The Modern Community College

The Modern Community College

Introduction

As community colleges review their progress and chart their path of improvement, a developmental process that embraces a collaborative effort is of paramount importance. Educational leaders, teachers, students, business leaders within a community, and broad-based community involvement are necessary for the development of a plan that creates and enhances effective colleges. There are multiple measures of a community college's success and those measures, in addition to student success on standardized tests, are based in the context of the community being served by the college. A common body of essential knowledge and skills, developed by the stakeholders, is indeed an integral component of a plan for effective colleges.

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) believes that funding for intervention programs and services necessary for improving student achievement must be addressed and improved if the quality of schools is to improve. AACC further supports early childhood education programs in collaboration with other agencies that provide readiness for preschoolers. A community college's internal operations must include professional development; curricular audits; and alignment of the curriculum that is taught, tested, and reported. Accountability systems do improve student success. Monitoring the process and accounting for variations in achievement begin to confirm progress and provide data that recognize effective schools (AACC, 2012).

Research continues to show that a commitment to students and an intrinsic desire to make a difference in the lives of students and their families is very important to an individual student's academic, social, and personal success. Community colleges need to remain adaptive in their pursuit of effectiveness. It is important to invest time, energy, and resources directed toward staff development as a continuous commitment. Teachers should feel a sense of community and collaboration when the reform has been initiated, supported, and fostered by the educational leadership. Administrators and teachers, when committed to working together toward standards and goals that are shared are more likely to succeed. Time to nurture and build trust necessary for appropriate relationships becomes of great importance if educators and school communities are to develop reform that is meaningful to students. The effective school movement is necessarily focused upon the instruction and delivery of instruction to students. Instructional improvement, coupled with the needs and expectations of students and their families, is a process involving awareness, planning, implementation, review, revision, and continual reflection regarding minimum standards.

Continuous teacher and staff professional development, of a high quality, call for collaborative support from teachers, principals, administrators, school staff, and other professional staff within the greater school community (Alssid, et. al., 2011). The meaningful involvement of parents and the local community in planning, implementing, and evaluating school-improvement activities should be encouraged and not underestimated for its value to the school's effectiveness.

Discussion

Historical Evolution of Community College Movement

A learning revolution is considered at heart a performance revolution, targeting both the performance of the individual learners and the institution. The performance and value that added by the learners in the college is all because of the planning and ...