High School Completion & College Going Initiative

The High School Completion/College-Going Initiative is being advanced to give greater impetus to the overarching goals of ASU Education Partnerships. These overarching goals ensure student success in and throughout the pre-Kindergarten-12 grade pipeline, student acceptance to and attendance in college, and ultimately, college completion. ASU Education Partnership efforts have been focused on high-need underserved populations within school districts and individual schools.

In order to increase the educational attainment of students in Arizona, the extent of the problem must be clearly understood. In order to further our understanding of the issue, the Initiative proposes to: 1) Collect all known statistical data on graduation rates and college attendance in Arizona; 2) Form a database of pertinent studies examining the causes of low educational attainment; and 3) Synthesize all information and disseminate the findings.

It is expected that the focus of the Initiative will gradually expand to include both symptoms of the problem as well as underlying causes. This may require that the Initiative conduct longitudinal case studies on school environments in Arizona that consistently demonstrate high graduation and college matriculation rates. This process will involve the following: 1) Identifying the selection criteria to locate highly performing schools; 2) Locating schools that meet the selection criteria; 3) Selecting schools amenable to longitudinal research methods; 4) Conducting multiple case studies using a methodology of spontaneous replication; 5) Supplementing quantitative data with qualitative data from site visitations and interviews; and 6) Analyzing findings in order to identify successful, replicable practices which lead to high and/or improved educational attainment.

The Initiative maintains an openness to collaborate with several state initiatives and organizations which share our goals and objectives. Possible partners include, but are not limited to:

• The Center for the Future of Arizona
• The Arizona Commission for Postsecondary Education
• The Governor’s P-20 Education Council
• The Rodel Charitable Foundation of Arizona
• The Arizona Business and Education Coalition
• The Arizona Department of Education (particularly the Arizona High School Renewal and Improvement Initiative)