Prior to the Guided Pathways movement, a litany of research in community colleges showed that course placement was inaccurate and ineffective. This article argues that placement might be redesigned, addressing erroneous assumptions about student success in service of pathways. This new placement would integrate three main areas of student success…

California community college data shows that most community college students will never earn a degree (The Community College Research Center, 2018) or take a long time to do so (Horn & Skomsvold, 2002; Jenkins et al., 2017). Low success holds significant impact for students of color since California community colleges serve 72% of all Latine…

While community colleges excel at expanding postsecondary enrollments, these institutions often struggle to help students succeed. A chorus of school leaders and policymakers increasingly agree that broad-based, comprehensive organizational change is needed to drastically improve community college student success and equity. The Guided Pathways…

CCRC's 2015 book "Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success" catalyzed a national community college reform movement. Since its publication, hundreds of community colleges have sought to implement whole-college reforms using the guided pathways model outlined in the book, either on their own or as part of…

Community colleges increasingly implement various student success programs, including 1st-year seminars, college skills courses, learning communities, and orientation, in an effort to boost degree completion. However, it is unclear how success programs' curricular designs may contribute to these and associated student outcomes. Such inquiry is…

"Three Big Lessons in Six Years" is both a reflection on the past and a look ahead to the future at Charlestown (C-Town) High School (Boston, Massachusetts) and other early college programs across the country. The purpose of this series is to document essential design elements, operational structures, and critical support for students to…

Today's nationwide focus on college completion is central to both individual and societal success. For individuals, attaining a credential has become essential to earn a livable wage and support a family. In addition, as each person's educational attainment increases, so does his or her capacity to contribute to the economy, his or her community,…

Achieving the Dream colleges engage in a process of institutional improvement to increase student success. A central component of this process is engaging internal and external stakeholders to help develop and implement interventions or changes in programs and services that improve student success. To determine whether these interventions do…

The 2010 edition of this monograph addresses many topics (e.g., administration of orientation programs, family involvement, student characteristics and needs, assessment, and orientation for specific student populations and institutional types) that were included in previous editions but approaches them with new information, updated data, and…