In 2007, the Illinois General Assembly passed Public Act 0950694, "The College and Career Readiness Pilot Act", in an effort to reduce remediation within Illinois' community colleges. An important objective of this legislation was to better prepare students to be successful in transitioning from high school to college. According to the grant guidelines developed by the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB), recipients of the CCR pilot funds were expected to engage in activities to assist the Board in meeting the five elements of the Act, including the: (1) Diagnosis of college readiness by developing a system to align ACT scores to specific community college courses in developmental and freshman curriculums; (2) Reduction of remediation by decreasing the need for remedial coursework in mathematics, reading, and writing at the college level; (3) Alignment of high school and college curriculums; (4) Provision of resources and academic support to students to enrich the senior year of high school through remedial or advanced coursework and other interventions; and (5) Development of an appropriate evaluation process to measure the effectiveness of readiness intervention strategies. An external evaluation was funded by the ICCB to determine the impact of pilot programs funded by the CCR Act. Evidence of student outcomes, including student transition to the community college with reduced remedial courses were seen as measures that would help to determine the success of CCR; however, before student outcomes could be measured, it was important to understand how the pilot sites were implementing the CCR programs. What changes were community colleges and their high school partners making? What programs and services were they offering to improve students' math, reading and writing competencies? Beginning with program implementation during the 2007-08 year, the state's evaluation of the CCR pilot programs has documented the evolving partnerships between community colleges and local high schools and provided quantitative and qualitative evidence of the how CCR programs and services are being implemented. The evaluation used a mixed-method approach to assess college preparatory (pre-college remediation) programs involving five community colleges and their many high school partners. The authors' evaluation shows the pilot sites are making recommended changes in response to lessons learned about program implementation in year one, and they are likely to continue to do so as they participate in subsequent years with the CCR initiative. (Contains 1 table.)