Community colleges, which serve almost half of postsecondary students in the United States, are receiving ever-increasing attention from policymakers and researchers. Although these institutions have always served a wide range of people in their communities, the number of students who enter community college requiring additional preparation before they can receive credit for college-level work has increased in recent years. Of course, there will always be returning students whose knowledge and skills need refreshing, but most of the students requiring developmental course work are recent high school graduates, a population that is unlikely to be rusty. (Many terms are used for the courses that precede the college credit level courses: "developmental," "basic skills," "precollegiate," and "remedial," among others.) Rather, these students never mastered the content and skills in these areas in the first place. Given the low percentage of students who progress through the precollegiate course sequence successfully, the focus of work by practitioners, policymakers, and researchers must be on how to better help students succeed from wherever they start. This article surveys the educational landscape to describe current policies and practices that affect student preparation for and success in community college, ranging from national trends and state-level policies to individual classroom projects.