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From 2016-2023, College Futures Foundation supported several California State University (CSU) campuses to partner with California community colleges in their regions to increase the number of students transferring from community colleges and completing bachelor's degrees at the CSU. In an effort to learn more about this work, College Futures Foundation partnered with Education Insights Center (EdInsights) to engage key constituents in a retrospective learning engagement about these transfer partnership efforts. This report serves to both document and share these learnings, and to provide relevant information to those interested in forming intersegmental transfer partnerships, potential funders, law and policymakers, and researchers. College Futures Foundation identified five intersegmental partnerships for the authors to invite into this learning engagement. Through this process, the authors sought to answer the following questions: (1) What compelled partners to work together on transfer?; (2) What did partners undertake during their grant periods?; and (3) What attributes foster a successful intersegmental transfer partnership?

California's higher education system depends heavily on community colleges. California enrolls a much larger share of recent high school graduates in community colleges than other states--but is near the bottom when it comes to enrolling in four-year colleges and universities. Transferring to four-year institutions thus plays a vital role in boosting the number of bachelor's degree holders in the state and strengthening the economic security of California workers. This study analyzes current transfer trends and identify opportunities for improving transfer rates. In recent years, statewide, regional, and local initiatives by the California Community College, California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC) systems have helped to expand transfer programs, increase access to and completion of transfer-level courses, streamline transfer pathways, and broaden dual enrollment opportunities. These efforts have yielded notable progress. Ongoing work to develop a single transfer pathway and establish dual admission options is also promising. Still, persistent equity gaps and recent declines in transfer enrollment will necessitate continued reform and collaboration among all higher education institutions to ensure that more students can reach their goal of attaining a bachelor's degree. [For the technical appendices, see ED631134. For the policy brief, see ED631141.]

For many non-traditional candidates, the path into teaching is riddled with bumps and detours. They must pay for increasingly expensive coursework and certification costs, attend classes that conflict with work schedules, and forgo wages to complete unfunded student teaching requirements. These roadblocks can deter valuable local talent--paraeducators, afterschool staff, substitutes, parents, and students--from becoming teachers. The good news is that a number of states are using competitive grants to expand and strengthen GYO programs, which offer more hospitable pathways into the profession for candidates who share the same communities and demographic backgrounds as their students.

Community college students aspiring to transfer into STEM majors at a four-year institution face a complicated and nuanced admissions process. In some cases, students may be admitted to the four-year transfer institution but face additional requirements to enter a STEM major. This study of community college underserved students of color, women, and first-generation students in a program aimed to help them succeed in STEM finds gaps in knowledge around transfer and STEM specific major requirements. These findings point to the need to build more knowledge about STEM-major transfer requirements and processes among community college students as well as advisors and STEM faculty so they can better inform students of transfer pathways. This research also points to the need to strengthen transfer partnerships between two-year and four-year institutions in support of community college students who aspire to a STEM baccalaureate degree.

Due to fragmented and misaligned segments of public education, many students lack access to educational opportunities that will ensure their success in college and career. This problem is one that may only be solved through better alignment and coordination between high school and college, between systems of higher education, and between education and economic development sectors. Intersegmental collaborations are emerging as a key lever for change, and the sustainability of these intersegmental efforts both depend on and offer opportunities to bridge research, policy, and practice in ways that facilitate improved outcomes. This brief summarizes lessons for effective collaboration and highlights opportunities for bridging research, policy, and practice to increase student success in college and career.

