Replicating the KCC Model at other Colleges

Kingsborough Community College has been involved with the development of a number of learning community (LC) programs over a period of ten years. Our first experience was the development of a LC program for ESL students, the Intensive ESL Program. More recently, we were involved in a nationwide two-year study with MDRC called Opening Doors that focused on developing a LC program for students with developmental skills needs.

Our experience with both programs points to the success of our LC model, with student performance improving on many levels. Data clearly show that students in both Intensive ESL and Opening Doors programs are more likely to pass developmental courses than their control-group counterparts. They pass reading and writing skills tests at a rate more than double that of students in control groups. Results to date point to the fact that LCs improve instructional delivery, especially at the basic skills level, and facilitate students' passing through remediation more quickly. In doing so, students are less apt to get mired in the morass of developmental skills sequential coursework where they may lose confidence and often drop out or deplete their financial aid before completing their degree.

We believe that Kingsborough's LC model, as we have developed it, has significant policy implications nationwide, and is replicable at community colleges locally and across the country. In 2006, Kingsborough received a grant from the Ford Foundation to replicate our LC model in community colleges across the nation. As a result, we are currently delivering training and support to a number of schools interested in replicating our model in order to initiate or develop LCs for their underprepared students. To date, training and support has taken the form of conferences at Kingsborough and off-site visits to participating schools.