It takes a village: leaders praise Gateways Partnership

• April 19, 2011 3:00pm

Despite some dramatic disparities in academic achievement in the Bay Area, there is cause for optimism that talent and innovation can be encouraged, said Matt Lonner, manager of Chevron’s Global Partnerships & Programs, at an event marking the first year of the Gateways Cradle to Career Education and Workforce Partnership.

The partnership hopes to improve outcomes for students from preschool through college and beyond.

About 100 members of the media, community leaders and educators heard presenters describe the regional initiative formed to sustain student success. With Cal State East Bay as an anchor institution, the Gateways Partnership is demonstrating a collective approach piloted in Cincinnati and North Kentucky by Strive, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks.

KnowledgeWorks’ co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chad Wick delivered keynote remarks. “We have been project-rich and system-poor,” he said about education reform.

“We can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. It isn’t a few white males making the decisions anymore— it’s you.”
Collective action is controversial, he added, and takes time for participants to wrestle with and define key points for intervention.

“We need to reverse-engineer what we should be doing,” he said. “It is hard for social organizations to be guided and look at efforts to outcomes, then align funding to that.”

He praised the Gateways Partnership’s initial focus on improving preparation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Bechtel Foundation is supporting continuing efforts of the Gateways Partnership, which was initially funded by Living Cities. CSUEB President Mo Qayoumi said the impetus is to ensure a qualified workforce by finding measures, metrics and practices that will help to identify causes and solutions to the academic shortfall.

Emily Brizendine, director of the Gateways Partnership, said nearly 60 percent of students are failing to achieve academic proficiency.

She called for a coordinated, aligned and sustained support system that will ensure every child’s future.
Developing a set of longitudinal, common data will help guide decisions so assets can be focused on gaps, said Chris Roe, chief executive officer of the California STEM Network.

Besides Roe, panelists included Trina Ostrander, director of community relations at Bayer Healthcare; Ruther Fernandez, coordinator of the Contra Costa Local Planning Council for Child Care and Development, Contra Costa County Office of Education; and Donald Gill, superintendent of the Antioch Unified School District. They described the need to overcome hurdles posed by fragmentation, diversity and duplication to pursue orderly progress and mutual learning.

“The education system is interdependent,” Brizendine observed.

Read Contra Costa Times article, "New business partnership targets student achievement."

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