California community colleges and universities face the important task over the coming decade of providing access, improving student success, and ensuring affordability of college for California residents. The state faces rapid demographic change, a growing young adult population, and increasing demands for highly educated workers to keep our economy strong. Policymakers will need to increase their investment in college-going to ensure the state's future vitality. At the same time, taxpayers, policymakers, the public and especially educators themselves want to ensure that resources are well spent providing the maximum benefit for the people of California.

Against this backdrop, California educators are developing and implementing positive solutions to provide better college opportunities for our residents. Some of these efforts entail new innovations, while others rely on the solid execution of well-tested ideas. Some happen within one institution, others cross segmental boundaries.

Building on the success of the inaugural year of Practices with Promise, the Campaign for College Opportunity is commencing another round of Practices with Promise in 2008. We want to know about the effective and innovative work underway to improve college opportunities, and make sure that other educators, policymakers, media, and civic, business and community leaders are aware of these efforts.

This project invites educators in California to submit a solution or practice they have put to work in improving college opportunity for California residents. The Campaign for College Opportunity will accept these submissions through May 16, 2008. Submission must be completed by using the online submission form. The Campaign will work with college presidents, academic senates, faculty associations, professional associations and research intermediaries to ensure that the project information reaches a wide range of educators who can participate.

All submissions that meet basic eligibility criteria will be acknowledged with a certificate of participation for the institution and will be listed in appropriate materials. A panel of reviewers, composed of experts from within and outside higher education, will review the submissions to identify 10 or more specific innovations and effective practices to receive special recognition through events, media, and other appropriate activities. The Campaign for College Opportunity hopes to provide maximum visibility for the effective and innovative practices of educators in support of college opportunity. Our goal is to encourage the wider adoption of these practices in collaboration with education leaders throughout the state.

Practices with Promise is an endeavor in the spirit of innovation and in the search for effective efforts in providing college opportunity. While we mean to provide special recognition to specific programs, this project is not intended as a competition.

Through this effort, we hope to achieve three major goals:

1. Dissemination – We want to identify good ideas that are working on California campuses and share these ideas with other educators and policymakers to make an even bigger impact.

2. Appreciation – We want to thank the educators and institutions who are making good use of resources to find solutions for college opportunity for California residents.

3. Recognition – We want to offer public recognition for the people, institutions, and ideas at work in making higher education achieve its full promise for the people of California.

We are interested in projects and efforts that provide students access to college, help students make progress toward their educational goals, and make college affordable for students and families. Across the themes described below, we are particularly interested in efforts that

• Promote equity in reaching California's diverse populations;

• Integrate a number of student services in a comprehensive way;

• Are effective in meeting programmatic goals; and

• Make efficient use of current resources.

Your submission does not need to be a fully executed program, it can simply be a distinct practice implemented to achieve a specific education goal.

Middle Grades: Practices that create a strong college-going culture and focus on early academic preparation in grades 6 through 8. These practices may be those employed at one school or district-wide strategies.

High Schools: Practices that prepare high school students for college and careers. Examples include practices that promote a strong college-going culture on the high school campus; practices that focus on academic preparation for college and career; or practices that inform students and their families about college options, which may include career technical education, and financial aid.

College Completion: Practices that assist students in the successful completion of their higher education goals. Examples include programs with strong student services and defined pathways to the successful completion of transfer, associate degrees, and certificates at community colleges or bachelor degrees at 4-year universities.

Alignment & Articulation: Efforts in aligning curricula standards across systems. Examples include aligning and articulating high school, community college, and university curricula standards particularly in math, English, sciences, and career technical courses. Topics may include student preparation and learning outcomes, the use of student data-driven analyses, test scores, and relationships between courses.

Assessment & Placement: Strategies for successful student assessment and proper course placement, and effective matriculation practices. 

Basic Skills: Programs that improve student progress in the mastery of basic skills. Examples include programs that improve basic skills in English and math, and assure the successful transition to college-level work in these areas. Of particular interest are programs that integrate the mastery of basic skills in math and English with relevance for career preparation.   

Financial Aid: Practices that inform students and families about financial aid and assist them in applying for financial aid. Examples include financial aid counseling and workshops particularly for 12th grade students or for community college students. 

