Arkansas Leading Change in College Student Experience
New report released on effective model for continuous improvement across community colleges statewide
Orlando, FL (February 25, 2014) – Today, Achieving the Dream released Continuous Improvement for College Completion: Arkansas Builds a System-Level Strategy for Community College Student Success during a session at DREAM 2014. This report details the coordinated efforts of Arkansas that has significantly improved the progress of student outcomes at two-year colleges across the state.
Between 2004 and 2011 Arkansas’s two-year institutions increased their degree and certificate production by 84 percent, compared to an increase of 32 percent for the United States as a whole during the same time period.
“We applaud the extraordinary commitments of the Arkansas community college faculties and administrations to ensure greater and more sustained successful completion by their students of their chosen programs,” said Achieving the Dream President and CEO William E. Trueheart. “This very difficult, but transformative, work will increase the numbers of gainfully employed, productive citizens thereby stimulating sustainable economic growth in their communities. We believe that Arkansas has the potential to become a national leader in community college reform producing exemplary practices that can be replicated in other states.”
Over the past five years, a broad, Arkansas statewide effort to improve student success in community colleges has taken root. Just 30 percent of Arkansan adults have a postsecondary degree, the second lowest rate in the nation. In that poverty correlates closely with educational attainment, that statistic is further complicated by the reality that the average household income in Arkansas is 25 percent below the national average.
Arkansas’s community colleges serve a unique and powerful role in educating the state’s students and future employees. But for many years student success in completing degrees and credentials at two-year colleges in Arkansas has lagged behind the US average.
Many factors played a role in Arkansas’s achievements. But a cornerstone in that success has been the development and implementation of a broad, intentional strategy, focused on student success, to build and scale the capacity of the state’s community colleges to drive change on their own campuses
Partners in the effort to improve Arkansas community college student success included the state’s 22 community colleges, the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education. Achieving the Dream helped the partners to develop and implement the “Arkansas System-Level Strategy for Student Success,” a new framework for building a state-wide culture of student success by testing, proving, and spreading innovative student success strategies across Arkansas’s community colleges. Intensive, creative, and methodologically rigorous, the System-Level Strategy is proving itself to be an effective model for continuous improvement across community colleges statewide.
Achieving the Dream, Inc. is a national nonprofit leading the nation’s most comprehensive non-governmental reform network for student success in higher education history. The Achieving the Dream National Reform Network, including over 200 institutions, more than 100 coaches and advisors, and 15 state policy teams - working throughout 34 states and the District of Columbia - helps nearly 4 million community college students have a better chance of realizing greater economic opportunity and achieving their dreams.
Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges (AATYC) AATYC is a private, nonprofit higher education membership organization serving the educational needs of two-year college students and the business/industry needs of the state. AATYC represents all 22 two-year colleges in Arkansas. AATYC facilitates the sharing of ideas, resources, and opportunities among its members, and advocates on behalf of members' students.
Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation
For over 35 years, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation has worked to make a difference by helping to build and sustain the organizations that serve and strengthen Arkansas. Through grantmaking and strategic partnerships, we are working even harder to help close the economic and educational gaps that leave too many Arkansas families in persistent poverty. Working together, the needle can and must move from poverty to prosperity for all Arkansans.
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CONTACT:
Lauren Lewis
Achieving the Dream
917-613-6419
llewis@achievingthedream.org
Collin Callaway
Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges
501-371-0404
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