As is typical in a recession, many community colleges are experiencing a surge in enrollment, at precisely the same time that they must--like many enterprises, both public and private--contend with choking constraints on resources. The reality for community colleges is this: No matter how good this nation's colleges are today--and they do contribute mightily to educational access, work-force development, and economic prosperity--they simply are not yet good enough. Their results, particularly when stated in terms of student achievement, are not adequate to serve the pressing needs of individual students, communities, states, and the nation. Without question, the most significant educational challenge for community colleges is providing effective remedial education for the large numbers of students who arrive underprepared to succeed in college-level work. Data from the national "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count" effort--a multiyear national project that uses student-achievement data to design effective institutional changes to help community-college students succeed--show just how much improvement is needed. As discussed in a recent report by the Community College Research Center, the numbers indicate that of the more than 250,000 students in the study, many who were assessed as needing remedial classes never made it to college-level course work. Sixty-nine percent of students referred to remedial math did not complete their sequence, and 56 percent of students referred to remedial reading did not complete theirs. Although remedial education is clearly a tremendous challenge, it is critical to the success of six out of 10 entering students, so it must be an important priority for community colleges. While improving student achievement is clearly hard, it is possible. Three pertinent and powerful data points from "Achieving the Dream" illustrate both the current performance challenge in remedial education and the significant payoff when colleges are able to get it right. Tracking first-time college students from the survey's 2002 cohort--colleges with disproportionately high enrollments of low-income and minority students--researchers found that upon entry, 72 percent needed at least one remedial math course. After three years, only 23 percent of those students had successfully completed the remedial math sequence--a disturbing lack of progress over all. But students from that very same cohort who successfully completed a remedial course in their first term of enrollment were then significantly more likely to persist than any other group in the college, including those who did not need remediation in the first place.