Overview
Achieving the Dream’s Alliance for Community College Learner Success is a two-year, cohort-based initiative that provides the selected colleges and system with structured coaching, peer learning, and technical assistance to improve student success outcomes for disproportionately impacted learners. Through focused work on teaching and learning, holistic student supports, and strategic leadership, participating institutions will develop and implement data-informed action plans that drive meaningful and sustainable improvements.
Colleges in the Alliance will work closely with ATD coaches and peers to analyze their current student success efforts, engage in deep professional learning, and identify practices that expand access and momentum for learners who have faced persistent obstacles in credential attainment. Over the course of the initiative, colleges will also share their insights to inform the broader field.
Why It Matters
Community colleges are engines of social mobility and economic resilience, especially for students who have historically faced barriers to completing postsecondary credentials. Yet, over the past decade, enrollment in these institutions has declined by nearly 2 million students — a troubling trend that predated the pandemic and continues today. While many institutions have intensified their focus on student success, achieving equitable outcomes demands deeper, more systemic reform.
Disproportionately impacted learners — those whose educational outcomes are significantly affected by institutional barriers — often encounter layered challenges both inside and outside the classroom. Addressing these challenges requires a holistic approach that aligns institutional, instructional, and community resources.
Achieving the Dream’s experience working with hundreds of colleges nationwide has shown that real transformation happens when institutions commit to using data, community insight, and evidence-based strategies to reimagine how they serve students. The Alliance builds on this approach by helping colleges embed sustainable, high-impact practices that will improve student outcomes and strengthen their student success agendas.
Goals and Outcomes
By the end of the initiative, participating colleges and systems will have accomplished the following:
- Conducted in-depth data analysis to examine access, progress, and success among disproportionately impacted learners
- Improved their capacity and ability to serve disproportionately impacted learners by providing tailored teaching and learning and holistic student supports necessary to ensure success
- Identified a data-informed plan that will advance action, access, and success of disproportionately impacted learners at their college or system
- Built a change effort sustainability plan that is integrated into the college or system’s student success agenda
- Shared what it has learned with the broader higher education community through ATD learning events and publications as well as partner events and collaborations so that peer colleges can benefit from the expertise