Workforce Preparation: Programs that prepare students for careers and the workforce. Examples include programs that prepare students for the workforce in high demand sectors such as health care or prepare students for careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

Administrative Systems: Effective administrative practices that make use of institutional resources to promote college access and success. Examples include comprehensive efforts that integrate student services and instruction; strategies for using student outcome data to inform instruction; methods for performance measurement and evaluation; and strategies that manage the availability of courses for high demand majors and career technical courses.

Regional Intersegmental Collaboration: Collaborative efforts across systems that improve college access and success. Examples include collaborative efforts between K-12, community colleges, and universities to improve college preparation, college-going, the use of financial aid, and collaborative career technical programs.

A teacher, faculty member, staff member, administrator, trustee, student or other person affiliated with any of the following California institutions can submit an entry: a K-12 institution, California Community College, California State University, University of California, independent college, proprietary institution, or student aid organization in California. In addition, researchers, foundation staff, civic and community leaders familiar with specific efforts of educational institutions may make a submission.

Entries can be at campus, district, regional, or state level. We particularly encourage entries that represent local and statewide efforts between segments of education.

A person, campus, or institution can submit more than one entry for different efforts or programs.

We also encourage resubmission from programs that submitted to Practices with Promise last year, but were not recognized as one of the fifteen highlighted practices.

Complete the Practices with Promise Online Submission Form by May 16th 2008.

All individuals who submit a complete entry that meets the eligibility criteria will:

• Receive a thank you letter, a thank you gift and an attractive Certificate of Participation.

• Be recognized in appropriate documents summarizing the submitted efforts.

• Be invited to a reception with policymakers and civic leaders to recognize these innovative practices.

• Be considered for special recognition among projects submitted for attention by the media, policymakers, and other educators (see below).

Ten or more practices will receive special recognition, including:

• Receipt of a special award from policymakers and civic leaders.

• Profiled to journalists and media for positive attention in California.

• Inclusion in a publication and profiled on a prominent website.

• Invitation to a special event at the State Capitol in Sacramento with policymakers.

Our dissemination partners help inform and encourage educators to submit their entry to the Practices with Promise project. They will also be invited to participate in efforts following the submission phase of the project to ensure the highlighted practices are widely shared and understood by educators throughout the state. Partners can include statewide associations, system offices of higher education segments, research intermediaries, and other organizations with networks that reach California K-12 and higher education leaders. To sign up your organization as a partner, request a Partner Form from info@collegecampaign.org.

Please come back to this site to see an up to date list of Partners.  The list of Partners will be available soon.

The panel of reviewers will be composed of experts in education and public policy, as well as innovative thinkers and practitioners in a number of fields with interests in education. They will review the submissions to learn about the range of efforts underway, identify broad themes and generate recommendations, and select specific efforts for special recognition and dissemination. All entries will be reviewed initially by Campaign staff and consultants, with a substantial number being presented to the full panel for review. For a more detailed discussion of the review process, please refer to the appendix on research methods in the full report on Practices with Promise (2007).

Please come back to this site to see an up to date list of reviewers. The list of reviewers will be available soon.

After the May 16th deadline, we anticipate conducting follow-up interviews and other background research on entries and projects of interest. We ask those who submit an entry to Practices with Promise to make themselves available for follow-up, and to provide valid email addresses and telephone numbers. Follow up will occur in the months following the deadline.

Relevance – We are looking for projects and efforts that address the broad concerns of access, success, affordability, and efficiency in providing college opportunity to California residents.

Impact – We are looking for efforts that have made a difference, with enough of a track record to show measurable quantitative outcomes and/or demonstrable qualitative improvements, or in the case of newer efforts, significant progress toward meeting goals.

Potential – We are looking for projects that are compelling and have the strong potential to be of interest to other educators and policymakers for dissemination, replication, and increased impact.

Viability – We are looking for efforts that are viable for replication given either 1) current resources or 2) reasonable additional investments from public or private resources.

If you are reporter and would like to get more information, please contact Blake Ulveling at blake@collegecampaign.org or call the Campaign's Oakland office at 510-645-1362.