Collaboration for College Readiness

Achieve

Achieve is a bipartisan, non-profit organization that helps states raise academic standards, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability to prepare all young people for postsecondary education, career, and life. Achieve was created by the nation’s governors and business leaders in 1996 following the first National Education Summit. Thirty-five states – educating over eighty percent of America’s students – have joined the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network. In these states, governors, state education officials, business executives and higher education officials work together to raise high school standards, strengthen assessments and curriculum, and align expectations with the demands of college and career.

American Council on Education

The American Council on Education (ACE) is the only higher education organization that represents presidents and chancellors of all types of U.S. accredited degree-granting institutions: community colleges and four-year institutions, private and public universities, and nonprofit and for-profit colleges. This cross-sector membership enables ACE to serve as higher education's unifying voice on key policy matters.

Since 1918, ACE has provided leadership and a unified voice on key higher education issues. Through advocacy, research and innovative programs, ACE represents the interests of more than 1,800 campus executives, as well as the leaders of higher education - related associations and organizations. Together, ACE member institutions serve 80% of today's college students.

ACE aims to foster greater collaboration and new partnerships within and outside the higher education community to help colleges and universities anticipate and address the challenges of the 21st century. ACE has partnered with Achieve, NASH and SHEEO in the Advancing College Readiness Initiative that seeks to help states define and enforce high school standards that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. The goal is to raise awareness and spur increased engagement among college presidents and other senior campus leaders in K-12 reform and alignment efforts. Additionally, ACE has partnered with Lumina Foundation and the Ad Council in the Know How 2 Go campaign, a national public service advertising (PSA) campaign designed to encourage low-income and first-generation students to take the steps necessary to go to college.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members are committed to extending the advantage of a liberal education to all students, regardless of their academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915 by college presidents, AAC&U now represents the entire spectrum of American colleges and universities—large and small, public and private, two-year and four-year. AAC&U comprises more than 1,150 accredited colleges and universities that collectively educate more than five million students every year.

The Data Quality Campaign

Founded in 2005, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data and to implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement. The campaign aims to provide tools and resources that will assist state development of quality longitudinal data systems, while providing a national forum for reducing duplication of effort and promoting greater coordination and consensus among the organizations focusing on improving data quality, access and use.

The Education Trust

The Education Trust works for the high academic achievement of all students at all levels, pre-kindergarten through college, and forever closing the achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from other youth. The organization’s basic tenet is that all children will learn at high levels when they are taught to high levels.

The Education Trust advances its mission along several fronts, from raising its voice in national and state policy debates to helping teachers improve instruction in their classrooms. Regardless of where it occurs, the Education Trust's work maintains a relentless focus on improving the education of all students, and particularly those students whom the system has traditionally left behind.

The Education Trust was established in 1990 by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) as a special project to encourage colleges and universities to support K-12 reform efforts. Since then, the Education Trust has grown into an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to make schools and colleges work for all of the young people they serve. The Education Trust works to achieve significant change in K-12 while simultaneously changing the way that postsecondary education does business. To that end, the Education Trust produces significant reports on state and local K-16 initiatives and, along with the National Association of System Heads (NASH) has launched the Access to Success Initiative to expand college access and increase success for low-income and minority students.

Lumina Foundation

Lumina Foundation for Education, an Indianapolis-based, private foundation, strives to help people achieve their potential by expanding access to and success in education beyond high school. Through grants for research, innovation, communication and evaluation, as well as policy education and leadership development, Lumina Foundation addresses issues that affect access and educational attainment among all students, particularly underserved student groups such as minorities, first-generation college-goers, students from low-income families and working adults. Lumina sponsors programs such as the Know How 2 Go campaign designed to encourage low-income and first-generation students to take the steps necessary to go to college; and the Achieving the Dream initiative, aimed at promoting sustained institutional change among community colleges.

The Foundation bases its mission on the belief that postsecondary education remains one of the most beneficial investments that individuals can make in themselves and that a society can make in its people.

The National Association of System Heads

The National Association of System Heads (NASH) is a membership organization of Chief Executive Officers of the 52 public higher education systems in 38 states and Puerto Rico. The goal of the association is to improve the governance of public higher education systems. Its member systems enroll about 70 percent of all four-year college undergraduates. A major commitment of NASH is to work with K-12 systems and civic leaders to build statewide K-16 vehicles to promote and carry out a coordinated, standards-based education reform strategy.

Along with the Education Trust, NASH has launched the Access to Success Initiative to expand college access and increase success for low-income and minority students.

The State Higher Education Executive Officers

The State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) is a nonprofit, nationwide association of the chief executive officers serving statewide coordinating boards and governing boards of postsecondary education. The State Higher Education Executive Officers association was created in 1954 by the executive officers of nine of the ten statewide higher education boards then in existence. SHEEO's current members are the chief executive officers serving 28 statewide governing boards and 29 statewide coordinating boards of higher education.

To help advance its mission of enhancing and improving higher education, SHEEO participates in the P-16 movement by launching initiatives such as Building Statewide K-16 Systems for Student Success and the SHEEO K-16 Professional Development Collaborative.