Santa Ana Partnership
CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE OF PRE K – 18 PARTNERSHIPS
SANTA ANA PARTNERSHIP
CASE STUDY FRAMEWORK
CONTEXT
Who are the participants and which partners best represent and are most
involved in the partnership? (those italicized are most involved)
K-12
Santa Ana Unified School District
(SAUSD)
Community College
Santa Ana College
Santa Ana College Foundation
Santa Ana Education Foundation
Higher Education
California State University Fullerton
University of California Irvine
Business
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce
Black Chamber of Orange County
Liberia Martinez Books
Community
United Way of Orange County
Parent Promotores Network
Youth Alternative Collaborative (YAC)
Community
Latino Health Access (LHA)
City of Santa Ana
Corbin Community Center,
City of Santa Ana
Delhi Community Center
Girls, Inc. of Orange County
District English Learner Advisory
Committee
(DELAC/SAUSD)
Families & Communities Together
(FaCT)
Program
Girls, Inc. of Orange County
Hispanic Education Endowment Fund
(HEEF)
Mexican American Opportunity
Foundation (MAOF)
Minnie Street Learning & Family
Resource
Center, City of Santa Ana
Reading Corners
Santa Ana Civic Leadership Institute
State of California Puente Program
Taller San Jose, Sisters of St. Joseph
Who is the targeted population?
Students in the Santa Ana Unified School District, Santa Ana College, California State
University, Fullerton and UC Irvine are the targeted populations. The primary target,
however, are students in the Santa Ana Unified School District.
SAUSD: 61,000 students. US Census 2000 data reveals a total population of 337,977
that includes: 76.1% Hispanic, 12.4% white, 9% Asian and Pacific Islander, 1.3%
African American and 1.2% other. Some of the characteristics that make Santa Ana
unique, according to recent Census studies, are:
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74% of the city’s residents speak Spanish, the highest in the nation among large
cities
84% speak a language other than English, also the highest in the nation
Santa Ana has the youngest population among large cities in the nation with a
median age of 26.5, and with 46% of residents age 19 or under
Santa Ana has the lowest educational achievement among the nation’s large cities—
60% of residents age 25 or older do not have a high school diploma
Santa Ana has the highest household density in California with an average
household size of 4.55 persons
Per capita income, at $11,280, is half the state average and 21.6% of residents live
below the poverty level
(“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”)
What is the focus, scope and shared vision of the partnership?
To provide all Santa Ana students with an academically rigorous curriculum and the
support they need to succeed in school, advance to college, and graduate. The
Partnership’s core strategies simultaneously embrace policy, practice, and outcomes
accountability, working towards scale to maximize impact and insure that the most
effective practice becomes standard practice across schools and colleges.
The goal of the collaborative is to provide all Santa Ana students with an academically
rigorous curriculum and the support they need to succeed in school, advance to college,
and graduate. By accomplishing this goal, they can realize their vision of providing
every student with the academic preparation necessary to enter and succeed in college,
ensuring that each student is the architect of his or her own future and not the recipients
of what’s-left-options after others have sorted, sifted, tracked and assumed on behalf of
the students and parents. To this end, the Partnership’s core strategies simultaneously
embrace policy, practice, and outcomes accountability, working towards scale to
maximize impact and insure that the most effective practice becomes standard practice
across their schools and colleges (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History
and Overview”).
What year did your partnership begin?
The Partnership began in 1983 through the formation of the Student Teacher
Educational Partnership (STEP) Council.
Who were the key participants and change-agents at its inception?
“This effort was initially launched by UC Irvine, Santa Ana Unified School District,
Santa Ana College and CSU Fullerton and later expanded to community, civic,
business and parent organizations” (S. Lundquist, personal communication,
August 9, 2002).
The Santa Ana Partnership, as an inter-segmental vehicle for examining challenges to
the academic progress and success of students who have been traditionally the least
likely to enter and succeed in college, dates back to the formation of the STEP Council
in 1983 when the University of California, Irvine convened K-16 educators from the
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greater Santa Ana area to identify the most pressing academic challenges faced by
students locally. From the “think tank” years of the STEP Council, in 1991 the
Partnership emerged in its current form when Santa Ana joined the Ford Foundation’s
Urban Partnership Program and became a broad working collaborative with a set of
action teams, each designed to focus on a specific aspect of the educational system
that was not working. They believed that the evidence such efforts would create would
refute the low expectations that haunt urban students and hold educators more
accountable for improving results for all students through the creation of new policies
and practices.