Tight budgets are a reality for many school districts across California, leading some to believe that a growing charter sector is squeezing the finances of traditional school districts. One common criticism of charter schools centers on special education: charter schools directly serve fewer students with disabilities, and thereby drive disproportionate costs to traditional school districts. While it is true that charter schools in California enroll fewer students with disabilities, though only at a marginally lower rate than traditional public schools, this argument is too simplistic. In reality, the way special education finance works in California affects schools of all types, and underinvestment in special education services from federal and state levels shifts costs to the local level. This argument also overlooks the ways charters, and other schools, contribute to the education of students with disabilities, including students they do not enroll. "California's Special Education Funding System Creates Challenges and Opportunities for District and Charter Schools" looks at several features of California's special education funding system which make it difficult for districts to serve students with disabilities and limit the ability of some charter schools to make decisions about the programs and services they offer for students with disabilities. For example, state special education funding is distributed to the local level according to total student enrollment rather than according to the services provided to students with disabilities or by specific disabilities. This approach is designed to remove financial incentives to over-identify students for special education services, but unlike several other states that use this approach, California lacks sufficient supplemental funding to support students who require very high-cost services. Additionally, the structures through which California allocates funding to the local level complicate the way schools receive funds, how they contribute to the broader provision of services across districts and regions, and how charter schools fit into the picture. Instead of pitting school types against each other, this brief explains California's special education finance system and analyzes how it affects both traditional and charter schools. The document also identifies financial and structural challenges facing traditional and charter schools and outlines potential solutions that focus on improving opportunities for all students with disabilities in the state. Understanding how special education funding works is important to solving the very real fiscal problems facing traditional and charter schools. [This report was supported by the California Charter Schools Association.]

California cannot produce the educated population our workforce and high-tech industries demand without significantly increasing the number of community college students transferring to universities. A strong transfer system is crucial not just for employers who need educated workers, but also for students seeking a clear and affordable path to earning a bachelor's degree as their best bet toward reaching the middle class and experiencing upward economic mobility in this economy. Concerns about the cost of college and state funding for higher education demand that our college leaders and policymakers eliminate the transfer maze and improve the transfer pathway for students. Doing so ensures that college remains accessible and affordable while simultaneously making the best use of taxpayer dollars. This report highlights the critical role transfer plays in producing college graduates and providing economic opportunity, and the unnecessary barriers that impede transfer for far too many Californians, resulting in high costs to students and the state. [This report was written with extensive contributions by Michele Siqueiros, Audrey Dow, and Jessie Ryan.]

In September 2011, the Association of American Universities launched a major initiative to improve undergraduate STEM education. The overall objective was to influence the culture of STEM departments at AAU institutions so that faculty members are encouraged and supported to use teaching practices proven by research to be effective in engaging students in STEM education and in helping students learn. The Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative's intent was to help research universities better assess and improve the quality of teaching in STEM fields by: promoting the use of teaching techniques in STEM classes demonstrated by scholarship to be the most effective at engaging and helping students learn; encouraging universities and STEM departments to better evaluate, recognize and reward faculty members for the quality and effectiveness of their teaching; and facilitate the creation of an effective network for disseminating and sharing best practices in undergraduate STEM education reform and classroom based educational improvements. (Additional funding for this report was provided from Elsevier and Research Corporation for Science Advancement.)

This Formative Evaluation Lessons Learned template captures the major findings and lessons learned from the formative evaluation of the Youth Transitions Partnership (YTP) program in Alameda County, California. The YTP program is an intervention built around the core components of intensive case management and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). In partnership with Alameda County's Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), First Place for Youth (FPFY) served as the program provider, bringing overall case and systems coordination to the YTP program, and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago served as the local evaluator, conducting a comprehensive formative evaluation which included implementing a CQI framework. The formative evaluation addressed questions about the extent to which process, quality, and capacity investments were deployed to support the installation and initial implementation of the YTP model as well as questions about program engagement and the short- and medium-term outcomes of program participants. These questions include: (1) Does the administrative risk assessment process correctly identify members of the target population?; (2) Are enrollment staff able to connect with and enroll youth?; (3) Is the intensive case management component of the intervention being delivered as intended?; (4) Is DBT being delivered to program participants as intended?; and (5) Is there evidence that program participants are progressing toward short- and medium-term outcomes? [For "Alameda County's Youth Transitions Partnership Program: A Promising Model for Supporting Transition-Age Youth in Foster Care. Project Brief," see ED607006.]

