Sophia Graff, a beginning algebra teacher at Valencia College in Orlando, had an idea. The state of Florida had instituted a mandatory competency test that students needed to pass to enter intermediate algebra, but only a third of her students were succeeding. As part of an action-research project that was required for all professors seeking tenure, Graff had already tried and rigorously proven that engaging her students in more group assignments increased student learning. She knew it worked in her classroom. Now she wondered what would happen if she provided students with a similar opportunity to prepare for the competency test, in groups. The faculty team tracked test outcomes over the course of a year and discovered that the approach worked: student passage rates improved significantly. This guide describes several community colleges that have achieved a culture in which faculty members continuously improve student outcomes, and provides guidance on how others might build and sustain such an exceptional culture similar. In 2011, the inaugural year of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the Aspen Institute analyzed student success measures at more than 1,000 community colleges and investigated practices at colleges achieving the strongest outcomes. The Aspen Prize Jury selected Valencia College as the winner both because it achieves unusually high completion and job placement rates and because Valencia provides an outstanding example of how deep attention to teaching excellence, review of evidence, and ongoing experimentation can drive consistently improving rates of student success. (Contains 3 endnotes.)