to learn more details about the strategies getting the most positive results?
Read this one page summary, check out the intervention explorer, or read a report from MDRC about what's working in developmental education.