America's institutions of higher education have been challenged to develop new strategies to improve the success of all students. With more and more students attending multiple institutions, improving the transfer process is key to ensuring all students succeed. AAC&U launched the Quality Collaboratives (QC) project in 2011 with support from Lumina Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in order to find ways to make transfer between institutions easier and more efficient and, more importantly, to make students' achievement of important learning outcomes, as measured by authentic assessments, the central metric that should guide transfer. Lumina's recently developed Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) was an important tool in this larger movement away from credits as proxies for student learning toward a system in which genuine proficiency is the measure of student progress and success. The DQP is a framework describing the essential learning outcomes that both employers and faculty claim as critical for college graduates and the levels of achievement on these outcomes that students should be able to demonstrate at the associate, baccalaureate, and master's degree levels (see page 22, below). As part of AAC&U's Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) signature initiative to ensure that all college students in the United States receive a liberal education, the QC project brought together twenty campuses and nine state university systems or state higher education commissions to collaborate and develop models that placed assessment of student learning at the center of the transfer process. This brief folio along with its more in-depth companion volume, "Collaboration for Student Transfer: A Nationwide Degree Qualifications Profile Experiment," describe ways to refocus student transfer on demonstrated student learning proficiencies as a primary basis for transfer student success. It is designed to help institutions interested in building successful cross-institutional collaborations to use the DQP to develop new approaches to advancing transfer student success and to assessing student learning. It begins with a flow chart that summarizes the main components of the successful cross-institutional collaborations that were developed by the QC institutions. The folio then charts key action steps in the process flow chart and lessons learned by these institutions through their implementation of these kinds of collaborative projects. [For a related report, see ED569339.]

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) launched Quality Collaboratives (QC): Assessing and Reporting Degree Qualifications Profile Competencies in the Context of Transfer in 2011 as a three-year project that engaged educational, assessment, and policy leaders in student learning outcomes assessment and transfer pathways. With funding from Lumina Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the QC project was organized through AAC&U's current signature initiative, Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP), which champions a twenty-first-century liberal education for all college students. During the project, two- and four-year transfer partner institutions within nine states--each already engaged, prior to the start of the project, in learning outcomes assessment work--beta tested different ways to assess proficiencies articulated in Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP). The DQP, now in its second version, benchmarks "what degree recipients should know and be able to do" at the associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree levels, and offers scaffolded learning expectations to guide paths between and among transfer partners. This publication features campus work from twenty institutions involved in QC--campuses with collaborative relationships that worked together as two- and four-year "QC dyads." The ten participating campus dyads hailed from California, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Utah, Wisconsin, and Virginia (two other states--North Dakota and Oregon--participated in the project at the state system level). This publication is anchored by a flowchart that reflects lessons learned from the campus-based work in which the QC dyads engaged. The flowchart is meant to serve as a guide for campus practitioners seeking to initiate transfer-based change efforts on their campuses. Key action steps taken by the various QC campus partners to implement assessment in the transfer context. Each action step (eleven in total) correlates with a case study presented herein. Written by QC dyad leaders, who are listed as contacts in this publication, these case studies represent campus change efforts that unfolded over the course of the three-year project.

First five years are identified as a critical period of child growth in scientific literature. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10 that appropriated a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support early childhood development. As a result, Kern County Children and Families Commission administered over $10 million in FY 2013-14 to fund 40 programs in focus areas of "Child Health," "Family Functioning," and "Child Development." In this study, variability of partnership strength is partitioned at the "program" and "focus area" levels. The result indicates co-existence of program effects with the significant funding impact, including "center-based" vs. "home-based" services, "initiation" or "collaboration" in partnership building, Summer-Bridge learning, referral support, and program outreach in hard-to-reach communities.

With 1.8 million students, California Community Colleges (CCC) are often the primary point of access to higher education for low-income, Black, and Latino students. Given the role of community colleges in creating a strong pipeline of college graduates, improving transfer rates to four-year colleges has become an increasingly important policy goal. Students who transfer have high rates of earning a bachelor's degree, which in turn is associated with higher lifetime earnings and greater economic mobility. This policy belief is adapted from the report, "Strengthening California's Transfer Pathway." [Adapted by Vicki Hsieh. For the full report, see ED631128. For the technical appendices, see ED631134.]

