By
Gonzalo Rojas
Seeking to promote the University’s
goals of responding to our communities’ needs, enhancing academic
quality and further increasing its diversity, San Diego State
entered into an unprecedented partnership with Sweetwater Union High
School District in the Spring of 2000. In a nutshell, the
partnership, named the Compact For Success, includes the following
among many other features:
SDSU guarantees admission to all
students from Sweetwater’s 7th grade class for the years 2000, 2001,
and 2002, if they meet a series of academic benchmarks, including
passing all and maintaining an overall G.P.A. of 3.0 in the A-G
pattern courses and satisfying the EPT and ELM requirements.
SDSU will provide support to
Sweetwater by way of enhanced teacher preparation, academic tutoring
and advising, and participation in District-wide reform efforts.
The District will continue and
intensify its own curricular and educational reform initiatives. In
fact, the District has adopted the concept of the Compact For
Success as one of its three goals for the academic year and for its
overall reform effort.
The first year of the Compact For
Success Partnership between SUHSD and SDSU ended as it began: with
promise and excitement. Following are some selected highlights and
projections:
On May 12, 1,500 seventh grade
students and parents visited the SDSU campus. The program for the
visit consisted of a welcome from President Weber and words from
Superintendent Ed Brand, a panel of parents and current SDSU
students who attended schools in the Sweetwater district, a tour of
the campus and an information fair including over twenty tables
staffed by students organizations, academic departments and student
outreach and support programs. In total, over 200 faculty, staff
and students from all throughout the campus joined to plan and host
the event. Dozens of district personnel also accompanied the
students.
The decision has been made to
continue and enhance the tutoring and mentoring services of the
Pre-Collegiate Academic Development Program (PAD) to all middle and
junior high schools in the District.
More dramatically, the decision has
been made to increase the services of the CSU-High School
Collaborative Academic Preparation Initiatives (CAPI) by 100% and to
expand it to eight of the high schools. This is the program
formerly known as Focus Ten and which served only four schools in
this District last year.
Furthermore, one of the high schools,
Bonita Vista, will serve as a full implementation school, where we
plan to involve all the English and mathematics teachers in a
faculty-to-faculty alliance with University faculty.
A proposal to automatically include
all seventh grade students in the Compact for Success, rather than
only those who sign a contract, has been approved for next year’s
group of students (approximately 5,800). This would be more in
keeping with the District’s overall reform initiative and its
commitment to inclusion of all students, and it would extend the
guarantee of admission to SDSU to all entering seventh graders who
successfully meet the benchmarks.
Finally, $500,000 grant from the
Ellis Foundation has been deposited with the Campanile Foundation to
serve as a scholarship fund for the Compact For Success participants
who enter SDSU in Fall 2006. We project that the amount available by
the year 2006 will be sufficient, along with government grants and
other scholarships, to adequately fund all students who need it.
Final negotiations are underway to secure a second $500,000 for the
class of 2007. Already this partnership has generated enthusiastic
community support and has made significant progress toward
curricular alignment, the integration of the PAD and CAPI programs
into the classrooms, the identification of close to a million
dollars for student scholarships, and the collaboration on the
development of a marketing plan and joint grant writing.
Gonzalo Rojas is the Coordinator
of Special Projects for SDSU's
College of Education. |