Santa Ana Education Partnership

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How can a collaborative of secondary schools, community colleges, and university educators provide all students with the rigorous curriculum and support needed to succeed in school and graduate from college?

Santa Ana has the lowest educational achievement among the nation's large cities; 60 percent of residents age 25 or older do not have a high school diploma. Community characteristics help define the challenges facing the Santa Ana partnership: Seventy-four percent of the city's residents speak Spanish, the highest proportion in the nation among large cities. Eighty-four percent speak a language other than English, the highest proportion in the nation. Santa Ana has the highest household density in California, with an average household size of 4.55 persons. Per capita income of $11,280 is half the state average; 21.6 percent of residents live below the poverty level.

The Santa Ana partnership is the oldest of the seven collaboratives in the Alliance. This partnership originated in 1983 with the formation of the Student Teacher Educational Partnership (STEP) Council launched by California State University, Fullerton, Santa Ana College, Santa Ana Unified School District, and University of California, Irvine. In 1991, the partnership assumed its current form when Santa Ana joined the Ford Foundation's Urban Partnership Program and became a broad collaborative with a set of action teams. Each of the teams was designed to focus on a specific aspect of the educational system that was not functioning effectively.

The goal of the collaborative is to provide all Santa Ana students with an academically rigorous curriculum and the support that they need to succeed in school, advance to college, and graduate. The partnership action teams have focused on mathematics achievement, English language proficiency, preparation for college (parent leadership and involvement, SAT-test preparation, and college/financial aid application completion), and the transfer process (because of the low rate of local community college students transferring to universities). This set of well-developed initiatives has firmly linked and integrated secondary school, community college, and university educators in student-centered academic and co-curricular reform efforts.

The Santa Ana Partnership has an unusually strong intersegmental team of institutional researchers. They meet as a group to define the research agenda that is pursued throughout the year. The primary purpose of the research group is to provide the capacity to have continuous high quality sources of information that assist in determining the effectiveness of current activities and in identifying future initiatives.

The Santa Ana Partnership is demonstrating a significant impact on student achievement. As a result of partnership efforts, the Santa Ana district is one of only four school districts in the state that has the academic requirements for entry to the state's public universities as its high school graduation requirements. The district is the only urban, heavily Latino, high-poverty district among the four districts. College-going rates increased during the past decade, with an average of 60 percent of Santa Ana high school graduates now going to Santa Ana College. The transfer rate of Santa Ana College students has more than doubled since 1990. The number of Latino students transferring to the University of California increased from 44th among the state's 108 community colleges in 1992 to 6th in 2001.

After more than a decade of developing and refining partnership processes, the Santa Ana partnership leaders have learned important lessons, as described in their own words, "The one extraordinary advantage of the Partnership is the deep history of connection and culture of collaboration." Utilizing a different leadership model, there has never been a director of the Partnership and none of the leaders are funded through the partnership. Each of the partner institutions contributes the time of an executive administrator that is publicly funded to help run the partnership in its respective organization.

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.

Participants found that while it is critical to deeply engage all segments in the K-16 educational system, it is not sufficient for instigating and sustaining long-term change. As a result, the partnership has endeavored to forge collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships with a constellation of nonprofit and community-based organizations throughout the greater Santa Ana area.

Notable Results:

• The high 65 percent college-going rate for Santa Ana Unified high school graduates speaks for itself.
• Remediation rates have declined for these students once they arrive at college.
• Santa Ana has doubled the transfer rate of Santa Ana Community College to four-year institutions since 1990.

Lessons:

• A history of connection contributes to a culture of collaboration.
• A sustained leadership commitment is important.
• A shared vision of success for all students is important.