January 2014, Governor Jerry Brown announced in his budget proposal an unprecedented line-item designation for student equity in community colleges. His proposal of $100 million for student equity set the stage for the past year and a half of enhanced activities locally and statewide on student equity issues. Most prominently, the 112 community colleges updated their equity plans as required under Title 5 in order to receive the funding. The Community College League of California ("League") also enhanced its own activities statewide both to advocate for funding and to support the colleges in their efforts to develop and implement their student equity plans. Now is the time for California community colleges, with guidance from the State Chancellor's Office and support from organizations such as the League, to fulfill their mission of student success for all -- that is, student equity. This paper aims to reflect on the League's own institutions and how their employees and trustees of the "system" need to see their own role (intentionally or unintentionally) in perpetuating the inequities, or more importantly, in helping to achieve student equity -- especially now with an unprecedented amount of funding. The goals of this policy paper are the following: (1) Make the case for continued, focused funding for student equity; (2) Provide some tools and recommendations for colleges to implement, integrate, and institutionalize their equity plans to achieve groundbreaking outcomes; and (3) Encourage a statewide, open and honest conversation about student equity. In addition, this paper: (1) Provides a historical perspective of the circumstances in law and policy as they relate to community colleges that have led us to this point; (2) Describes the League activities over the past 5 years; (3) Identifies some partner organizations' activities over the past year on student equity; (4) Provides some observations made by the State Chancellor's Office, leadership (Trustees and CEOs), League membership (colleges), and League Staff on student equity funding and activities; and (5) Provides some recommendations for the League and our colleges in achieving outcomes to justify the expenditure of funds.

A growing body of evidence indicates the critical importance of appropriate supports for children and their families at early ages, as well as the potential for targeted interventions to make meaningful contributions to children's development. Family involvement in the early years of a child's learning and development can serve as a protective factor for children at risk for negative life outcomes. Indeed, family engagement has emerged as a critical strategy used especially for supporting positive outcomes for students from low-income and immigrant communities. Yet practitioners receive little training on how to effectively engage families. Within organizations, family engagement efforts may be haphazard; i.e., not aligned to specific goals or learning objectives. And frequently, there is little collaboration between child- and family-serving organizations in the same community, resulting in missed opportunities for sustained, systemic support to families (Weiss et al., 2010; Mapp & Kuttner, 2014). This brief reports findings from a needs assessment study meant to inform project planning for a systemic, integrated, and sustainable family engagement initiative, the Family Engagement Impact Project (FEIP) in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The needs assessment consisted of two surveys administered to low-income, immigrant families and the providers who engage them. Approximately 800 families and 120 providers across six communities participated. The surveys explored how families and providers think about families' engagement, what resources they utilize to support young (0-8 years) children's learning, and what resources would support a more systemic effort to engage parents in their children's learning and development. The key findings include: (1) Both participant families and service providers place high priority on family engagement interventions that support children's learning and development. This shared goal suggests a promising implementation context for further efforts to better integrate and improve family engagement initiatives; (2) While families in the study overwhelmingly report that they care about their children's learning and development, they also report that they do not always know how to support their individual children's learning needs; (3) The kinds of programming available to families are not always aligned with what families believe they need to support their children's learning and development, including activities that parents can do "with" their children such as enrichment activities, playgroups, and support groups; (4) Provider definitions of successful family engagement emphasize participation, communication, collaboration, and empowerment. In general, providers highlighted school- or site-based participation and did not highlight children and families learning at home, or culturally shaped ways parents may support their children's learning; (5) Providers reported interest in professional development that includes specific strategies, pedagogies, and approaches to skillfully engage families in their children's early learning, such as training in adult learning theory, creating hands-on workshops, and using strength-based approaches; and (6) Parents are involved in a number of practices to support their children's school readiness. While preschool and elementary school providers support students' kindergarten transition, there is a greater need for increased systemic collaboration among providers offering supports to children and their families across multiple settings and ages.

This memo, which is the fifth in the series, highlights the ongoing work of the Leadership Public Schools (LPS) Network--a network of three high schools in Northern California serving about 1,500 students with 98% identifying as people of color and 80% qualifying for free and reduced lunch. LPS, driven by their belief that students are serious and capable learners, thinkers, and doers, worked to disrupt inequities by developing and refining student peer feedback practices. This memo describes what LPS discovered about creating the conditions in which peer-to-peer feedback motivates and educates each learner. As LPS deepened its understanding of what teachers needed to do to create a sense of belonging for each student, the Network's assessment practices evolved and became increasingly equity-oriented. LPS realized that generating high-quality feedback and enabling students to use that feedback was not merely a matter of giving students greater agency and voice in the assessment process. LPS educators also noticed that a student's capacity to meaningfully engage with feedback was influenced by a constellation of factors, such as the student's sense of self-worth, purpose, and confidence; feelings of connection to the school; perceived social status; and relationship to the subject matter and teacher. [To read the fourth memo of the series, "Virginia's Student-Led Assessment Networked Improvement Community: Coming Together for Systems Change," see ED600645.]

