Investing in Public and Private Resources

Investment of Public and Private Resources: To create sustainability for the CAIC initiative, an investment of public and private resources is needed as well as a multi-pronged fundraising approach that includes multi-year foundation grants that will support the development of the core program, capacity building, and the delivery of direct services to students and their families. Additionally, “corporate partners” who are willing to commit to supporting our programs and signature events for up to three years are critically important.

Effective collaboration and networks: Strengthening existing relationships with collaborating partners and identifying new networks and organizations that share our commitment to youth development and collective action to scale and amplify this collaborative effort is a key to expanding this initiative.

Leveraging technology: The ability to leverage instructional technologies to extend instruction beyond the traditional classroom settings is necessary to scale-up this initiative. Equally important, linguistic experts are needed to strengthen our capacity to meet the instructional needs of California’s diverse multi-lingual communities. For example, at Rosemead High School, parents speak five languages, including English, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish, with approximately 300 monolingual parents that speak each language. As such, the use of professional interpreters and translation headsets to improve our instructional practice and learning outcomes is needed in this type of multilingual environment.

Accountability framework: Currently, no branch or group is responsible for ensuring that students graduate from high school college- and career-ready. Millions of dollars are allocated to fund Local Control and Accountability Plans and student success initiatives. In the 2016-17 State Budget, $200 million was allocated to Local Control Funding Formula Plus school districts to increase the number of low-income students who are eligible for California’s public universities. School districts contract with a variety of college access partners, nonprofit organizations, and vendors to help them reach their goals and provide more services to high-need students. Unfortunately, there are no comprehensive standards for the college and career planning curriculum that is taught to students, no quality control or transparency of instructional materials used, nor the requiring of evidence that learning outcomes are being met. Equally important, California schools are not required to help students discover their personal interests or to show them ways to match their personal interests to career options so that students can develop an education plan to propel themselves forward.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: If educators are required to meet these goals, they will need to invest in Professional Development training and tools that support school counselors and their college access partners. In this scenario, coordinating this initiative and “re-imagining” ways to inspire youth to stay in school and meet high academic standards so they are prepared for subsequent success in education or the workplace without the need for remediation in core academic disciplines would be critical because meeting this goal is too important to be optional.

The WILL: CAIC Program activities need to be closely aligned to a school’s vision and academic mission as well as the school’s comprehensive school counseling program. CAIC student lessons were developed as a tool to inspire all students to plan for their future as well as to help California schools serving high concentrations of underserved students concentrate their college and career awareness activities. CAIC student curriculum is aligned to American School Counselor Association (ACSA) Student Competencies detailed in the ASCA Mindsets & Behavior for Student Success: K-12 College- and Career-Readiness for Every Student. Student lessons were designed to be delivered during the school day by credentialed school counselors and college access professionals as part of a school’s comprehensive counseling program. As such, CAIC student lessons were never intended to be delivered as part of a stand alone project or informational session. For this reason, deep collaboration with schools, families and guardians is crucial to the implementation of the CAIC curriculum and the successful learning outcomes for all Program participants.

Schools alone cannot be expected to meet the goal of graduating students college- and career-ready. A multi-sector approach is required in order to leverage resources from different entities to amplify impact for students in underserved communities and the willful inclusion of a culturally and linguistically relevant Family-Centered approach in all student capacity-building and college access initiatives. Moreover, policies need to be enacted that help educators and community stakeholders institutionalize effective student-centered research-based practices.

Moving forward, the ICC will need to collaborate with Partner Schools to ensure CAIC student lessons and activities align with the school’s vision and academic mission as well as the school’s comprehensive school counseling program. The “ASCA National Model:A Framework for School Counseling Programs” (ASCA, 2003, 2005) outlines the components of a comprehensive school counseling program. A comprehensive school counseling program is driven by student data and based on standards in academic, career, and personal/social development that promote and enhance learning for all students. This alignment will help the ICC and Partner Schools build systems and a coordinated plan to sustain, enhance, and increase the scale of CAIC curriculum and program activities so more students, parents/guardians, and caregivers will benefit from this “Family-Centered” initiative.