Completion Arch Tool to Measure Community College Students’ Progress, Success

May 2012

Advocacy

The Completion Arch, a new free and innovative Web-based resource from the College Board and MPR Associates, uses more than 500 indicators and an intuitive design to measure the progress and success of community college students. This tool collects, organizes and explains the vast amount of publicly available data currently available — on enrollment, workforce preparation and placement — to offer a comprehensive look at the education landscape.

The Completion Arch’s framework spans the wide range of community college stu­dent endeavors. By synthesizing hundreds of indicators from dozens of sources, it fills the need for useful, reliable and centrally organized statistics on the progress of community college students and highlights the central role that community colleges play in addressing the nation’s need for a well-educated workforce.

Publicly available national, state- and initiative-level data relating to commu­nity college student progress will be available in a single Web-based resource, helping educators, policymakers and others who are working to advance student success.

“The Completion Arch is our newest effort to promote the importance of community colleges while helping educators and policymakers fine-tune the system so that it best meets the growing needs of our students,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. “To properly serve the unique population of community college students from their point of entry through their entire experience, it is essential to better understand and evaluate the many available measures of their progress. This powerful new tool is an enormous advancement for community college educators and administrators, helping them keep the promise that community college makes to growing numbers of Americans.”

As the United States works to increase the proportion of adults who complete at least an associate degree, community colleges will play a critical role.

With nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States attending a community college at some point in their college career, monitoring and advancing the success of the two-year college sector is essential to reaching the college completion goals.

The Completion Arch is part of a broad spectrum of ongoing initiatives at the College Board that support community college students, families, educators and policymakers, including:

• The National Office of Community College Initiatives, which advances and strengthens these institutions throughout the United States;
• The Community College Advisory Panel, composed of national community college leaders, which helps guide the College Board’s partnership with two-year institutions; and
• College Board–led policy analyses, empirical research, counselor professional development and college guidance material for community college students.

“The Completion Arch is an important resource for community college leaders,” said Paul Sechrist, president of Oklahoma City Community College and chair of the College Board’s Board of Trustees.  “Having ready access to national and state-level data will help them highlight to legislators and policymakers the pivotal work of community colleges. Given the importance of these institutions in meeting the nation’s college completion goals, the Completion Arch will be a powerful ally.”