The Partnership action teams focused on mathematics achievement, English language
proficiency, achieving college (embracing everything from parent leadership and
involvement to SAT-taking and college/financial aid application completion), and the
disproportionately low transfer rates of local, urban community college students from
Santa Ana College to universities. As a result of this new working structure, the 1990s
were watershed years for the Partnership as their original reform strategy focused on
researching and identifying problems evolved into a robust set of initiatives that
permanently linked and integrated secondary school, community college and university
educators in student-centered academic and co-curricular reform work (“The Santa Ana
Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”).
What prompted the establishment of your partnership?
In 1983, the Santa Ana Partnership, an inter-segmental vehicle, examined challenges to
the academic progress and success of students who have been traditionally the least
likely to enter and succeed in college (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief
History and Overview”).
“The Partnership realized that the Latino population of Santa Ana was
underachieving academically. Latinos comprised approximately 50% of the
population and currently represent 96%. Latino students were not performing
where the White students are performing. The dissonance prompted the
educational partnership of Santa Ana” (S. Lundquist, personal communication,
August 9, 2002).
What are the short-term goals of your partnership?
“The first immediate short-term goal is to continue to develop the capacity to do
things differently and to get constant high quality sources of information that will
give us clues on what to do next. We are one of the few partnerships that has an
inter-segmental research team of Ph.D. researchers. They are a team from
SAUCD, CSUF, SAC, and UCI that meets as a group to define a research
agenda and the agenda is worked on all year long. Examples include
performance indicators, baseline indicators, and particular initiatives. Later the
findings are presented. The first short-term goal is to have the Information and
research capacity.
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The second short-term goal is to focus constantly on what is happening in
teaching and learning so that one isn’t planning a whole lot of things while a
whole lot of students are getting the same things that everyone always got. It’s
implementation and finishing things out in the trenches” (S. Lundquist, personal
communication, August 9, 2002).
What are its long-term goals?
To provide all Santa Ana students with an academically rigorous curriculum and the
support they need to succeed in school, advance to college, and graduate.
What is the timeline for the accomplishment of these goals?
“The timeline is immediate, but one has to identify when you have a goal. What
do you consider to be the evidence that will tell you whether or not you’re
successful? For example, college begins in kindergarten but it’s going to take a
long time to track this. Long-term goals are those that keep the high dream alive
for every student. But increments of progress constitute the evidence that you’re
on track. That you can gather along the way. Know what they are and gather
them regularly. That’s how you keep your partnership going because you
nourish it with increments of success. One example is a huge policy change.
The Santa Ana Partnership is one of four school districts in the state of California
that has the academic requirements for entry to the University of California as the
high school graduation requirements. Also, we are the only urban, Latino, high
poverty, school district while the others are suburban school districts” (S.
Lundquist, personal communication, August 9, 2002).
How is commitment demonstrated by each of the main partners?
“Partnerships use each other well. They don’t duplicate each other. They create
a jigsaw puzzle linkage that connects them in real meaningful ways. In terms of
each of the main partners, K-12 does their work. They have a culture of sharing
power, by sharing fiscal agency, when pursuing grants. We very strategically
rotate fiscal agency between the university, the K-12, and the community college”
(S. Lundquist, personal communication, August 9, 2002).
Which 3-5 programs would you describes as the partnership's showcase
activities? (please refer to bolded items)
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High school graduation requirements
Community College to UC and CSUF: Dual Enrollment
Higher Education Centers
Resource development
Research and evaluation
Parent leadership and advocacy
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The Collaborative Implements a Vision of Quality Teaching:
Academic and Access Policies
è Middle School Algebra
è High School
Graduation
Requirements
è Entrance Requirements
to UCI’s Department of
Education Minor and
Credential Program
è High School to Santa
Ana College Concurrent
Enrollment
è Community College to
UC: Concurrent
Enrollment
è Community College to
UC and CSUF: Dual
Enrollment
Policy is in place establishing 7th grade pre-algebra and 8th
grade algebra as the academic standards for all students in
SAUSD.
