California’s only open access intuitions, the community colleges, are particularly affected by the difficult challenge of educating students academically unprepared for college. To address this challenge, the community colleges launched the Basic Skills Initiative in 2006. This initiative seeks to improve basic skills education by learning about effective practices and increasing their use across the 112 colleges through professional development and increased funding. Despite its strengths, the potential success of the initiative is limited by state and system policies that are not well aligned with the goals of the initiative. Greater success could be had through reforming state and system policy.
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