About this Project
College Tools for Schools tackles the issue of unequal access to California’s colleges and universities. To begin with, California has a relatively low high school graduation rate. Among those who do graduate, it ranks 48th among states in the proportion who then go on to a four-year college. Further, within this overall picture there are several groups seriously under-represented in our UCs and CSUs. And the gaps are widening. For all these reasons this a serious and worsening concern. In the More Tools section of this website, you will find links to background and research papers about this subject.
This website is the product of a University of California effort to expand college access in California. The project is a collaboration among three organizations: the University of California’s Office of the President; the Center for Educational Partnerships at UC Berkeley; and the Career Academy Support Network in the Graduate School of Education at Berkeley. It is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation in San Francisco.
For the past three years a team made up of representatives from these three organizations has been working with six pilot high schools in three regions of the state (the Bay Area, Central Valley, and Inland Empire) to help them in three directions:
- Develop a college-going culture
- Employ the new electronic analysis of student transcripts (TES)
- Strengthen their SLCs and/or Career Academies
Much new information came out of this effort. Many creative activities were developed, and we saw a sizable jump in the number of freshmen and sophomores who were meeting the UC/CSU a-g course entrance requirements in these pilot high schools. We continue to work with four such high schools, and have incorporated many of the lessons and activities that came from these efforts into this website.
Project Team
UC Office of the President
Juan Sanchez, Acting Director,
State Early Academic Outreach (EAOP) Program
Center for Educational Partnerships (CEP), UC Berkeley
Gail Kaufman, Deputy Director; Director,
School/University Partnerships (SUP)
Miya Hayes, Assistant Director,
School/University Partnerships
Claudia Morales, Community
Coordinator, School/University Partnerships
Career Academy Support Network (CASN), UC Berkeley Graduate
School of Education
Patricia Clark, Program Manager
Carrie Collins, Administrator
Charles Dayton, National Coordinator
David Stern, Professor of Education and CASN Principal Investigator
Susan Tidyman, State and Regional
Coordinator
Website design
Nick Despota, Lumina Media Production