Graduation requirements have been elevated to require
Geometry and now match eligibility requirements for
admission to the University of California.
Access to UCI’s Department of Education academic minor and
credential program will be expanded with a more liberal set of
eligibility requirements for students with partnership-affiliated
pre-teaching experiences.
SAC’s Board of Trustees opted to officially waive all tuition
charges for local high school students wishing to take SAC
classes while still in high school, providing unlimited tuition-free
enrollment privileges. As a result, Middle College High School
students and students at all SAUSD high schools may enroll in
college classes tuition-free.
SAC students may enroll in any UC Irvine classes with seats
available for a flat $10 fee.
SAUSD students may matriculate simultaneously to SAC
and UCI via University-Link, a Dual Admissions Program
created to fast track partnership students for transfer.
Highlights of Results Achieved
(“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”)
AREA
School
Readiness
Mathematics
Achievement:
Saturday
Academy of
Math (SAM)
Mathematics
Achievement:
th
7 grade prealgebra
Supplemental
Instruction
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Pre-K Readiness programs for children and their parents have been created at half
of the SAUSD elementary schools, with the remaining schools and additional
community sites scheduled for 2002 & 2003. 2,251 students have been served in
the current academic year.
The Saturday Academy of Math, a 10-week, hands-on supplemental math
program for middle school students is now offered at all 9 SAUSD middle schools,
serving more than 1300 students annually. In addition to the program serving as a
catalyst for transforming the standard math curriculum, 90% of students in the
program’s pilot year went on to college.
th
A pilot effort associated with the GEAR UP initiative enrolled all 7 graders in two
intermediate schools in pre-algebra, as opposed to approximately 8% previously.
Approximately 80% of the 1200 students enrolled were successful, leading to the
adoption of a new district-wide math policy, detailed on the following chart. When
the first class of pilot students entered high school this fall five sections of Geometry
were scheduled to accommodate entering students, vs. one section previously.
· Supplemental instruction has been built into the academic school day at
partnership middle schools to maximize every student’s opportunity for subject
matter mastery.
· At 2 pilot middle schools & high schools letters are sent home to parents of
students at risk of failing a class requesting attendance at mandatory tutoring
sessions, conducted by certificated teachers. Tutoring participation has more
than tripled this year alone.
· Academic and co-curricular initiatives are integrated for more than 1,000
students annually as part of SAC’s Freshman Experience Program, targeting
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Mathematics
Professional
Development
Digital Bridge
Program
Neighborhood
Family Literacy
Parent
Leadership &
Advocacy
Higher
Education
Centers/College
Going Rates
University
Transfer
Resource
Development
Research &
Evaluation
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gateway to transfer disciplines.
UCI’s Center for Educational Partnerships has developed a customized set of
math training programs for elementary school teachers, Algebra teachers, advanced
math teachers, and future teachers, all designed to integrate rigorous mathematical
concepts, hands-on learning, and subject matter expertise in the service of
students. More than 1,000 SAUSD teachers annually participate in these summer,
off-cycle, and after school professional development activities.
As part of an effort to advance student learning and create opportunities for parents
and family members to become acquainted with computer and educational
technology, three community-based Technology Learning Centers have been
established at community-based organizations in Santa Ana. The centers offer nocost computer training classes in English and Spanish and other support services.
A parent-founded program, Reading Corners, was established to bring reading
support, lending libraries, and educational information to high-density apartment
complexes in Santa Ana. The original center has now expanded to five programs
overall, with a waiting list for additional sites and training sessions.
· 28 secondary parents have been trained as Padres Promotores a role that
will help them organize and mobilize other middle school parents at all 9
middle schools around education. The cohort is planned to double again
next year.
· Parent participation has increased at one middle school (McFadden) from
10-15 attending meetings 3 years ago to 80-120 regularly attending monthly
parent meetings.
