The Wayne County Community College District (WCCCD) has been selected to join the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative to help more community college students succeed. The college is one of six from Michigan, and 26 overall, joining the initiative in fall 2008. The initiative has now grown to 84 participating institutions in 15 states. This marks the Achieving the Dream’s first expansion into Michigan.
Achieving the Dream provides participating colleges with support to implement strategies designed to help more students, particularly students of color and low-income students, earn degrees, complete certificates or transfer to other institutions to continue their studies. Achieving the Dream emphasizes building a culture of evidence, in which colleges use data to identify effective practices, improve student success rates and close achievement gaps.
The Achieving the Dream initiative was created by a number of national partners to increase the number of community college students who succeed by completing developmental education and college-level courses with a "C" or better, return to college from semester to semester, and complete certificate and degree programs. The national partners include the Lumina Foundation for Education, the American Association of Community Colleges, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation. The WCCCD AtD initiative is funded by a five-year grant from the Kresge Foundation.
AtD is particularly interested in closing achievement gaps between low-income persons and minority students and the general student body.
WCCCD identified four priority intervention areas based on research on student achievement patterns. These interventions are:
