Seven cities look to improve graduation rates
By CC Times, Published November 5, 2009

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $4 million to projects in seven cities to boost college graduation rates by better coordinating services provided at colleges, schools and government and community agencies.

The grants will be managed by community colleges and local government agencies to help cities in New York, Florida, Arizona, Ohio and California, according to the foundation, which recognizes that improving college success requires education, business and civic leaders to work together.

Enrollment at the nation’s 1,200 community colleges is at an all-time high, yet two-thirds of those attending will not graduate within three years, according to the foundation said. Many students are not ready for college-level academics, juggle school and family responsibilities and must work full-time while attending classes. 

“The barriers preventing students from graduating are varied and complex, so we need governments, schools, and social service groups to coordinate and target their efforts,” said Hilary Pennington, director of education, postsecondary success and special initiatives at the Gates Foundation. “We need to make sure that those students who enroll in college successfully earn the credentials they seek.”

Because the help that students need to overcome these obstacles comes from a range of agencies, it is critical to better understand how to coordinate assistance, especially in urban areas, according to supporters of the initiative.

“Cities have not traditionally been focused on postsecondary success, but that is changing,” said Donald Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities, which is serving as the intermediary for the project. “Recognizing that an educated workforce forms the underpinning of a vibrant local economy, municipal leaders have turned new attention toward boosting college completion rates.”

Community colleges offer the training and degrees that give workers job security and stability, even in down economies. Despite near record-high unemployment rates, the jobless rate of workers with associate degrees was about half that of those who only graduated from high school, the foundation said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that over the next decade jobs for community college graduates will grow nearly twice as fast as the national average.

The new grants will support nine-month collaborative planning efforts in each of the seven cities. The foundation may invest additional money in 2010 to implement and expand the most-promising ideas from the current effort.

The colleges and city agencies that will receive the grants are:

• Sinclair Community College (Ohio): $250,000 to strengthen partnerships, services, education, training and data systems to help low-income youths (ages 16-26) earn postsecondary credentials. Led by the college in collaboration with low governments and public schools, the planning process will build upon proven local successes with disaffected youths. Dayton’s project is unique among the other participating cities in its involvement of a county administrator. A contingent of local school districts, community-based organizations, industry representatives, local foundations and four-year universities will support the project.
• Florida State College at Jacksonville: $250,000 to build upon three local projects that are coordinating efforts to lower neighborhood crime, decrease the city’s high school dropout rate and boost the number of college graduates.
• Mesa Community College (Arizona): $250,000 to evaluate community college efforts in student outreach and remediation, as well as assess the needs of the city’s disconnected youth population. The partnership includes Mesa public schools and the mayor’s office.
• The city of Phoenix, Ariz.: $245,764 to expand partnerships among the city of Phoenix, Maricopa Community College and the local school district to examine the relationship between the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards, course-taking and college readiness and to improve the college completion rates of disconnected youths.
• New York City: $250,000 to develop a citywide systemic approach to college readiness and success by building on a K-16 data-sharing agreement and innovative partnerships between the mayor’s office, the city’s education department, City University of New York and several community organizations.
• Riverside City College (California): $140,000 to explore how the city, college and local school districts can work together to increase access to higher education, particularly among low-income and underrepresented populations, and to raise the college-going rate in the region to 61 percent, which translates to 100,000 more students enrolled in postsecondary courses by 2025.
• Interagency council, city and county of San Francisco: $250,000 to support its Post-secondary Partnership, a project to unify the efforts of the school district, City College of San Francisco and the city and county governments to double postsecondary completion rates.

The grants are part of the  Gates Foundation's plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years to double the number of low-income students who complete a college degree or a certificate program. The focus is on community colleges.

The foundation has already awarded millions of dollars this year toward the project. Last month, it awarded $5.3 million to the community college system in Washington to launch a statewide initiative to significantly increase the completion rates of community college students. The foundation also announced last month that it is co-funding with Lumina Foundation for Education a $1 million project to fund a new voluntary accountability system to help colleges improve their programs and graduate more students on time and at a lower cost.