With the Regional K-16 Education Collaboratives Grant Program, which aims to address persistent inequities in higher education and workforce participation through the development of regional intersegmental partnerships statewide, reaching its end, a new report from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) examines the outcomes of one of the programs key partnerships.
The University of California (UC) Davis is a higher education partner to local educational agencies in three California regions and examines its actions and activities through a collective impact framework, offering a unique lens through which to consider the development and ongoing commitment required of such partnerships.
“In California, regional K–16 partnerships aim to bridge a siloed education system with a new set of workable relations that combine the interests of school districts, higher education institutions, and local employers,” according to the report. “Because collective impact requires commitment and coherence, it also takes time to cultivate interactions, build trust, and formulate collaborative efforts that can transform a series of interactions into institutional connections that lead to lasting change.”
Authors of the report note that improving college enrollment and completion rates can have profound benefits for both individuals and society at large, but in California, only about 30 percent of high school graduates earn a degree or certificate within eight years.
To address this, the state has invested heavily in intersegmental collaboration efforts to increase alignment across its K-16 system through dual enrollment, streamlining the transfer process between the UC, California State University (CSU) and California Community Colleges (CCC) systems, the expansion of career technical education (CTE) pathways and more. Still, researchers found that the siloed nature of the state’s public education segments, including K-12, UC, CSU and CCC, and the limited coordination across these systems has continued to negatively affect degree attainment for students.
Intersegmental partnerships like those involved in the Regional K-16 Education Collaboratives program are key to improving alignment and educational outcomes because they can help to establish the communication needed to target systemic challenges, identify common perspectives and commitments, and formalize collaboration.
According to the report, UC Davis is one of only two UC campuses currently engaged in more than one collaborative, with partnerships in three regions spanning 22 of California’s 58 counties, including urban, suburban and rural locations, as well as several tribal communities.
“UC Davis’s involvement in multiple regions results in the linkage of efforts across separate Collaboratives, the expansion of networks, and the establishment of a broad coalition of partners aiming to make a collective impact for almost 900,000 students enrolled across northern California, including about 587,000 K–12 students, nearly 200,000 community college students, and more than 113,000 four-year college students,” the report states. “At the K-12 level, nearly 40 percent of students enrolled across the three Collaboratives are from historically underrepresented groups, while 60 percent are lower income and 14.5 percent have been designated as English learners.”
The report goes into significant detail about how UC Davis collaboratives took steps to align regional goals, adopt regional data-sharing agreements, expand awareness of and access to better coordinated activities such as CTE pathways, build strong relationships and networks, and develop core teams to ensure smooth coordination of each collaborative’s efforts.
Early lessons that emerged from the collaboratives include allowing time to build plans and partnerships, embracing flexibility and innovation, and making time for in-person meetings even if they occur only once a month or once every quarter.
The report concludes that “Evidence suggests it may take as long as 10 years before strong positive effects are realized, so continued investment in intersegmental efforts such as the regional collaboratives ensures that over time strong partnerships are a long-term strategy rather than a short-term fix, ultimately leading to more equitable educational outcomes to support the needs of both the students and the state.”