· Higher Education Centers have been established at each of the 4
comprehensive high schools in SAUSD serving over 12,000 students and
becoming a hub for the support of a college-going culture at each school.
· Multilingual Higher Education Centers are currently under development at
three local community based organizations.
· Approximately 65% of SAUSD high school graduates currently go to college.
There has been a 25% improvement over the past five years in matriculating
course placements for students in English and math.
· Santa Ana College’s university transfer rate has more than doubled
since 1990. The college has initiated a number of transfer-enhancing
programs and services including residential summer academic institutes
at UCI, freshman and sophomore learning communities, dual admissions
programs and aggressive, individualized student follow-up. The college
has risen from 44th to 6th in the state among community colleges over the
same period in terms of Latino transfer to the UC.
· Discipline-specific pathways to transfer have been developed for
future teachers as part of the UCI Teach summer residential program and
MESA community college program for future math/science/engineering
majors
In addition to local partnership affiliates, the collaborative currently
works with four national foundations, three local foundations, and
areas businesses as well as state and national government agencies to
garner implementation and scholarship funding for students and
programs locally.
An inter-segmental Research & Evaluation team has been established
for the partnership with doctoral level lead researchers from SAUSD,
SAC, CSUF, and UCI. The team establishes and updates institutional
baseline data, crafts a focused research agenda for the partnership,
trains program leaders in evaluation, and feeds indicators of progress
back to the collaboration to adjust and refine work in progress.
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LEADERSHIP
What is the organizational structure of the partnership? (please see appendix A for
a detailed organizational chart)
Partnership Organizational Chart
PARTNERSHIP BOARD
SANTA ANA PARTNERSHIP LEADERSHIP TEAM
Core
Curriculum
Achieving
College
Leadership Development
& Community Capacity
Building
The B.A. &
Beyond
Scholarship,
Research &
Evaluation
Who are the leaders of the partnership?
The Santa Ana Partnership Leadership Team includes representatives from all partner
organizations, including students, faculty, parents, community and evaluation
representatives. The Leadership Team meets every 4-6 weeks as the decision-making
body for the initiative. It oversees implementation and progress assessment as well as
policy development for all aspects of the Partnership (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part
one: Brief History and Overview”).
“We believe our Partnership needs executive level administrators that are
anchored at the top of their institutions that are deciding policy and practice being
the leaders of the partnerships. We have never had a director of our Partnership
and we aren’t funded through the Partnership. We have a different leadership
model. Each of our partner institutions contributes the time of an executive
administrator that’s already publicly funded to help run the Partnership in their
respective organization as it needs to be done and in coalition of a small handful
of people. I’m the facilitator of this” (S. Lundquist, personal communication,
August 9, 2002).
There is no executive director but the facilitator of the Santa Ana Partnership Board is
Sara Lundquist, Vice President of Student Services of Santa Ana College.
What are their position titles and where do their positions reside in terms of
institution and division?
a.
Dr. Sara Lundquist, Vice President of Student Services at Santa Ana College
b.
Dr. Juan Francisco Lara, Associate Vice Chancellor at University of California,
Irvine
c.
Dr. Linda Kaminski, Chief Academic Officer, Santa Ana Unified School District
d.
Dr. John Nixon, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Santa Ana College
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f.
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Lilia Tanakeyowma, Associate Dean & Director of the Office of School and
Community Partnerships at Santa Ana College
Dr. Stephanie Hubert-Schneider, Director of Research at The Center for
Education Partnerships at University of California, Irvine
How is the partnership governed?
The Partnership Board membership includes CEOs and board chairs of lead
educational, public, and community-based institutions. This Board meets semi-annually
to maximize impact of policy work, leverage resources, and review
outcomes/accountability data (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and
Overview”).
How are decisions normally made?
Decisions are made through discussion and consensus. They are not made through
formal voting.
Please provide examples of collaborative decision-making?
