Policies and Practices to Improve Student Preparation and Success: New Directions for Community Colleges, Number 145

Attention to college access has improved opportunities for students of all backgrounds to participate in higher education. Less work has been done on the equally important issue of success once in college, however. Many students enter community colleges unprepared or underprepared for college-level work. This volume examines various attempts to improve entrants' preparation, as well as efforts to help them succeed once they have enrolled.

Chapters discuss:

1. The landscape of policies and practices that support student preparation and success
2. Challenge and opportunity: rethinking the role and function of developmental education in community college
3. Sustaining changes that support student success in community college
4. New directions for dual enrollment: creating stronger pathways from high school through college
5. Ready or not?
6. Making prealgebra meaningful: it starts with faculty inquiry
7. Pedagogies of visibility: the full e-mersion and beyond
8. State college readiness initiatives and community colleges
9. Looking ahead: synthesizing what we know about national, regional, and local efforts to improve student preparation and success

These chapters offer broad perspectives--providing context for preparation efforts and developmental education writ large--and the view on the ground--highlighting work on specific community college campuses. Authors represent community college faculty, researchers, funders, and policymakers. Each chapter contributes to the larger understanding of how best to help students prepare for success in college.

This is the 145th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Community Colleges. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.