11:20am | According to a release from Long Beach State (CSULB), a progress report released today on four-year-old, local College Promise initiative to prepare more youngsters for college success revealed encouraging results, though education officials cautioned that California’s budget cuts threaten to curtail and reverse these gains.
 
 “Against difficult odds, including hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding cuts to our three institutions, we see encouraging signs of success,” states the report signed by LBUSD Superintendent Christopher J. Steinhauser, LBCC Superintendent-President Eloy Ortiz Oakley and CSULB President F. King Alexander. “[…] California must find a way to stabilize its volatile funding for K-12 and higher education. Without such a basic commitment of resources from our state, the College Promise is in greater peril than ever. In fact, state cuts already are impacting students in significant ways, and yet further cuts to education loom.”
 
The progress report highlights key steps that the three institutions are taking to prepare more students for success in college and in high-demand, high-paying jobs. Included in these efforts is a commitment to cover the cost of first-semester fees for every local high school graduate who enrolls directly at LBCC after graduation. The LBCC Foundation has raised more than $6.5 million and established an endowment to pay the enrollment fees in perpetuity. Thousands of students already have taken advantage of the tuition-free first semester.
 
The College Promise also guarantees LBUSD graduates admission to CSULB with minimum requirements. Today’s report shows that 729 LBUSD students entered CSULB as freshmen in 2011 – more students than ever before and a 40 percent increase from 2008 when the College Promise began.
 
Today’s report from the three institutions also shows:

• Nearly three of four LBUSD graduates (74 percent) are pursuing post-secondary education within one year of graduation. Half of those students are enrolled at CSULB or LBCC.  
• LBCC fall 2011 enrollment of LBUSD graduates increased to 1,675 despite state funding cuts that have curtailed course offerings at LBCC.  
• LBUSD students’ college readiness in English and math proficiency, as measured by the Early Assessment Program (EAP), improved even as participation rates increased significantly.
• While the number and proportion of CSULB freshmen from LBUSD has grown, the percentage requiring math and English remediation has decreased.
• LBCC students from LBUSD continue to be much more likely to persist in college.  LBUSD students’ persistence dramatically outpaces the persistence rate of students entering from other high schools.
• Since the establishment of the College Promise, CSULB transfer students from LBCC are retaining at a higher rate than nonlocal community college transfers admitted with more rigorous criteria. 

View the full report on the College Promise at www.longbeachcollegepromise.org.
 
March 20, 6:00am | Four years ago, LBUSD Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser, LBCC President Eloy Ortiz, and CSULB President F. King Alexander signed the Long Beach College Promise, a commitment by all three institutions to provide local students with greater opportunities to pursue and complete their higher education.

The College Promise is the most recent and comprehensive project of the nationally recognized Seamless Education Partnership between the three institutions. The Long Beach Seamless Education Partnership was launched in 1994 by local civic leaders to ensure that all students would progress smoothly through the education systems and into the workforce.  This partnership has accomplished much since its inception through close collaboration between LBUSD and the CSULB College of Education to improve the professional development of local teachers.

According to the Business Higher Education Forum, the Seamless Education Partnership “has become a defining feature of the community and a model for the nation.” 

The three educational leaders will present a progress report tomorrow, while also awarding scholarships to 28 eighth graders and discussing how state budget cuts are putting the College Promise in greater danger than ever. They will be joined by Jack Scott, chancellor of the California Community Colleges.

The event will start tomorrow at 1pm, at Cabrillo High School Auditorium, 2001 Santa Fe Avenue.