Achieving the Dream

Achieving the Dream identifies seven essential capacities that must be in place for colleges to create the student-focused culture that promotes student success. 

1. Leadership & Vision – The commitment and collaboration of the institution’s leadership with respect to student success and the clarity of the vision for desired change.
2. Data & Technology – The institution’s capacity to collect, access, analyze and use data to inform decisions, as well as, to use powerful technology to support student success.
3. Equity – The commitment, capabilities, and experiences of an institution to equitably serve low-income students, students of color and other at-risk student populations with respect to access, success, and campus climate.
4. Teaching & Learning – The commitment to engaging full-time and adjunct faculty in examinations of pedagogy, meaningful professional development, and a central role for them as change agents within the institution. Also, the college’s commitment to advising, tutoring, and out-of-classroom supports as well as restructuring developmental education to facilitate student learning and success.
5. Engagement & Communication – The creation of strategic partnerships with key external stakeholders, such as K-12, universities, employers and community-based organizations, and internal stakeholders across the institution to participate in the student success agenda and improvement of student outcomes.
6. Strategy & Planning – The alignment of the institution with the umbrella goal of student success and the institution’s process for translating the desired future into defined goals and objectives and executing the actions to achieve them.
7. Policies & Practices – The institutional policies and practices that impact student success and the processes for examining and aligning policies and practices to remove barriers and foster student completion.

A culture of evidence is embedded into all seven capacities, reflecting the need for colleges to incorporate data-informed decision making across their value systems. The framework brings improvement efforts under one cohesive umbrella. It weaves in network colleges’ experiences and the best thinking from the student success movement with the successful strategies already underway on campus.

To complement the framework, Achieving the Dream partnered with network colleges to develop the Institutional Capacity Assessment Tool (ICAT). This self-assessment tool, helps colleges identify strengths and areas for improvement in each capacity area.

Changing campus culture and improving student outcomes is a challenging task that requires self-reflection, critical thinking, feedback, and coordinated action across the institution. The ICAT is a tool that can get this work done. Colleges that completed the ICAT are leveraging the results to guide strategic planning, prepare for accreditation, launch pathways, implement high impact practices, facilitate discussions across the college, and drive action.

To support colleges in answering the call for better data, Achieving the Dream emphasizes efforts to collect, analyze, using, and sharing data on student outcomes. Achieving the Dream institutions develop a culture of evidence and inquiry on their campus so the whole community is engaged in identifying ways to better serve their students. Achieving the Dream leverages data from member colleges and the National Student Clearinghouse to produce reports for each Achieving the Dream institution that enables them to:

• Track persistence, completion of credential(s), and transfer to four-year institutions longitudinally.
• Evaluate student success efforts through an equity lens through disaggregated data.
• Benchmark performance against colleges in the Achieving the Dream Network in their state, region, and the Achieving the Dream Network.

ATD colleges are coached to the following performance metrics:

Early Momentum – Credit Accumulation

• 6+ college credits in 1st term
• 12+ college credits in 1st term
• 15+ college credits 1st year
• 24+ college credits in 1st year
• 30+ college credits in 1st year

Gateway Math and English Completion

• Completed college Math in 1st year
• Completed college English in 1st year
• Completed both college English & college Math in 1st year

Persistence

• 1st term to 2nd term
• 1st year to 2nd year

Credit Completion Ratio

• College credits earned vs. attempted in 1st year

As an Achieving the Dream College, OC has access to a Leadership Coach and Data Coach. Coaches play a critical role in the success of Achieving the Dream by providing ongoing support via numerous site visits, email, conference calls and continuous communication as needed. 

Leadership Coach

Leadership Coaches embed themselves in the culture of the organization and seek to build the organization’s capacity to reach its long-term goals. Leadership Coaches endeavor to be a critical friend by asking clarifying, tough questions and helping to problem solve. They try to surface unspoken concerns and assist the college to imagine new ways to reach their student success goals and build leadership at all levels of the organization. Leadership coaches listen with empathy and model collaborative behavior and transformative change. They contribute to our active and collaborative coaching community and, in partnership with a Data Coach, ensure that ATD provides the most effective, on-the-ground support to Network colleges.

OC's Leadership Coach is Diane Troyer. Prior to her role with Achieving the Dream, Dr. Troyer served as a Senior Program Officer with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and served on the Postsecondary Success team, which is focused on significantly increasing the numbers of low-income young adults who obtain a postsecondary degree or credential that has value in the workplace. 

Data Coach 

The Data Coach supports the college to build capacity in the development, analysis, and use of student performance outcomes, efficiency outcomes, and equity outcomes to inform improvement efforts. The data coach supports the college in building a culture of inquiry to answer critical questions about who attends college, who succeeds in and after college, and how college is financed. To advance goals of socioeconomic mobility and equity, Data Coaches guide colleges in disaggregating data to determine how low-income, first-generation college goers, students of color, and other underserved students perform and in identifying achievement gaps to close.

OC's Data Coach is Dr. Desiree Zerquera. Dr. Desiree Zerquera is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs and Organization and Leadership in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco and a Data Coach for Achieving the Dream. In her current role, Desiree teaches courses on student success, organizational theory, and assessment. 

Guided Career Pathways is a research-based approach that helps simplify students' choice of programs of study, providing access to the support they need, and ensures students are learning what they need to know in order to pursue further education and careers. 

Achieving the Dream offers a student-centered, data-informed framework for institutional improvement, with a focus on closing equity gaps. Within that framework, Guided Pathways comprises four distinct pillars:

• Pillar 1 (Simplifying the pathway) We organize the curriculum based on 6-8 career paths or meta-majors to provide students clearer roadmaps to their academic and career goals.
• Pillar 2 (Getting students on the pathway) We support students in exploring academic and career options, selecting the right pathways, and getting on the pathways as quickly as possible.
• Pillar 3 (Keeping students on the pathway) We provide students integrated support services to facilitate their persistence and success, including their transition to further education and careers.
• Pillar 4 (Ensuring students are learning) We clarify and align learning outcomes across programs to improve teaching and ensure that what students are learning in and outside the classroom is relevant to the requirements for success in their further education and careers.

Students at ATD colleges are finding success moving through the stages of their educational journeys: learning the skills for a new career, completing courses, earning credentials and degrees, and transferring to four-year institutions. Achieving the Dream provides a framework, resources, and support to bring about the kind of holistic change that makes it possible for students to achieve their dreams.

Bakersfield College, CA

Increased successful completion of developmental English from 21.3 percent in 2010 to 24.9 percent in 2012 and successful completion of developmental math from 19.1 percent to 23.3 percent.

Trident College, SC

Increased fall term successful course completion rate from 62 percent in 2011 to 76 percent in 2014.

William H. Rainey Harper College, IL

Increased the percentage of degree and certificate-seeking students who reached their goal within three years of initial enrollment from 14 percent in 2010 to 24 percent in 2014. The percentage of recent high school graduates who enrolled in college-level math within one year of high school graduation also increased from 47 percent to 72 percent.

Durham Technical Community College, SC

Increased fall-to-spring persistence from 64 percent in 2007 to 71 percent in 2011. Additionally, the persistence gap closed as African American students’ persistence during the same time period rose from 62 percent to 71 percent.

University of Hawai'i Community Colleges, HI

Increased the number of degrees awarded by 70 percent between 2010 and 2014, during a stable enrollment period.