Success at Every Step of College and Career Preparation

Friday, February 5, 2010 • 9:00am- 12:30pm

SUMMARY

This half-day AYPF forum focused on the urgent need to help students achieve success in college and careers, and highlighted proven strategies that provide such support throughout the education system. The forum was anchored by the findings of the new AYPF publication, Success at Every Step: How 23 Programs Support Youth on the Path to College and Beyond, which profiles programs that have been proven effective in helping young people complete high school and be prepared for success in postsecondary education and careers. The event provided an overview of the publication’s findings, showcased a variety of programs that support college- and career-readiness, and explored implications for federal and state policy.

CLICK HERE FOR FULL FORUM BRIEF

SPEAKER BIOS:

James Connell, president and cofounder of IRRE, developed First Things First and has continued to strengthen its framework through a decade of implementation and evaluation. Long recognized for his research on youth development in urban settings and the theory-of-change approach to planning and evaluation of system change, work in adolescent development and a theory-of-change approach to youth issues, he has become one of the nation’s foremost experts on education reform, especially at the secondary level.  He advises policy-makers, foundations and educators on reform issues and frequently contributes theoretical and practice-based writings to a wide variety of national venues.

Dr. Connell is a former special education teacher and professor at the University of Rochester, where his research was recognized by major awards from the American Psychological Association and the W.T. Grant Foundation.  From 1992 to 1995 he served as a Senior Vice President and Senior Fellow with Public/Private Ventures.  And, after co-founding IRRE in 1989, Dr. Connell has served as President of the organization from 1991 to the present.

Greg Darnieder is the Special Assistant to the Secretary on College Access at the U.S. Department of Education. Greg began his career in education as a middle grades teacher in St. Louis and Riverdale, Maryland.  He then worked for fifteen years as the executive director of youth development and college access organizations in Chicago’s Cabrini Green Housing Development.

Beginning in 2003, he oversaw the Steans Family Foundation’s community focused philanthropic efforts in Chicago’s North Lawndale community including early childhood, education, organizational development and affordable housing.  That same year, Greg established the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development (DPSESD) at Chicago Public Schools (CPS), designing and implementing an assortment of postsecondary, academic, financial, and social support programs and building university, corporate and civic partnerships to enhance college access.  In 2008, he was named the director of the Department of College and Career Preparation, a newly formed department in CPS that consists of the DPSESD and the Department of Education To Careers. In 2009, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, named Greg the Special Assistant to the Secretary for College Access at the U.S. Department of Education.  

Katharine Oliver is the Assistant State Superintendent for Career and College Readiness for the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), a division that administers a full range of academic, career, and technology instructional programs and support services for youth in Department of Juvenile Services facilities.  Mrs. Oliver was appointed to her current position in 1989 and is the nation’s most senior State Director of Career and Technology Education.  Until July 2009, her division also had responsibility for Maryland’s systems of Adult and Correctional Education.  Earlier in her career, she was a member of MSDE’s Division of Rehabilitation Services Executive Team and also worked with Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation in workforce development.

Mrs. Oliver serves on a variety of local, state, and national advisory boards related to education and workforce development.  She is a past President of the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium and is the current chair of the Southern Regional Education Board’s High Schools That Work Board.  Recently, Mrs. Oliver was honored by The Daily Record as one of
                                 Maryland’s Top 100 Women.

Ryan Reyna is a Policy Analyst in the Education Division at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center).  Ryan works on a variety of high school reform issues, including college- and career-readiness, turning around low-performing schools, career technical education, and technology in education. He currently leads the NGA Center's work on dropout prevention and recovery, working with six states to develop comprehensive policies and programs to improve high school graduation rates. Previously, he worked as a Research Associate at the Data Quality Campaign.  Ryan holds a B.A. in American Politics from the University of Virginia and an M.P.Aff. from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Rachel Singer serves in the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Kingsborough Community College in New York.  For the past eight years she has been the Director of Academic Affairs, overseeing many community learning initiatives.  As part of an earlier national demonstration to evaluate student success, Kingsborough students in learning communities demonstrated greater persistence, achieved higher GPAs, and passed out of developmental English classes at a much higher rate than their peers who were not in learning communities.  Under her direction, learning communities targeting under-prepared students at Kingsborough have expanded from an initial enrollment of 120 students each semester to over 800 each semester.

Ms Singer represents the Office of Academic Affairs in all policy matters concerning academic advisement and registration, and, in addition, developed KCC’s Weekend and Evening College.  As the project director for a Ford Foundation grant, Ms. Singer worked with five community colleges across the country
                                 to help build, develop and sustain learning communities on their campuses, and later assisting in the
                                 creation of an additional twelve.  Ms. Singer is also a licensed Clinical Social Worker, in private practice
                                 for the past twenty-six years.

David Sinski is the Executive Director of After School Matters, an innovative after-school program that aims to offer Chicago teens paid apprenticeships or club memberships in arts, sports, technology, and communications programs.  The organization solidifies partnerships between citywide agencies and organizations in order to annually engage more than twenty thousand teens from underserved communities.

Prior to his work with ASM, David served as Director of Youth Development Programs at Alternatives, Inc., spent ten years at Mujeres Latinas En Accion, and began his career at Teen Living Programs of Chicago.

Joel Vargas is a Program Director at Jobs for the Future, an organization that identifies, develops, and promotes new education and workforce strategies in order to help our communities and our nation compete in a global economy. Dr. Vargas studies and advises on state policies to promote improved rates of high school and postsecondary success for underserved students.  He focuses on new education pathways that blend high school and college, such as early college high schools and comprehensive dual enrollment programs.                                                    

Dr. Vargas has directed, initiated, and studied a variety of middle school and high school programs designed to help more underrepresented students get into and through a postsecondary education. He also has been a teacher, editor, and research assistant for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, coeditor of Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth (Harvard Education Press) and Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It (Harvard Education Press).  He was featured in the Chronicle of Higher
                                 Education as one of "Higher Education's Next Generation of Thinkers."

Michael Wotorson is executive director of the Campaign for High School Equity, a partnership of ten of the nation’s leading civil rights and education organizations focused on high school education reform. He is responsible for overseeing the coalition’s federal policy agenda and its public outreach and education activities.

Michael has spent his career advocating in support of educational equality and civil rights, working for more than fifteen years as a researcher, advocate, and policy analyst. Prior to joining CHSE, Michael was national education director for the NAACP, and has held positions at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Mid-Atlantic Equity Center, National Association of State Universities & Land-Grant Colleges, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington, and Anti-Defamation League.  He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Maryland ACLU.

RESOURCES:

• Success at Every Step: How 23 Programs Support Youth on the Path to College and Beyond
• Success at Every Step Brief with List of Programs (4 Pages)
• First Things First: Theory, Research and Practice by James Connell
• Download the forum agenda.

POWERPOINT SLIDES:

• AYPF Presentation on Success at Every Step
• Presentation from Rachel Singer, Kingsborough Community College
• Presentation from David Sinski, After School Matters
• Presentation from Joel Vargas, Jobs for the Future
• Presentation from Jim Connell, IRRE