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DONORS & PARTNERS
UC Educational Imperative Pre-K — 20 Initiatives
Executive Summary
The UC Office of the President in its recently disseminated paper The University of California Educational Imperative - A collaborative effort to enhance the capacity of California's K-12 schools has asked all campuses to provide an inventory detailing the "full breadth" of UC’s efforts to assist elementary and secondary schools.
UCSB’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education faculty, researchers, and graduate students are working to improve the quality of and access to education for all students – from pre-school to graduate school (Pre K-20). Their work is catalogued in this PDF publication accessible via this table of contents.
This inventory indicates the range and scope of activities that the Gevirtz School faculty and researchers are leading in the Pre K-20 arena. A total of 56 distinct programmatic activities were identified. This executive summary provides a picture of these programs along a number of dimensions.
First, many of the activities contain a focus on students along the preschool to graduate school continuum. While each program focuses on multiple student groups it is noteworthy that 33% of programs target early childhood education. This focus is consistent with the growing research on the importance of early development and the Gevirtz School’s recent emphasis on degree program development in early childhood. Consistent with the historical focus of the Gevirtz School, over half of the activities had as their target group elementary (61%) and middle school (52%) students.
High school students were targeted in 43% of the programs and community college students in 4% of the efforts. The Gevirtz School’s newest signature program, the Science Math Initiative and Community College Partnerships, is one of only two programs currently targeting community college students. In over half of the programs identified, parents and families (54%) receive intervention to increase students’ success in preschool through high school.
Second, many of these programs partner with educational institutions across the Pre K-20 continuum. In 84% of the reported programs partnerships exist across educational segments.
The most extensive relationships with institutions revolve around interaction with teachers and administrators. In 7 out of 10 programs our faculty and researchers identify teachers and administrators as part of the focus of their programs. Among the activities reported are preparing new teachers (16%), developing education and curricular products (62%), and providing teacher professional development (32%).
Finally, the activities of the Gevirtz School faculty and researchers are firmly based in research and policy. An important function of these activities is to use the knowledge, research skills, and research training that are the hallmarks of a graduate school of education at the UC. Thus it is not surprising that over one third (36%) of the activities engaged undergraduate students, while two thirds (70%) are aimed at graduate students. The common activity that binds the work of the Gevirtz school faculty and researchers is developing new knowledge (84%) and influencing policy (66%).
The brief descriptions of each program provide a fairly comprehensive picture of how the Gevirtz School faculty and researchers are putting the UC Educational Imperative into practice. The report also contains appendices that provide some summary statistics about our Pre K-20 work and a listing of recent scholarly publications and final reports that are associated with the work. Many of the final reports are available for review by contacting tracey@education.ucsb.edu
Although the pages that follow do not catalogue every partnership activity in service of enhanced educational attainment for all Californians, they do provide a sampling of the important work being accomplished through a firm commitment to our land grant mission. As a graduate school with an international reputation, we are proud to serve our region in ways that promote access to higher education and access to excellent Pre K-20 educational services for all.
Jane Close Conoley, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor
March 2008