Jo-Carol Fabianke, director of Achieving the Dream, provided an update to the Academic Accountability and Student Success Committee Dec. 4.
She made a presentation to the committee of the Alamo Community College District board of trustees summarizing what the Achieving the Dream program has accomplished.
Achieving the Dream focuses on improving the student success rate throughout the district.
The goal is to increase academic success with emphasis on low-income students and students of color, Fabianke said.
Increasing students' ability to acquire certificates and degrees and increasing relationships with high schools are among some of the strategies Fabianke outlined in her presentation.
The priorities set for Achieving the Dream were support for first-time-in-college students, improving the success rate in areas of developmental math and gatekeeper courses, such as English and history, while enhancing a culture of evidence.
She said some of the steps the colleges are taking include making orientation compulsory for all first-time-in-college students, adding one lab hour to math courses, referring at-risk students in developmental courses for additional support, aligning developmental and college-level English for similar outcomes across the colleges, referring students to writing centers and providing developmental sessions for adjunct faculty.
She said each college had its own method of trying to improve student success in the targeted areas.
Whichever college shows the most success in any of the targeted areas will have its policies and procedures aligned with other colleges to improve their outcomes as well.
Fabianke provided a list of statistics on the success rate of first-time-in-college students organized by race.
Categories included statistics for persistence, developmental math, gatekeeper English, gatekeeper math and gatekeeper history courses over three years from fall 2003-05.
The total increase in success and persistence by students at each college was 5 percent.
However, the statistics showed the total average percentage for persistence was 73.8 percent for students of all races over the three years.
The success rate for developmental math was 48.2 percent, gatekeeper English 67.6 percent, gatekeeper math 56.3 percent and gatekeeper history 58.6 percent.
"None of us are proud of these results," Fabianke said.
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