A community-wide effort was undertaken in 2000-2001, in which 50 small group
dialogues, with over 500 total participants, were held throughout Santa Ana to
review and discuss (in English and Spanish) a report card on the educational
achievement of local students. Although sharing the large-scale achievement statistics
was discouraging, profiling partnership exemplars and increments of success created
believers and helped to motivate many others to fight for change and become directly
involved. Recommendations from the dialogues were then used to create the agenda
for a subsequent three-day Strategic Planning Retreat that was attended by 150
partnership stakeholders including parents, community leaders, students, and educators
in August of 2001. Retreat participants reviewed and updated the Partnership vision
and goals, assessed victories and challenges, crafted action plans for the year ahead,
and cultivated new venues for expanded involvement of critical stakeholders.
A newly formed inter-segmental research and evaluation team (SAUSD, SAC, CSUF,
UCI) was featured at the retreat. Research team members divided themselves among
breakout sessions to ensure evaluation and assessment plans were part of the action
agendas being developed. The work of this group within institutional accountability
systems and databases is a breakthrough academically and operationally. The
Partnership believes it will create a comprehensive research and student achievement
data bank that will be a significant foundation for the next phase of their reform work,
including responsibility for the periodic updating of the local educational report card,
discussed above.
To ensure that the continually expanding role of partners outside of education is
reflected in the leadership structure of the Partnership, a new oversight group has been
created in the form of the Santa Ana Partnership Board, the majority of whose
members are non-educators. The purpose of the Board is not the operational
management of Partnership initiatives, but rather to serve as a decision-making body
for the critical policy, financial, and evaluation issues that will determine the
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major development and implementation activities of the Partnership. The
Partnership envisions that this body will assist in leveraging additional resources to
support student achievement and reform efforts and will maximize linkages within and
among involved organizations to help forge new relationships to benefit students and
families. While the locus of much of the change must be within the public education
institutions, their work to date has demonstrated that leaders outside the system are
uniquely equipped to influence such work with their complementary perspectives and
resources (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”).
What are the normal communication patterns of the partnership?
“The one extraordinary advantage of the Partnership is the deep history of
connection and culture of collaboration. The executive level staff at each
educational institution are in constant contact with one another to discuss funding
opportunities, new educational report, and performance comparison of students”
(S. Lundquist, personal communication, August 9, 2002).
ACCOUNTABILITY
A newly formed inter-segmental research and evaluation team (SAUSD, SAC, CSUF,
UCI) was featured at the retreat. Research team members divided themselves among
breakout sessions to ensure evaluation and assessment plans were part of the action
agendas being developed. The work of this group within institutional accountability
systems and databases is a breakthrough academically and operationally. The
Partnership believes it will create a comprehensive research and student achievement
data bank that will be a significant foundation for the next phase of their reform work,
including responsibility for the periodic updating of the local educational report card.
An inter-segmental Research & Evaluation team has been established for the
Partnership with doctoral level lead researchers from SAUSD, SAC, CSUF, and UCI.
The team establishes and updates institutional baseline data, crafts a focused research
agenda for the Partnership, trains program leaders in evaluation, and feeds indicators of
progress back to the collaboration to adjust and refine work in progress (“The Santa
Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”).
What are the criteria for determining effectiveness?
“Audit your system for its defaults. In other words, what will happen to someone if
no one intervenes? That’s how you measure the values of the system. What
does your system intend to produce? Like a leaf going down the stream after it
rains. Where will the leaf go if nobody does anything to pick it up or move it
along. Think of the student like a leaf going down the stream” (S. Lundquist,
personal communication, August 9, 2002).
The Collaborative’s Actions Lead to Improved Outcomes: Evaluation Policies
è Pipeline Data Sharing
Data sharing and transmission protocols have been established
among educational institutions in the partnership and between
educational and community-based organizations for the purpose
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è Intersegmental
Research & Evaluation
Team
10
of establishing program and intervention priorities, tracking
outcomes, and resource development.
SAUSD, SAC, CSUF, and UCI have formed an inter-segmental
research & evaluation team for quick retrieval of baseline data,
annual institutional student achievement snapshots, & initiativespecific progress assessment.
(“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”)
RESOURCES
Funding sources.
Fiscal Agency: The Partnership rotates fiscal agency among partner institutions to
balance administrative loads and spread discretionary decision-making authority.