How do we determine if incoming students are ready for college-level work? California's community college system is currently working to address this complex question in a more nuanced, comprehensive, and equitable way. This research brief offers insights that can inform these efforts resulting from the Student Transcript-Enhanced Placement Study (STEPS)--a statewide study designed to help colleges grow their capacity to utilize high school transcript data to improve student placement. The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges designed this research brief for a broad range of community college practitioners who have a hand in defining assessment and placement policy on their campuses and/or carrying out these policies in practice. These stakeholders include leaders of college instruction and student services divisions; assessment coordinators, counselors, admissions and records staff, and other student services professionals; math, English, and English as a second language (ESL) faculty; and research and information technology (IT) teams. This research brief provides a high-level overview of the methodology used by the colleges participating in the STEPS study to explore the link between students' high school and college performance. The authors share key implications resulting from the STEPS work thus far, and conclude with a preview of the project's next steps. The STEPS project was supported by The Rosalind and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, and LearningWorks.

This is a report on distance education in the California Community College. This is the seventh report to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors (BOG) per BOG Standing Order 409 (b) "that evaluates the effectiveness of distance education and education technology system wide and provides analysis of data demographically (by age, disability, ethnicity, and gender) of student accessibility to instruction, and enrollment and completion rates." The first distance education report by the Chancellor's Office was issued in January 2002. It recognized the extent to which DE was offered in the community colleges and covered 1995-2000. Starting in 2003 and every two years since, this report is updated to include data from the prior two fiscal years. The last report was done in April 2011 and covered the five year period of 2004-05 to 2009-10. This report adds distance education data for fiscal years 2010/11 and 2011/12 and covers the five year period from 2006/07 to 2011/12. This report looks at multiple forms of distance education that is using all types of technology both low and high tech. Regardless of the method of delivery there are two types of time based delivery modes for distance education: synchronous and asynchronous. Online instruction using asynchronous delivery is by far the most widely used method of conducting distance education because it offers students the greatest flexibility in taking courses. Currently over 90 percent of all distance education courses are internet asynchronous courses. Nearly 27 percent of all students take at least one distance education course per term and over 12 percent of all courses are distance education courses. This report uses data from four primary sources: Chancellor's Office Management Information System (COMIS) and three Chancellor Office generated surveys. The following are appended: (1) Summary of Methods of How DE Faculty Interact With DE Students; (2) Success Rates for Credit Distance Education and Traditional Education Course Sessions; (3) Student services available via the Internet, telephone, or on-campus; (4) Student Enrollment and Completion Rate by Age in Distance Education Credit Course Sessions; (5) Student Enrollment and Completion Rate by Ethnicity in Credit Course Sessions; (6) Student Enrollment and Completion Rate by Gender in Credit Course Sessions; (7) Student Enrollment and Completion Rate by Type of Disability in Distance Education Credit Course Sessions; (8) Number of Distance Education Course Sessions by Delivery Method 2005-12; and (9) Best Practice Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity in Online Education.

How can the field of youth development move from being an assortment of valuable but often disconnected programs to become a coordinated system or sector with greater policy relevance? One strategy for working toward this goal involves building a community youth development coalition. Successful coalitions can take various forms, but most are marked by shared goals, inclusive membership, community legitimacy and the ability to mobilize community assets and resources to create policy or institutional change. Through funding and technical assistance provided to grantees in seven Sacramento-area communities, REACH sought to create effective community youth development coalitions as part of a broader regional change strategy. This issue brief examines what has been learned about the coalition-building process during the REACH youth development program. The authors first review benefits associated with the coalition development strategy, some realized concretely during REACH and others whose promise became apparent. Then they focus on the types of challenges that must be overcome if these benefits are to be more fully realized. The goal is to inform other funders or communities that wish to create vital, effective coalitions capable of advancing youth development goals. [This paper was written with support from Lisceth Cruz Carrasco, James Fabionar, and Whitney Wilcox.]

