Readiness efforts key to ensuring college success

Community colleges serve a critical role in today's educational climate. They are the gateway to achieving advanced degrees, and to gaining successful employment.

According to the American Association of Community Colleges, over 45 percent of all college undergraduates enroll in community colleges. To help our students succeed, it is important that they are college and career ready.

Wherever our students go to college, we all must focus on their readiness so that they can move through higher education as quickly and successfully as possible, leading them to a degree, certificate, or a fruitful career.

If students are not ready, it takes them longer to complete. This is reflected in the average completion rate in the U.S. of 30 percent (National Student Clearinghouse).

College and career readiness embodies many issues, but, nationally, the biggest issue is the incoming students' inability to be successful in college-level math.

Having to enroll in developmental coursework is a significant barrier to future college and career success, considering that, according to a 2010 study, two-thirds of students referred to developmental courses never go on to enroll in credit-bearing classes.

In Illinois, approximately 50 percent of first-time community college students have to take at least one developmental course when they enter college before they can move into college-level coursework. Only 14 percent of developmental education students end up graduating in three years. That's the real issue - more students taking developmental coursework, lower completion rates.

But while college and career readiness is perhaps one of the biggest issues facing community colleges nationwide, it has actually helped further their collaboration with K-12 school districts in Illinois, creating some dynamic approaches to better preparing a student for college and beyond.

At, Elgin Community College, math instructors have developed a fourth-year math class in partnership with high school math teachers. And Harper College offers developmental math classes to seniors in high school. Harper has also recently introduced the same program for developmental English.

At McHenry County College, we work to ensure that students take classes appropriate for their skill level, which often means developmental coursework. In 2010, 1,797 recent high school graduates attended MCC. Of those, 1,026 (57 percent) required developmental math.

We shared this data with our K-12 district superintendents, who initiated a College and Career Readiness Alliance partnership focused partly on reducing the need for recent high school graduates to enroll in developmental math at the college level.

The alliance focused on ensuring that students are prepared for a seamless transition directly into college-level courses upon high school graduation and ensuring that student progression is toward the completion of a credential, which leads to a career or toward matriculation to a four-year institution.

One significant result of the alliance's effort was reducing the percentage of recent high school graduates who need to take developmental math from 57 percent to 26 percent over the last four years - a 31 percent decrease.

Other MCC readiness efforts include an over 1,000 percent increase over five years in the number of high school students taking college credit (dual credit), and development of a dedicated college and career readiness website (www.mchenry.edu/collegeready http://www.mchenry.edu/collegeready).

These examples are just some of the ways in which community colleges are tackling the national issue of college and career readiness. Many community colleges in Illinois are also working with the Illinois Community College Board, Advance Illinois, and the IL P-20 Council to eliminate developmental education at the college level altogether.

In the end, that is our goal. But to get there, it takes:

1) Continuous improvement and redefining the high school to college transition;

2) Support throughout every level of each institution; and

3) A strong partnership between K-12 school districts and colleges.

Ultimately, a common purpose, commitment and understanding around readiness efforts will help drive overall student success. Our students' success, after all, is our top priority.

Dr. Vicky Smith is president of McHenry County College in Crystal Lake.