There was a time when driving up institutional enrollments to provide opportunity for more Americans was the mark of success for the nation’s community colleges. Institutions took all comers but did not sufficiently monitor student progress and success. They did not have the data to systematically track which students were succeeding and which were failing, and why. As a result, the commitment to access did not translate into significant increases in students persisting and completing degrees, particularly for underserved populations. The open door was too often a revolving door, and students who came from low-income and diverse backgrounds were typically left behind.
For over two decades, Achieving the Dream (ATD) has been a leader in the student success reform movement, laser-focused on addressing these challenges. Along with a host of partners and hundreds of institutions, ATD has led the effort to create a new vision of student-centered institutions to help every student succeed.
ATD primarily supports institutions that serve large numbers of underserved populations, including first-time college students, student parents, rural and low-income students, and students of color. Today, the ATD Network includes one quarter of the nation’s two-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs); nearly one-third (30%) of the 2.75 million students studying in ATD Network colleges identify as Hispanic or Latinx.
ATD has learned that there is no simple way to transform institutional performance. Everything matters — from making decisions based on evidence rather than hunches to turning aspirations into actionable plans and providing holistic student supports.
To drive institutional transformation, ATD helps colleges measure and strengthen seven foundational capacities that create a student-focused and equity-centered culture, which promotes student success. The seven capacities include:
· Leadership commitment, to develop a shared vision, align resources, motivate action, and create accountability for desired outcomes
· Data empowerment, through data access, literacy, and continuous improvement
· Educational excellence, to foster exemplary teaching that emphasizes learner-centered design and practice
· Organizational agility, to enable continuous learning and rapid response to community needs
· Digital transformation, to enhance learning, support all students, and strengthen operational efficiency
· Disciplined implementation, to align and empower people to effectively execute and monitor changes
· Community connectedness, through partnerships that plan, fund, and advance access, student success, workforce outcomes, and thriving communities
ATD helps its Network of over 300 community colleges — including most Tribal Colleges and Universities and hundreds of other open-access institutions — test, implement, and continually fine-tune strategies for meeting momentum and milestone markers, and for preparing students for lives marked by economic and social mobility.
A recent study comparing outcomes at ATD Network colleges to those at non-ATD colleges found that ATD colleges achieved stronger and more accelerated gains in student completion, including reductions in attainment gaps across student populations.
Laboratory for Innovation
ATD serves as an innovation laboratory for the field. Engaging diverse cohorts of Network colleges in funder-supported reforms, ATD and its partners have broken new ground in strengthening developmental education, redesigning advising systems, providing holistic student supports to address non-academic challenges, and creating cultures of excellence in teaching and learning. By exploring new ideas and championing equitable solutions, we equip institutions to transform and shape lasting, meaningful change. Currently, ATD is working with cohort colleges to align data, technology and human effort to support student success, accelerate and diversify nursing pathways, create AI-enabled colleges, and transform learning through the humanities.
Transforming Institutions and Communities
The future of higher education will require attracting new generations of learners and ensuring that institutions move from being lifelong learning institutions to lifelong career-matching institutions, where learners continually move between work and school to upskill and advance in their careers. ATD’s Community Vibrancy Framework supports colleges in helping students become successful beyond completion by connecting institutional transformation efforts to upward mobility and community impact. The framework includes:
· A bold new access agenda that ensures that college is affordable and students feel a sense of belonging, supported at every stage of their journey, from pre-college to post-college
· Building momentum to completion, which includes reducing the time needed to obtain a degree and developing milestone markers, so students gain traction toward credentials
· Advancing student social and economic mobility by attaining degrees and credentials of labor-market value that lead to greater socioeconomic status
· Developing thriving communities as measured by key metrics that include graduates’ mobility and return on investment (ROI), as well as these vibrancy metrics:
A strong foundation for supporting Latinx student success
ATD’s approach to student success begins with deeply understanding the students each institution serves and validating and affirming the talents, strengths, and lived experiences students bring to college. ATD encourages colleges to look internally and externally to understand how transforming institutions advances student success and influences communities, while understanding how community context influences and informs how colleges support student success. These approaches are particularly important in helping more students from diverse communities — and especially the Latinx community — succeed.
In recent years, ATD has partnered with organizations such as Excelencia in Education and Every Learner Everywhere to help institutions more intentionally serve Latinx students. The work has primarily focused on helping Hispanic-Serving Institutions become more student centric and move beyond enrollment to bolster their “servingness” by transforming teaching and learning.
The core of ATD’s work with Excelencia in Education was data-informed instruction and decision-making to holistically support student success. From 2024 to 2025, ATD and Excelencia in Education established a community of practice among a cohort of eight HSIs across six states, focused on:
· Increasing institutional awareness of their identity as an HSI among employees, students, and the community
· Strengthening faculty hiring and instructional practices to better serve Hispanic/Latinx students
· Training faculty in culturally responsive pedagogy to improve success rates for Hispanic and low-income students
· Creating an inclusive environment for Latinx/Hispanic male students
· Prioritizing Hispanic student success with a focus on equity and narrowing achievement gaps
ATD also has developed specialized training in teaching and learning to help colleges:
· Introduce course assignments that underscore a sense of belonging
· Create educational environments that allow students to engage in learning as their authentic and whole selves.
· Identify and implement the use of digital tools to support cultural connection to course content.
· Center students’ culture, identity, and lived experiences in course content and curriculum.
Conclusion
Even while there are financial, political, and demographic challenges to the enterprise, ATD is committed to our mission of creating and accelerating greater opportunity for more students and communities over the long term.
We look forward to bringing the best of what we have learned about institutional and community transformation to new communities, including Latinx-serving colleges and communities.
About the author
Dr. Karen A. Stout has been president and CEO of Achieving the Dream since 2015. She is president emerita of Montgomery County Community College (PA).