This qualitative case study reports on processes and outcomes of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE) project at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). It addresses a critical challenge in studying systemic reform in complex organizations: the lack of methodologies that incorporate technical, social, cultural, and cognitive elements. Guiding questions include (a) how the institutional context influenced the project, (b) whether project activities affected science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction, interdisciplinary collaboration on preservice programs, and inter-institutional collaboration on in-service programs, and (c) if and how change initiatives are accepted and incorporated. In-depth interviews (N = 34), relevant documents, and observation data were collected in 2006 and 2007. Findings identified several factors that supported and several that inhibited achievement of SCALE goals. Supportive factors included reform efforts already underway at CSUN, an institutional mission emphasizing undergraduate education, an active social network of STEM educators, and faculty experienced with inquiry-based STEM instruction. Inhibiting factors included a heavy faculty and staff workload, a lack of pedagogical training for new faculty hires, a limited pipeline of preservice science majors, funding limitations, and a pervasive sentiment that scientific legitimacy is equated with basic research and not teaching expertise. Into this context, SCALE introduced two activities, including thirteen 5-day science professional development workshops for 270 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) personnel, and four 15-day math professional development workshops for 83 LAUSD personnel. The project's success was limited by the absence of SCALE leaders at CSUN, and the subsequent lack of an explicit theory of institutional change for CSUN. Instead, SCALE engaged CSUN as primarily a site for its already existing math and science institutes, and largely ceded the effort at institutional transformation to chance and the extant reforms at CSUN. An enduring lesson from this study is that efforts to change the culture of teaching and learning in STEM departments should focus on illuminating and then shifting the pervasive cultural schema that faculty hold for teaching and learning. This analysis suggests that shaping the culture of an organization may require comprehensive efforts to change the structural, social, and symbolic milieu in which individuals operate, in addition to efforts to change the cognitive processes that constitute individuals' habits of mind. To accomplish this, leaders are encouraged to (a) conduct regular institutional assessments prior to program planning, (b) design neutral spaces in which different groups may interact, (c) recruit a skilled culture-broker when working with interdisciplinary groups, (d) marshal existing resources and reform projects to collectively target key leverage points, and (e) focus on developing cohorts of STEM educators in specific departments. (Contains 5 figures and 3 tables.)

In Spring 2007, the State Chancellor's Office of the California Community Colleges awarded the Transfer Leadership Center (TLC) study to investigate two-to-four year transfer practices and strategies. As part of the study's qualitative component, research teams from the Center for Student Success of the Research & Planning Group of the California Community Colleges conducted site visits to seven community colleges with higher-than-expected transfer rates. The site visits included extensive interviews and focus groups conducted with students, college counselors, faculty, administrators, classified staff, representatives from special programs, and high school counselors. This paper presents findings from site visits to De Anza College. Appended are: (1) De Anza Study Participants; (2) Documents Reviewed for De Anza Case Study Analysis; (3) De Anza College Descriptors; (4) De Anza College Transfer Indicators; and (5) De Anza's Agreements with Four-Year Colleges and Representative Visits. (Contains 1 footnote.) [For related reports, see the following: (1) "Transfer Issues and Effective Practices: A Review of the Literature" (ED521887); (2) "A Qualitative Study of Two-To-Four-Year Transfer Practices in California Community Colleges: An Analysis of Seven Case Studies Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher-than-Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521877); (3) "Transfer Velocity Project: Key Findings on Student Transfer in California Community Colleges" (ED521885); (4) "Transfer Practices at Irvine Valley College: Case Study #2 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521884); (5) "Transfer Practices at Los Angeles Southwest College: Case Study #3 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521889); (6) "Transfer Practices at Porterville College: Case Study #4 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521880); (7) "Transfer Practices at Reedley College: Case Study #5 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521878); (8) "Transfer Practices at San Diego City College: Case Study #6 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521876); and (9) "Transfer Practices at Skyline College: Case Study #7 of 7 Featuring Colleges with Consistently Higher than Expected Transfer Rates, Fall 2008" (ED521879).]

