LearnmoreMN Blog

Collaborating to close the achievement gap

By Sara Dziuk, July guest blogger

Each year in Minnesota we invest millions of dollars in some 500 initiatives to close the achievement gap, yet the outlook for underprivileged kids remains one of the worst in the country and the gap continues to grow.

Nationally only 8% of low-income students earn a college degree by age 24 compared to 82% of their higher income peers. I’m proud to say College Possible students are graduating from college at the same rate as students from all income levels nationally, effectively closing the achievement gap for our students. We now have an opportunity to grow our model through a unique partnership with Generation Next and Greater Twin Cities United Way.

Generation Next was launched in 2012 to dramatically accelerate academic achievement for all children. Generation Next is based on the Strive Partnership framework, uniting the community around shared goals to support the success of every child from cradle to career. Together, we’re working to close the achievement gap in the Twin Cities.

Generation Next identifies organizations achieving the strongest results for Minneapolis and St. Paul and maximizes their impact by leveraging resources to scale and replicate best practices. After a rigorous selection process, I’m thrilled that College Possible is one of six premier partners selected to become a Social Innovation Fund subgrantee. The Social Innovation Fund mobilizes public and private resources to find and grow community-based nonprofits with evidence of strong results.

In our meetings with the other partners I couldn’t be happier to see the familiar faces of former College Possible AmeriCorps members. It’s inspiring to see our vision come full circle as our Corps members go on to careers at other organizations focused on education equality, continuing our mission work even after they complete their service with us.

We also saw the potential for our work to come full circle as we met with leaders from other Generation Next partner organizations. Although we focus on very different things, Way to Grow’s success ensuring pre-natal health through kindergarten readiness contributes to College Possible’s success as these kids go on to thrive in college and beyond with a network of support along the way.

In addition to these investments in proven solutions, Generation Next launched action networks focused on early literacy and college and career readiness this spring. This gives me an opportunity to be at the table with our partners across sectors sharing best practices. There is so much energy in the room at these meetings and we’re seeing true, effective collaboration happening.

With facilitation and coaching on how to use data to support a “cycle of inquiry,” more than 100 individuals and organizations are establishing action plans that identify effective strategies and break down silos. Action networks focused on 3rd grade reading, 8th grade math and high school graduation will launch in 2014.

It’s early in the process but we’ve already seen that we can make great strides by working together. The success of our students depends on a broad community partnership with youth practitioners, parents, students, teachers, government, foundations and business. You can join in giving every student an opportunity to succeed by becoming a partner­. Soon even more students in the Twin Cities will have college in their future.

An old industry learning new tricks

By Jim Campbell, August guest blogger

It’s been said that many of the longest-operating organizations in the world are institutions of higher education. While industries have evolved, the Fortune 500 list has turned over, and political boundaries have formed and changed, the higher education system has held relatively constant. In fact, the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, Saint John’s University, and Winona State University were founded before Minnesota even became a state in 1858. Many of our other public and private schools have been educating students for over a century.

The longstanding higher education tradition in Minnesota is mostly a good story for Minnesota. It has helped us build a world-class workforce, which has enabled decades of relative prosperity.

However, sometimes, strong traditions can challenge progress. Though I haven’t been around quite as long as some of these schools, I have had a long affiliation with Minnesota’s higher education institutions (including earning a BS at the U of M in the 60s, serving on alumni and foundation boards, and serving as interim Dean of the Carlson school in the 2000s). For the past couple decade, I have been completely frustrated by the pace of change at our higher education systems.  But I am happy to say that this past year I have felt an historic shift in attitude and actions among our higher education leadership.

Previously it seemed that to me that though the world evolved in significant ways, the schools were slow to respond. Technology enabled new ways of accessing higher education. Colleges and universities are serving a broader spectrum of the population, as job prospects for those with only a high school diploma have significantly diminished. The new economic normal is putting unimagined financial pressures on the systems and our students. Yet, in the past, Minnesota’s higher education institutions seemed to make only incremental efforts to respond to these forces. And instead of working together as public service providers, the higher education institutions cooperated very little, each sticking to their own domains believing they had little to benefit from working together. I often felt their actions even bordered on unproductive competition.