Includes funding from: Ford Foundation, National Science Foundation, Kellogg
Foundation, HUD, Subject Matter Projects, Yale/New Haven Project, CAPP, & MESA
The Collaborative Implements a Clear Strategy for Sustaining the Work at Scale:
Fiscal & Resource Policies
è In-kind Matching
è Non-Grant Funded
Leadership
Leveraged match in excess of 1:1 creates a strong foundation
for maintaining and expanding successful practices.
All program leaders from community and educational institutions
are funded with local, non-CERI resources adding stability to the
leadership and implementation infrastructure.
(“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”)
What are your main sources of funding?
“The funding that our institutions receive to educate students is the most
important resource. Every grant received is tiny compared to the resources we
already have. The question to ask is, ‘How do you use the permanent resources
that you have?’ Our Partnership does do supplemental resource development
work but the core resources are most important” (S. Lundquist, personal
communication, August 9, 2002).
What are the time lengths associated with these funds? Please provide a detailed
budget, if possible. What percentage of funding comes from hard and soft
sources?
All of the above leaders are funded through their home institutions and provide
leadership to the Santa Ana Partnership as part of their regular professional work.
Additional institutional funds support a significant number of Partnership initiatives. Each
institution also works collaboratively to seek external funding for related initiatives and
fiscal agency for major grants is rotated among educational institutions. Current
supplemental revenue totals several million dollars annually; as a result it is not practical
to detail all line item budgets or to attach them. The major current sources of external
funding include but are not limited to:
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USDE/GEAR UP (1999-2006)
21st Century Learning Community Grant (pending)
W.K. Kellogg Foundation/ ENLACE (1999-2004)
The Ford Foundation/ Collaborating for Educational Reform (2001-2004)
The National Science Foundation (2002-2007, estimated)
The Atlantic Foundation (2000-2003)
(S. Lundquist, personal communication, February 6, 2003)
MAJOR CHALLENGES & SUCCESSES:
What challenges has the partnership been successful in overcoming?
Establishment of these new structures brought early academic victories for students and
linked them to academic support services upon enrollment at Santa Ana College (SAC),
UC Irvine, or California State University, Fullerton. College-going rates increased
steadily during this period, with, on average, 60% of Santa Ana’s high school graduates
going to Santa Ana College. And, while the numbers were still small, the numbers of
transfers from SAC to a university grew exponentially, with, for example, the number of
Latino students transferring to the University of California leaping from 44th among the
state’s 108 community colleges in 1992 to 6th in 2001.
The Partnership simultaneously began work to consolidate parent leadership and
support programs across institutions with SAC opening a no-cost citizenship center to
help families through the often-complex journey from non-resident to voting citizen.
Outreach to civic and business institutions resulted in the City of Santa Ana creating a
million dollar endowment to fund college costs for graduates of Santa Ana high schools.
Also, college graduates coming back to Santa Ana were given priority for citysubsidized home loans. Symbolically, the City changed it’s official slogan, that
appeared everywhere from the city water tower to its official letterhead, to “Education
First”, as a way to create a civic culture that affirmed and supported educational
achievement. These and other community-wide mobilization and engagement efforts
begun in the early part of the decade, helped Santa Ana pass the only school bond
measure approved locally in 1999, when other wealthier communities’ bonds were
defeated (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”).
What strategies did you use to overcome or solve these challenges?
“The major challenges have been associated with the size and scope of our
work. The Santa Ana Partnership begins initiatives with the intention of using the
results to leverage significant student-centered changes in policy and practice.
This requires careful, on-going evaluation, continual refinement of work in
progress, and close connection with colleagues engaging in similar efforts
throughout the Partnership to link and advance their work in coordination. The
Partnership serves a very high talent/high need student constituency, which
means that they will never have sufficient resources to completely level the
playing field, and will have to constantly stretch, link, combine, and refine their
efforts for maximum impact. Additional critical challenges have been to center
their work on academic competency at every educational level, linking all co-
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curricular and support services back to academic essentials for students. Each of
their initiatives does this as illustrated on Partnership’s Blueprint for Change” (S.
Lundquist, personal communication, February 6, 2003).
What challenges is the partnership currently facing?