This report provides background and summary information on undergraduate students who transfer from public community colleges to baccalaureate degree-granting institutions in California. The report describes the basic requirements that students must meet to transfer from community colleges to California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) institutions. It also includes information on recent legislation related to student transfer--one major provision calls for the development of a common core of general education courses to enhance transfer articulation. Examples of transfer-focused programs and services that community colleges and community college students can utilize include the computerized Articulation System Stimulating Interinstitutional Student Transfer (ASSIST), the California Articulation Number System, the Transfer Opportunity Program (TOP), the Transfer Alliance Program (TAP), and the Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum (IMPAC) system. Other highlights include: (1) total public sector higher education headcount enrollment increased from 1.8 million students in 1989 to 2.4 million by 2000, yet there was only a fraction of a percent increase in the overall numbers of community college students successfully transferring during that time; (2) in 1999-2000, 47,706 students transferred from a community college to a CSU school and 10,827 transferred to a UC school; and (3) community colleges are expected to enroll 528,000 additional students between 2000 and 2010. The appendix offers a glossary of pertinent transfer-related terms, programs, and services. (Contains 37 references.) (MKF)

This document, from the University of California, Davis, reports that California's three-tiered higher education system is committed to both open-access and selective admissions. Community college to four-year institution transfer programs are being pressed into service to meet both anticipated population growth and increased demand and to accomplish racially and ethnically diverse access. Research regarding community college attendance for bachelor's degree (BA) aspirants shows that those with high school GPAs above 3.5 achieved a BA at a 75% rate when they began studies at a four-year institution, and at a 37% rate when they started at a community college (Kinnick and Kempner). Tidal Wave 2, the term for the anticipated population growth and increased demand that will affect college enrollment, could increase community college enrollment by 36%. Community college and university presidents in California share the goal of increasing the number of community college students transferring to the University of California (UC) by 50% between 1998-99 and 2005-06. Students with Transfer Articulation Agreements (TAAs), contracts made between the university and community college students that include a prescribed curriculum and a required performance standard, are more likely to enroll in UCs, and are slightly more likely to graduate than other transfers (82% to 80% at UC Davis). (Contains 4 tables, 4 figures, and 35 references.) (NB)

This document discusses the Small Business Development Center initiative which addresses the needs of California businesses to grow through the delivery of one-on-one counseling, seminars, workshops, conferences, and other technical activities. The community colleges host 21 full centers. Some of the major objectives of the initiative are the following: (1) create and retain jobs; (2) create investment in companies to stimulate economic investment; and (3) increase business sales, thereby increasing economic impacts on regions served. Some of the strengths of the initiatives are that it actively promotes to the small business community college programs and services, offering diverse services to colleges, and partnering with local organizations including colleges, chambers of commerce, cities, economic development organizations and private business. There are four systematic barriers to the success of the initiative: (1) communication and leadership barriers between the three main stakeholders; (2) different funding formulas have created problems so that funds have not been distributed to rural centers; (3) limited funding; and (4) demands for services exceed center resources and it does not seem that this situation will change in the near future. The document also addresses the emerging opportunities for this initiative, whether the initiative could be sustained without categorical funding, and how additional funds would be used if they were made available. (MZ)

A study explored the human services delivery system for American Indian children in Los Angeles County (California). Telephone interviews were conducted with 29 Indian organizations, 19 members of the American Indian community, and 14 government agencies that provide services for children. Topics discussed included Indian child welfare, education, substance abuse, child health care, child care centers, stereotypes and discrimination, and adult issues that directly affect children, such as legal services, employment issues, and elderly needs. The study concluded that the current arrangement of county and Indian organizations does not adequately serve the needs of the Los Angeles Indian community. Child care, education, and health care are especially critical needs among Indian children in the county. Educational issues that were mentioned frequently included lack of funding and staff for tutoring and student support services, culturally insensitive teachers and curriculum materials, low parent participation, and need for cultural education. Indians prefer receiving services at Indian organizations because of a lack of cultural sensitivity and understanding exhibited by nonIndian organizations. But Indian organizations are few, understaffed, overworked, and underfunded, and they must compete for funds with other Indian organizations and county agencies within an environment of declining federal, state, and county services. Twelve solutions are suggested, which can be implemented through a centralized, multiservice, culturally based delivery system, either through a central location with satellite offices, or a networking together of existing organizations. An alternative or enhanced education program for Indian children is needed to curb high dropout rates. (Contains 116 footnotes.) (TD)

