February 2, 2017 

Data Workgroup

L.A. Compact Signing Ceremony

On December 14th, the L.A. Compact hosted a Signing Ceremony at the library of the Robert F.Kennedy Community Schools Campus to welcome new signatories.  LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, and LACOE Superintendent Debra Duardo became the newest signers of the Compact, uniting the district, its teachers, and greater Los Angeles civic leadership in a cross collaborative partnership to benefit public education.  The event marked the first time in the nine year history of the L.A. Compact that UTLA joined as an official signatory.  LACOE's continued partnership with the Compact represents L.A. County's commitment to improve student outcomes among some of our most vulnerable system-involved youth.

Other L.A. Compact leaders reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the Compact’s three goals for all students, including Mayor Eric Garcetti, LAUSD Board President Steve Zimmer, AALA President Juan Flecha, Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez, Cal State L.A. President William A. Covino, and First 5 LA Executive Director Kim Belshé. Soraya M. Coley, President of Cal Poly Pomona, and Rusty Hicks, Executive Secretary-Treasurer with the L.A. County Federation of Labor, signed the Compact earlier in 2016.

Charting Progress Toward L.A. Compact Goals and the L.A. Compact Data Walk

UNITE-LA recently published Charting Progress Toward L.A. Compact Goals, which tracks cradle-to-career outcomes in the L.A. region.  The report includes latest-available and longitudinal data on a range of relevant indicators for LAUSD, L.A. County and California, selectively disaggregated by race/ethnicity.  the full report and executive summary are available at www.lacompact.org/measures_reports.

Charting Progress serves as a tool for the L.A. Compact and community to improve our collective impact efforts.  To roll out the report and bring attention to recent student trends, UNITE-LA held its first L.A. Compact Data Walk on December 12th; members of the Compact's 17 workgroups and other community leaders engaged with the report at poster stations, where discussions were facilitated by experts from the L.A. Compact Data Workgroup.

L.A. Regional STEM Hub

The Chamber, in partnership with Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) hosted a meeting with Los Angeles' industry leaders and local Workforce Development Boards to discuss the workforce needs and skills gaps biotech companies ar facing in the L.A. region.  Grifols Biologicals Inc.'s President Willie Zuniga and the City of L.A. Economic and Workforce Development Department shared their successes in collaborating with LAVC to develop expansive training opportunities across L.A. community colleges and universities to address workforce and ups killing needs for employers in the biotech sector.

 Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Collaborative

With support from UNITE-LA and the Bixel Exchange, two IHE Collaborative member institutions submitted proposals for Governor Brown's 2017 Awards for Innovation in Higher Education.  The awards recognize innovative strategies that promote student success by shortening time to degree completion and/or making college more affordable.  East Los Angeles College submitted a proposal that would leverage partnerships with the Bixel Exchange and General Assembly to provide work-based learning opportunities to students in computer science pathways.  LACCD submitted a proposal to launch the L.A. Reverse Transfer Pilot, an initiative between CSU Northridge, L.A. Mission College, Pierce College, and L.A. Valley College that would award a first-time associate degree to community college transfer students who have stopped out of a 4-year program at CSUN.  If selected, each project would receive $2.5 million in one-time funds to carry out these initiatives.  The awards committee will meet in late March 2017 to determine recipients.

The Los Angeles Educator Pathway Partnership (LAEPP)

The LAEPP workgroup held its most recent meeting on February 1, marking a major milestone in the partnership.  After several years of working together to initiate a data sharing partnership between the Los Angeles Unified School District and local teacher preparation programs, the partners finalized a data exchange at the meeting.  With renewed funding provided by the Bechtel Foundation, the partners will now turn their attention to data analysis in order to answer their agreed-upon research questions, and to begin assessing their preparation pathways.

Student Success Workgroup  

The Student Success Workgroup has continued to make progress in assessing opportunities for regional collaboration.  On December 20th, the group met to share additional information related to community college transfer pathways and strategies to increase public awareness of these pathways.  Representatives from LACCD and CSUN also shared updates on their efforts to develop a reverse transfer pilot in the valley, a topic that the Student Success Workgroup first began exploring in July 2016.  Dr. Teshia Roby, the Cal Polly Pomona representative to the Student Success Workgroup, will be participating in a Lumina Foundation convening in Atlanta, Georgia on February 16 -17 to learn more about collective impact approaches to postsecondary attainment.  She will share back learnings at the next workgroup meeting on February 22, during which, partners will discuss innovations in assessment and remediation.

School Readiness Workgroup (convened by First 5 LA)

The School Readiness Workgroup (SRW) held its last in-person meeting on October 27, 2016, which fully launched the workgroup into a deliberate transition of the work to ongoing efforts related to each of the subgroup priorities: Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA), Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS), and Family Engagement.  In the following months, SRW members, with the help of Glen Price Group (GPG), will focus on sharing relevant updates, surveying opportunities for future collaboration, and developing a final report which will synthesize lessons learned, elevate messaging that can be used to inform policymakers and program implementation and inform considerations for future collaboration in L.A. County.  The report will be available in Spring 2017.

 L.A. Opportunity Youth Collaborative (convened by Alliance for Children's Rights)

Career Program

Youth Leaders

Subsidized Jobs Working Group (convened by UNITE-LA)

FYCAP (convened by the John Burton Foundation and UNITE-LA

L.A. Opportunity Youth Collaborative (convened by Alliance for Children’s Rights):

• Career Program

• Young Leaders

• Subsidized Jobs Working Group (convened by UNITE-LA)

FYCAP (convened by the John Burton Foundation and UNITE-LA

The Foster Youth College Advancement Project convened on January 19 to explore ways to engage foster parents and caregivers in regional efforts that increase direct college enrollment and expand financial aid access for foster youth.  The partners discussed but practices and challenges in this realm, hearing directly from providers like Fedcap and the L.A. Trader Tech College Foster Care and Kinship Education Office.

FYCAP (convened by the John Burton Foundation and UNITE-LA): The Foster Youth College Advancement

Project convened on January 19th to explore ways to engage foster parents and caregivers in regional efforts

that increase direct college enrollment and expand financial aid access for foster youth. The partners discussed

best practices and challenges in this realm, hearing directly from providers like Fedcap and the L.A. Trade Tech

College Foster Care and Kinship Education Office. In addition, the partners shared updates on two new

partnerships between the Children’s Law Center and the Edelman’s Children’s Court, and between L.A. Cash for

College, the DCFS Independent Living Program, and local community colleges that engage child welfare

partners in providing direct FAFSA assistance to foster youth. While FYCAP will continue to explore the topic of

caregiver/foster parent engagement and programmatic partnerships, it will focus its next meeting on February

23rd on how to best embed FAFSA completion goals and strategies within DCFS and LACOE.