Community colleges across the country have created innovative, data-informed programs that are models for educating underprepared students, engaging traditionally underserved students, and helping students from all backgrounds succeed. However, because most of these programs have limited scope, the field now has pockets of success rather than widespread improvement. Turning these many small accomplishments into broad achievement--and improved completion rates--depends on bringing effective programs to scale. To meet this challenge while facing shrinking budgets and rising enrollment, colleges must be certain that all of their resources--time and money--are being spent on educational practices that work for all students. But what makes a practice effective? And how can colleges identify the mix of practices they should use to close achievement gaps so all students succeed? To help colleges answer these questions, the Center for Community College Student Engagement has launched a special initiative, Identifying and Promoting High-Impact Educational Practices in Community Colleges. The Center's initiative on high-impact practices is a multi-year effort that draws on data from students, faculty members, and colleges. Findings from surveys and focus groups will be presented in a series of reports. This report provides a first look at the data on promising practices. These are educational practices for which there is emerging evidence of success: research from the field and from multiple colleges with multiple semesters of data showing improvement on an array of metrics, such as course completion, retention, and graduation. This first look describes the promising practices from four perspectives: entering students describing their earliest college experiences, students addressing their overall college experiences, faculty members providing their perceptions of student engagement, and colleges focusing on their use of the practices. (Contains 15 endnotes.)

Center for Community College Student Engagement. 3316 Grandview Street, Austin, TX 78705. Tel: 512-471-6807; Fax: 512-471-4209; e-mail: info@cccse.org; Web site: http://www.ccsse.org/center