The Binational Program promotes the continuity of education for approximately 45,000 students who migrate between Mexico and the United States each year, a pattern related to their parents' work as migrant agricultural laborers. Begun in California, the program now encompasses approximately 10 U.S. and 32 Mexican states (including the Federal District of Mexico City). A binational commission of representatives of these states developed the Transfer Document for Binational Migrant Students, a form containing demographic and educational information on binational students that is transmitted between the U.S. and Mexican schools that they attend. The Binational Program in California has played an important role in assisting schools in both countries to obtain, process, and transmit the transfer document for pupils. In the area of professional development, the Binational Program has collaborated with the Mexican Secretaries of Public Education and of Foreign Relations to provide summer inservice programs in which Mexican specialist teachers share information with U.S. teachers of migrant students concerning bicultural approaches, native language development, special needs students, and the Mexican school system; short inservice programs for individual districts during the school year; and ongoing teacher training courses in four "Centros Culturales" in California. In addition, the Binational Program has begun a pilot teacher exchange program between California and Michoacan (Mexico) school districts, and serves as a clearinghouse for Mexican educational materials and information on cultural events and educational opportunities. Includes the four-page Transfer Document and a chronology of the development of the Binational Program. (SV)

Through a personal narrative, this chapter describes the history of the Gomez Farias-Pajaro Valley Project, which was renamed Project MEDIR and is now known as the Binational Program. The Binational Program is administered by the Migrant Education Programs in 10 U.S. states and all 31 Mexican states and the federal district of Mexico City. This chapter is based on the chronological journals of Arlene Dorn, an elementary teacher who served as catalyst for the project's development. In 1976, Dorn took a sabbatical from Pajaro Valley Unified School District (California) to study in Mexico. At the time, approximately 20,000 Mexican students traveled between Mexico and California each year as their families pursued work as agricultural laborers. These students were never in Mexico in September at the start of the school year and therefore, were denied enrollment in Mexican schools when they returned to their hometowns in November. Dorn visited Gomez Farias, the hometown of many of her district's students; found administrators and teachers, there and in Mexico City, who were sympathetic to the plight of the international migrant students; arranged lines of communication between Mexican and California administrators; helped to develop the process of communicating students' academic records between schools in California and Mexico; and located private foundation funding to expand the program. In 1984, the project was institutionalized within the California Migrant Education Program. (SV)

Mexico and the United States have reached agreements at the national, state, and local levels designed to improve the literacy and schooling of Mexican immigrants in the United States. National agreements include: (1) the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad, which links U.S. communities of Mexican origin to Mexico through programs administered by Mexican consulates, supplies Mexican textbooks to U.S. preschool and elementary schools, supports teacher exchanges, and produces a catalog of Mexican university courses relevant to U.S. bilingual teachers; (2) a memorandum of understanding between U.S. and Mexican Secretaries of Education, which promotes teacher exchanges, relevant educational research and innovation, help for migrant students, and intercultural understanding; and (3) the U.S.-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange, which covers a Fulbright teacher exchange program and nonacademic cultural exchanges. State and school district projects include the Binational Program, which facilitates the transfer of migrant students between U.S. and Mexican schools; efforts by the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve the education of Mexican-origin students; and Educacion Sin Fronteras, which adapts Mexican educational concepts to Mexican American adult education. Private agencies that have agreements with Mexico include One Stop Immigration, where immigrants may study English, Spanish, and courses from Mexican school curricula, and may earn a Mexican education certificate; and PROFMEX, which promotes communication between U.S. and Mexican researchers and faculty. Brief descriptions and contact information are provided for 13 selected programs. Contains 13 references. (SV)

By focusing on four-year colleges, academies/training centers, and community colleges, a study identified some of the duplication and gaps in public safety education in California. Survey instruments were designed to identify the current status of public safety education and elicit data regarding respondents' ideas about the desired direction that education should take. The survey instruments provided ample opportunity for respondents to make comments about various issues, and those comments were used to develop lists of issues that were centerpieces of statewide Delphi meetings of educators and practitioners to prioritize issues. The primary finding was the desire of educators and practitioners to develop some degree of standardization of the curriculum within each of the areas studied--corrections, criminal justice, and fire science. Well-organized and comprehensive training guidelines were being used throughout the state. Related to frustration with lack of standardization was a desire for better articulation between the various organizations that provided public safety education. Since standardization of the three curricula was being pursued, the remaining critical recommendation was articulation and organization of programs to achieve that articulation. (The bulk of the report consists of documents from the three Delphi meetings, curriculum data, instruments, and an expanded executive summary.) (YLB)