Since last fall, I have been working with The Itasca Project Higher Education Task Force (see report here), which included higher education leaders Eric Kaler, Steven Rosenstone, Brian Rosenberg, as well as business and community leaders. We have spent countless hours together around the same table discussing the future of higher education in Minnesota, how the systems might work together in new ways, and how business can be a more effective partner. Let me say that again: the leaders of the U of M, MnSCU, and a private college are working together and with business to identify ways to enhance Minnesota’s economic prosperity. We’ve initiated plans to work together to improve workforce alignment, build a stronger ecosystem of research and innovation, and to improve operational efficiencies through collaboration.

Of course we have a long ways to go to get to where we need to be for this 21st century economy. Yet, this activity has felt dramatically different than any higher education initiative I’ve been associated with. Our new leaders are not comfortable with business as usual, and I have felt their conviction to do things differently for Minnesota. In fact, I just learned that MnSCU and some of the private colleges are preparing for their first joint purchase together. This was a very small step, but I believe this is the start of a new wave of collaboration that will positively impact our region.

Though our higher education institutions may very well be around in another hundred years, they need to be very different organizations than they are today. I am pleased that Minnesota’s institutions have acknowledged that need to change and have started down the path.

Getting more from our higher education system requires collaboration

By Greg Page, August guest blogger

Global forces are demanding ever more from our higher education system. Minnesota is fortunate to be starting from a position of strength, but to remain competitive we must be better.

Over the last nine months I have had the pleasure of chairing a task force, convened by the Itasca Project, to identify strategies for higher education in Minnesota that drive long-term, sustainable economic growth and prosperity. The task force included higher education leaders Eric Kaler, Steven Rosenstone, Brian Rosenberg, as well as business and community leaders (see the report here 5MB, PDF).

The group identified a four-part strategy:

• Align academic offerings with workforce needs;
• Foster an ecosystem of research and innovation;
• Form new collaborations across higher education to optimize system-wide intellectual assets and efficiency; and
• Graduate more students with the foundational and technical skills needed to drive Minnesota’s prosperity.

These strategies and much of the task force’s deliberations, centered on a single unifying theme: the need for more robust and meaningful collaborations. The new economy requires our higher education systems to work together in unprecedented ways to benefit from operational efficiencies and to give students better options to achieve their degrees. But getting our institutions of higher education working better together is not enough. The business community must engage with higher education in new ways; such as:

Articulate future workforce needs, in terms of foundation and technical skills and sharing with institutions and students;

Engage with more students to help build their skills and expose them to employment opportunities through student projects and internships;

Partner with our institutions on research and innovation, where appropriate, to support the growth of Minnesota’s core economic sectors; and

Share operational expertise (e.g., implementing shared services).

I believe that through these collaborations we have the potential to create a fundamentally more powerful engine of learning, innovation, and economic growth for Minnesota. While important collaborations have been undertaken in the past, the new efforts foster partnerships with far greater intentionality and scale than previously imagined, creating the nation’s foremost collaboration of educators and employers.

The good news is we’ve gotten a lot of support and excitement for these strategies. This seems to be, thankfully, a non-partisan issue. I’ve had the opportunity to talk with business groups, policymakers, the Minnesota Private College Council, the U of M Board of Regents, the MnSCU trustees, and more. The reaction we have gotten most often to the proposed strategies and intention of renewed collaboration has consistently been “how can we help?” And from the business leaders I have talked with, I know we intend to do our part. We have formed a compact with higher education leaders to be more engaged partners and invite educators and employers to sign on.

The Itasca Project higher education task force has been a remarkable journey and there’s much to do yet. The fact that business leaders, the U of M, MnSCU, and the Private Colleges agreed to work together to chart a new course for higher education suggests this is a new era. Given the intensifying global competition, we must move with urgency into that new era of collaboration.