California's Outreach Partnerships

The University of California is embarking on an ambitious new program for cooperative work with California's schools and communities. In 1997 UC campuses began working jointly with a select number of individual schools for major improvement of learning opportunities for all students. These new alliances are setting high standards for student achievement focusing specifically on college preparation.

This new strategy grows out of the work of a 35-member Task Force established to address educational achievement and diversity in light of Proposition 209, which eliminates consideration of race, ethnicity, and gender in admissions.

After 18 months of intensive study, the task force issued their report in late 1997 calling for a major new expansion and reorientation of University outreach activities. One critical aspect of this expansion is a recommendation that UC and K-12 schools pool their expertise to effect broad-scale changes in school culture and practice such that college-preparation and college-going activity of students improve substantially.

UC and K-12 Schools as Partners

This new plan offers the University a unique opportunity to work directly with the State's K-12 schools in a holistic approach that addresses the difficult problems connected with educational disadvantage. It will provide students significant new opportunities, not only at the school sites where partnerships are being established, but at all of the state's schools through a much closer relationship between UC faculty and teachers at the elementary and secondary levels.

The result will be new ways of addressing the gap that now exists between levels of postsecondary preparation achieved by students in educationally disadvantaged circumstances and the high standards of academic achievement needed as a foundation for successful college work.

The new partnerships with schools are being built around the notion of renewal across the full length of the education pipeline, beginning with the early years of elementary education. Clusters of schools are being drawn into these projects, including high schools and the surrounding feeder middle schools and elementary schools. This approach is intended to address the fact that differences in achievement begin early in students' careers, with patterns becoming clearly noticeable at the third- and fourth-grade levels.

Partners in the Community

The second principle of the school partnerships recognizes the role played by all members of a community in school achievement, not only within the boundaries of the school, but in the surrounding community. The partnerships seek to involve parents, local businesses and industry, and community organizations in support for the school and for the learning process of students enrolled.

High Academic Standards

Lastly, the partnerships are formed around a set of high academic standards and careful monitoring of the process of achieving those standards. The partnerships recognize the potential that all children have for achievement and seek to provide new tools and an environment in which that potential can become a reality.

Richard C. Atkinson is the president of the University of California. This article was originally printed in: On Common Ground, The Journal of the Yale-New Haven Teacher's Institute, No. 8., Winter 1998.