School, business, and community leaders in those cities are adopting six-year programs designed to improve their students’ rates of high-school completion, college enrollment, and college graduation.
The American Association for Higher Education is bringing postsecondary- and precollegiate-education leaders together to identify and resolve problems affecting both sectors.
Known as the Education Roundtable, the effort aims to involve college and university leaders in the school-reform movement on the broadest scale possible.
“We want higher-education leaders to come to the table instead of hiding,’' said Kati Haycock, the roundtable’s director.
“For those of us who have worked primarily on K-12, when you look down the road five or six years, it becomes increasingly clear that education reform can’t succeed without reform of higher education,’' she added.
A.A.H.E. officials discussed plans for the project at the group’s annual conference on school-college collaboration, held here June 28 to July 1.
During the past year, the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the American Council on Education, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities have called on higher-education institutions to pay more attention to school reform.
Roundtable participants will identify systemic reforms and call attention to the need for schools and colleges to work together.
Ms. Haycock said she hopes to convene school and college leaders this fall to develop a reform agenda and urge its adoption nationwide.
She is in the process of gathering a handful of presidents from a cross-section of higher-education institutions who will form the nucleus of the effort on that level. They will be expected to take a national role in the collaboration and systemic reform efforts.
The roundtable will complement partnership efforts begun under A.A.H.E.'s office of school-college collaboration.
“We’re just trying to get people to think differently,’' said Ms. Haycock. “It’s not that they’re not interested; they’re just in this programmatic mindset--if you’ve got a problem, you create a program.’'
Grants for Urban Programs
The A.A.H.E. also recently announced the winners of grants for el20lthe development of model communitywide reform programs in urban school districts.
The winners of the $40,000 grants, which were provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, are the cities of Birmingham, Ala.; Boston; El Paso; Gary, Ind.; Hartford, Conn.; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Providence, R.I.; and Pueblo, Colo.
School, business, and community leaders in those cities are adopting six-year programs designed to improve their students’ rates of high-school completion, college enrollment, and college graduation.