As promising as the work of the early to mid-1990’s was, the Partnership still faced
significant challenges. These included minimal parent involvement, the often-unlinked
efforts of community-based organizations, and the absence of a vehicle for educational
reform with the potential for impacting all 60,000+ students in the K-12 system. The first
significant opportunity to address these challenges came with the Ford Foundation
invitation to apply for funding under the Collaborating for Education Reform Initiative
(CERI). Through this initiative, the Partnership has been able to focus on a specific
feeder pattern of schools (elementary, intermediate and high school) and to implement
carefully monitored academic, co-curricular, and parent/community-centered initiatives
for all students in those specific schools (“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief
History and Overview”).
What challenges do you expect to face in the future?
“The Partnership does not expect the challenges noted above to subside, but
they will be complicated by the significant impact of the state’s current budget
crisis that is reducing the capacity of all public entities in the state, especially
educational institutions” (S. Lundquist, personal communication, February 6,
2003).
What have been some of your successes to date?
· College-going rates have increased steadily. 60% of graduating seniors go onto
Santa Ana College.
· Between 1992 – 2001: The number of Latino students transferring to the
University of California leaped from 44th among the state’s 108 community
college to 6th in 2001.
· Parent Leadership and support programs across institutions.
· SAC: No-cost citizenship center to assist families in moving from non-resident to
voting citizen.
· City changed its slogan to “Education First.”
· Ford Foundation: Funded the Collaborating for Education Reform Initiative:
focuses on feeder patterns of schools to implement academic, co-curricular and
parent/community-centered initiatives.
· 2000-2001: Community-wide effort to review and discuss education report card
on educational achievements.
· 2002: Inter-segmental Research and Evaluation team to track success indicators
and student achievement data.
(“The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”)
What are some effective strategies for partnerships that you have employed?
Today, with coordinated coalitions of advocates and policy victories, the Partnership is
positioned to take its gains district-wide. In order to do so, they must undertake the
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capacity-building work of successfully implementing course scheduling, classroom
practices, professional development and community/parent engagement, necessary to
translating the enacted policies into real and significant student improvement (“The
Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: Brief History and Overview”).
CRITICAL INCIDENCES
Please provide us with 1 or 2 narratives regarding critical incidences that the
partnership has encountered in terms of its inception, overcoming challenges,
dealing with different institutional cultures, etc.
1) Creating a Results-Oriented Culture
“Partnerships are perpetually in danger of being viewed as an end in themselves
rather than a strategic means to a student achievement – centered end. To avoid
this significant problem the Partnership plans with specific numerical and
percentage goals for student participation and achievement as part of their
collaborative conceptual framework. They look at a problem, understand its
dimensions by reviewing associated student data, consider as a partnership what
academic and co-curricular strategies would impact the baseline and advance
from there. This helps them to understand in detail the point of departure,
develop indicators of progress for their work along the way, quickly see where
the Partnership is not advancing and intervene as appropriate” (S. Lundquist,
personal communication, February 6, 2003).
2) Reaching Beyond Educators to Change and Improve the System
“While it is critical to deeply engage all segments of the K-16 educational system,
it is not sufficient for instigating and sustaining long-term change. As a result they
have endeavored to forge collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships with
a constellation of non-profit and community-based organizations throughout the
greater Santa Ana area. In addition, the Partnership has launched an extremely
effective parent training and empowerment initiative, Parent Promotores de
Education. A team of educators and community activists trains one cohort of 25
parents annually. Parents learn advocacy training, networking, and become
extremely familiar with the educational system in the U.S. and the requirements
of college entry. After graduation, the promotores are stationed at schools and
community organizations and serve as an information bridge and peer leader
throughout the community. They have many other community-based organization
examples, but this is one of their most well developed and has become a national
model in association with the Santa Ana Partnership and Latino Health Access”
(S. Lundquist, personal communication, February 6, 2003).
REFERENCES
The Santa Ana Partnership. Part one: brief history and overview.
Maldonado, C. (2002). California Alliance of Pre K-18 Partnerships site profile for the
Santa Ana Partnership.
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Santa Ana Partnership
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Santa Ana Partnership
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