Paving the Way

Abstract

Partnerships between colleges and universities and K-12 school districts attempt to improve access to higher education by tailoring college outreach and teacher professional development programs to local needs as well as aligning high school curricula with higher education admissions criteria. In this article, we conduct a quasi-experimental evaluation of partnerships between universities and school districts in California. Our fixed-effects models indicate that comprehensive K-16 partnerships substantially increase student graduation and nonselective university enrollment rates in participating school districts, but that these effects take time. We argue that local partnerships are an effective, but resource- and time-intensive, K-16 school reform strategy.

Keywords

educational policy evaluation and assessment high schools university-community collaboration

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ACT. (2000). High school sophomores need help planning upper-level courses, college, and careers. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from http://www.act.org/news/releases/2000/06-05-00.html

ARCHES. (2009). Complete list of regional collaboratives. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://www.arches-cal.org/calimap.html

Attewell

Lavin

Domina

Levey

(2006). New evidence on college remediation. The Journal of Higher Education, 77, 886-924.

Barnett

B. G.

Hall

G. E.

Berg

J. H.

Camarena

M. M.

(1999). A typology of partnerships for promoting innovation. Journal of School Leadership, 9, 484-510.

Bozick

Lauff

(2007). Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002): A first look at the initial postsecondary experiences of the sophomore class of 2002 (NCES 2008-308). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008308.pdf

Brookhart

S. M.

Loadman

W. E.

(1990). School-university collaboration: Different workplace cultures. Contemporary Education, 61(3), 125-128.

California Alliance for Pre K-18 Partnerships. (2004). Raising student achievement through effective education partnerships: Policy & practice. California State University Long Beach. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://www.calstate.edu/CAPP/publications/Alliance_for_Pre_K-18_Partnerships.pdf

California Education Round Table. (2007). Educational collaboration in California: Results from a statewide survey. Sacramento: California Education Round Table, Intersegmental Coordinating Committee.

Callan

P. M.

Finney

J. E.

Kirst

M. E.

Usdan

M. D.

Venezia

(2006). Claiming common ground: State policymaking for improving college readiness and success. The Institute for Educational Leadership, National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

10.

Cambell

F.A.

Pungello

E. P.

Miller-Johnson

Burchinal

Ramey

C. T.

(2001). The development of cognitive and academic abilities: Growth curves from an early childhood educational experiment. Developmental Psychology, 37, 231-242.

11.

Cech

S. J.

(2008). P-16 councils bring all tiers of education to the table. Education Week June 5, 2008. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/05/40overview.h27.html

12.

Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, University of Southern California. (2006). The opportunities and challenges of partnering with schools. Retrieved July 2, 2008, from http://www.usc.edu/dept/chepa/pdf/Working_with_schools_final.pdf

13.

Cohen

(1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

14.

Domina

(2009). What works in college outreach: Assessing targeted and school-wide interventions for disadvantaged students. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31, 127-152.

15.

Domina

Thurston

Ghosh-Dastidar

Bonnie

Tienda

Marta

. 2010. “Students Left Behind: Measuring 10^th to 12^th Grade Student Persistence Rates in Texas High Schools.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32(2): 324-346.

16.

Essex

N. L.

(2001). Effective school-college partnerships, a key to educational renewal and instructional improvement. Education, 121, 732-736.

17.

Garza

Barnett

Merchant

Shoho

Smith

(2006). The urban school leaders collaborative: A school-university partnership emphasizing instructional leadership and student and community assets. International Journal of Urban Education, 1, 14-30.

18.

Goldring

Sims

(2005). Modeling creative and courageous school leadership through district-community-university partnerships. Educational Policy, 19, 223-249.

19.

Gomez

M. N.

Bissel

Danziger

Casselman

(1990). To advance learning: A handbook on developing K-12 postsecondary partnerships. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

20.

Green

Tichenor

(1999). Partnerships on a collaborative continuum. Contemporary Education, 70, 13-19.

21.

Horn

(2006). Placing college graduation rates in context: How 4-year college graduation rates vary with selectivity and the size of low-income enrollment (NCES 2007-161). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007161.pdf

22.

Ingels

S. J.

Burns

L. J.

Chen

Cataldi

E. F.

Charleston

(2005). A profile of the American high school sophomore in 2002: Initial results from the base year of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (NCES 2005-338). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2005/2005338.pdf

23.

Kirst

M. W.

(2007). Separation of K-12 and postsecondary education governance and policymaking: Evolution and impact. In Fuhrman

Susan

Cohen

David

(Eds.), State of education policy research (pp. 203-224). New York: Routledge.

24.

Kirst

M. W.

Venezia

(2001). Bridging the great divide between secondary schools and postsecondary education. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(1), 92-97.

25.

Kirst

M. W.

Venezia

(2004). From high school to college: Improving opportunities for success in postsecondary education. San Francisco: Wiley.

26.

Kuenzi

J. J.

(2007). TRIO and GEAR UP programs: Status and issues. In Cruthers

J. E.

(Ed.), Trends in higher education (pp. 73-87). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

27.

McLendon

Heller

D.E.

Lee

(2009). High school to college transition policy in the American states. Educational Policy, 23, 385-418.

28.

Mishel

Roy

(2006). Rethinking high school graduation rates and trends. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved April 29, 2008, from http://www.epi.org/books/rethinking_hs_grad_rates/rethinking_hs_grad_rates-FULL_TEXT.pdf

29.

Nye

B. A.

Hedges

L. V.

Konstantopoulos

(1999). The long-term effects of small classes: A five-year follow-up of the Tennessee class size experiment. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 21, 127-142.

30.

Peel

H. A.

Peel

B. B.

Baker

M. E.

(2002). School/University partnerships: A viable model. The International Journal of Educational Management, 16, 319-325.

31.

Roy

Mishel

(2008). Using administrative data to estimate graduation rates: Challenges, proposed solutions and their pitfalls. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(11). Retrieved July 1, 2008, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n11/

32.

Schneider

Carnoy

Kilpatrick

Schmidt

W. H.

Shavelson

R. J.

(2007). Estimating causal effects using experimental and observational designs. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

33.

Shaw

Heller

D. E.

(Eds.). (2007). The challenges of comparative state-level higher education policy research. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

34.

Springer

Callam

K. G.

(2007). ENLACE connection: What makes a difference in the education of Latino U.S. students: Learning from the experience of 13 ENLACE partnerships. (Rep. No. 929). Retrieved October 4, 2010, from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Website: http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/YouthED/ENLACEreport_00252_03774.pdf

35.

Stone

C. N.

(2001). Powerful actors versus compelling actions. Educational Policy, 15, 153-167.

36.

Venezia

Callan

P. A.

Finney

J. E.

Kirst

M. W.

Usdan

M. D.

(2005). The governance divide: A report on a four-state study on improving college readiness and success. The Institute for Educational Leadership, National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

37.

Venezia

Kirst

M. W.

(2005). Inequitable opportunities: How current education systems and policies undermine the chances for student persistence and success in college. Educational Policy, 19, 283-307.

38.

Winkler

Frechtling

(2005). Evaluating new versus mature partnerships: How evaluation questions may change based on partnership longevity. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://fom.mspnet.org/media/data/Winkler-Frechtling.pdf?media_000000006089.pdf