In 2003, the Lumina Foundation for Education launched a major initiative, "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count," to increase student success at community colleges. The initiative focuses on colleges with high enrollments of low-income students and students of color. In the first round, 27 colleges in five states were selected. The initiative aims to help more students succeed, while maintaining access to community college for groups that traditionally have faced barriers. A key means to improve the performance of colleges is through enhancement of their capacities to gather, analyze, and act on data on student outcomes, including data on students grouped by race, income, age, sex, and other characteristics. From the beginning, a central component of this effort has been state policy. In each of the states where Achieving the Dream colleges are located, the initiative is working with a lead organization (typically the state community college system office or state association of community colleges) to develop policies that will enhance student success. To help guide that policy effort, the Lumina Foundation commissioned an audit of state policy affecting access to, and success in, community colleges. An in-depth analysis was to be conducted of the initial five Achieving the Dream states (New Mexico, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia), to be supplemented later by a survey of all 50 states. This report summarizes that initial in-depth analysis of the first five Achieving the Dream states. The report analyzes state policies with regard to student access, student success, and performance accountability, with particular focus on minority and low-income students. In the case of access, the report examines what policies states have in place with regard to open door admissions, tuition, student aid, outreach to potential students, a comprehensive curriculum, and convenient access. The success policies the report analyzes pertain to remediation, academic counseling and guidance, non-academic guidance and support, transfer assistance, baccalaureate provision, noncredit to credit articulation, and workforce and economic development. Finally, with regard to performance accountability, the report examines the indicators used by the state, how data are collected by the state, and how the data are used by the state and the community colleges to determine funding and shape how colleges act. Besides describing the policies in place, the report also summarizes the reactions of those interviewed to those policies. Moreover, it details suggestions for future directions for state policy toward community college student access and success. To secure information on what policies the states have and how well they are working, we conducted many interviews and reviewed the written academic and non-academic literature on these subjects. We also attended the Policy Listening Tour meetings in each of the states, conducted by the Futures Project, in order to observe the discussions and informally converse with policymakers. Our interviews were conducted over the telephone and averaged twelve in each state. We interviewed officials of the state agencies coordinating the community colleges, the governor's educational advisor, state legislators or staff members from both houses, the head of the state community college association (if one existed), the presidents or top officials of three or four community colleges (differing in degree of urbanicity and area of the state), and representatives of community organizations representing the African American, Latino, and low-income communities in each state. (Individual chapters contain references, endnotes, and appendixes.).