Business-Higher Education Forum Releases Case Study on Exemplary Efforts to Increase College Readiness

Report commissioned by GlaxoSmithKline underscores the importance of broad collaboration to improve local educational efforts

Washington, DC (October 20, 2009) – The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), as part of its College Readiness, Access, and Success Initiative (CRI), today released a case study on the Long Beach Seamless Education Partnership in California, highlighting the partnership as a model for strengthening education through greater alignment of the K-12 and higher-education systems.

Improving Education Through Collaboration is based on approximately 50 interviews with members from various sectors of the Long Beach community, including K-12 and higher education, community and faith organizations, and business. Long Beach Education Foundation Executive Director Judy Seal was instrumental in the effort.

The case study reflects the success that can be achieved when K-12 and higher education employ integrated strategies focused on improving educational outcomes to further a community’s economic goals. Integral to their success is support by local business, political, and community-organization leadership. As the report notes, the “Partnership is built on a shared attitude that the students of Long Beach are everyone’s students in a continuous system.”

Among the positive outcomes of the Long Beach Seamless Education Partnership: 73 percent of the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) graduating class of 2008 enrolled in two- or four-year postsecondary institutions, well more than the national average of approximately 60 percent.

“Our goal in unveiling this case study is to highlight the Partnership as a national model for how increasing alignment from Pre-K through graduate school (P-20) can improve educational outcomes,” says BHEF Executive Director Brian K. Fitzgerald. “We know, as demonstrated by the Partnership’s success, that when community leaders coalesce around a shared vision for education that is shaped by local needs, significant educational improvement is possible.

“When all these sectors of a community come together, developing a world-class, seamless education system is an attainable goal. The Long Beach Seamless Education Partnership truly is a model for our members and their communities across the nation to utilize when working to improve college readiness, access and success.”

The case study includes key ingredients of the development of a successful collaboration:

• Build broad-based community demand and support for a seamless education system that drives economic development and community well being.
• Build strong, long-term leadership among educators and cultivate community leaders who view themselves as “parents of the community.”
• Sustain the initiative through periods of leadership turnover by encouraging broad-based community support.
• Develop relationships with media in order to garner positive, long-term coverage.

The Partnership primarily is comprised of the LBUSD, Long Beach City College (LBCC), and California State University at Long Beach (CSULB). Local business was an instrumental catalyst in the Partnership’s creation in the early 1990s as part of an economic development push in Long Beach and provided critical financial support to initiate it. Today, business continues to support the Partnership with financial and in-kind resources. 

The case study was produced with generous financial support from GlaxoSmithKline.