Draft of November 20, 2009

Strategic Planning Town Hall Conversation 2: The Education Pipeline
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 -- University at Buffalo

Summary

Small-Group Reports and Subsequent Q & A
Collaboration
1. Creating partnerships among SUNY schools, communities, government, industry, etc. to improve the education pipeline is made more complex by the variety of types of SUNY institutions and their geographical diversity.  As we think of collaborations among community, industry, business, etc., we should also to consider the need for partnerships among SUNY institutions from the different institutional sectors (research university, 4-year college, technical and community college sectors) and the different roles they may play in these collaborations.
2. We need to consider what will draw potential partners to the table - what are their self interests that will be served by addressing the educational pipeline?
3. Unions are increasingly buying into the educational pipeline concept.  We need to consider their roles as partners.
4. How can we make better use of our boards of trustees and our college councils as liaisons to the diverse partners we'll need to address the pipeline in a STRIVE-like model?

Specific Interventions and Initiatives
5. Simply because of their very large number, SUNY students and faculty could have enormous impact on the education pipeline by serving as student-to-student and faculty-to-faculty mentors.
6. SUNY institutions should partner with schools to improve the quality of teacher recruitment.
7. We will be thinking too narrowly if we consider SUNY's role only with respect to our schools of education and educational/pedagogical expertise.  Students and families need "wrap around" services (educational, social, financial, medical, etc.) to increase their retention in the pipeline.  SUNY can help plug the pipeline by working in all of these areas.
8. We should make it a presumption - by students, their teachers, families, college faculty -- that high school students will participate in college courses at SUNY before their high-school graduation.  This will help blur the boundary and lower the hurdles at a key transitional point in the pipeline.  It will also be an important factor in encouraging family expectations of college going. 
* We shouldn't let the logistical questions such as what is the right SUNY institution/course for a given student, credit-related issues, etc. get in our way at this point.  It's more important to work toward creating the assumption among the groups mentioned that every high school student will have the chance to experience some college-level work.
9. Use our students (SUNY) and the high-school students with which we interact through all of these initiatives as conduits through which we can learn about and address the educational needs of their parents and families.

Data and Research
10. SUNY research institutions should play a major role in data acquisition and analysis with respect to NY State's education pipeline.  SUNY should become a repository of such data, which should be widely accessible.
11. SUNY, the system, or some institute formed by SUNY for the purpose, can help with the overall "recipe" for something like "STRIVE" - help answer the question of how you adapt a STRIVE model to different types of institutions.
12. We must re-conceptualize the education pipeline from "K-16" to "cradle to grave".  It may help in this to shift from a perspective of "teaching" to one of "encouragement of learning."
Context and Culture Change
13. It will be important to blur the college-faculty/school-teacher boundary in order to collaborate on curricular modifications.
14. SUNY will need to articulate its relationship to CUNY and to the private and proprietary college sectors with respect to improving the educational pipeline.  This is a crucial public need that we cannot allow be hindered by competition or lack of coordination among these higher-education sectors.
15. Teacher education must be conceived of as an all-University responsibility done collaboratively with our K-12 partners.  We need to consider content and pedagogy and not simply think of this as a matter of "fixing our ed schools."
16. Think outside of higher education.  Look at the professional preparation of doctors, lawyers and even beauticians to find models for clinical experience.  This applies as well to how we should think about preparing school leaders.  Look at schools of business, leadership institutes, and other entities that focus specifically on training for leadership roles.

SUNY's Role
17. In thinking about educational pipeline initiatives in which SUNY should be involved, it will be important to define the relevant region for any work.  A region isn't necessarily a school district, a county or a municipality.  A role for the SUNY may be to help scan the System, identify capabilities and/or models across it, and define the relevant players and region - in effect creating a "topology" of the relevant partners and resources by region.
18. At the system level, SUNY should become a repository of data about NY State's education pipeline and ensure that this information is made widely accessible.  SUNY might also help design and "codify" the most appropriate metrics, milestones, monitoring processes, reports, etc. to measure progress.
19. Similarly, SUNY should become the "one-stop shopping" source for school districts - the entity they think of first as a source of best practices, guidance, collaborations, etc.
20. We should take the perspective that SUNY is fundamentally an academic institution and a research center.  SUNY should ensure that we learn from all of the education-pipeline initiatives we engage in regionally -- obtain feedback from them and refine our approaches based on that feedback.
21. Improving our own policies regarding student mobility/transfer will help plug some of the leaks in the education pipeline.
22. SUNY is the largest university "authorizer" of charter schools in the nation.  How can we work this into our role in supporting the educational pipeline?
Some Possible BHAGs
23. As a result of initiatives undertaken collaboratively among SUNY, school districts and the diverse partners already mentioned, completely reinvent high school.
24. Create a student educational portfolio or passport that tracks with the student through all of his or her educational experiences and related services.
25. Eliminate the need for remedial education within SUNY by the year 2020.
26. Eliminate the educational achievement gap at every level among NY State students.
27. Combine library resources such that the same system is used by a fifth grader and by a doctoral student.
Robert Bennett's Response
Critical Factors in Improving the Educational Pipeline
28. Involvement and input from business and industry are essential.
29. A system for gathering, organizing and analyzing data is an urgent and immediate need.  It is something that SUNY, as, in part, a research entity should move to address quickly, as it's fundamental to all efforts to improve the pipeline.
30. Parent involvement - we need to change our culture such that schools become more welcoming and inviting to parents, encourage their engagement.
31. Improving the quality of pre-K teaching is a must.  This is where we should place our most-highly-trained teachers.
32. Freedom to innovate cannot be solely the province of the charter schools.  It must extend to all schools.
Chancellor Zimpher's Response
Key Roles for SUNY
33. SUNY must be prepared to provide a schematic, a framework, to guide the diverse initiatives we'll undertake regionally.
34. We can incentivize.
35. SUNY System has great power as a convener to bring the right players to the table and to ensure the dissemination of their thinking.
36. We need to take a "supply-chain" perspective on our place in the pipeline.  Efficient and ample production of college-ready students is one of our critical needs.  And at the other end, we're the primary supplier of teachers for the K-12 chain.
* Taking a lesson from industry, we should embed people from higher up the supply chain in the lower-down production entities to ensure they're doing things right to produce what's needed at the next stage in the chain.
* This will require boundary-spanning initiatives, things like placing high school teachers in first-year and sophomore classes, inviting our college teachers into high-school classes, and placing our teacher-education faculty in the schools so they can see the needs in those classrooms.
37. SUNY must help bridge the high-school-to-college transition through that critical summer before the start of freshman year.




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ANTHONY KNERR & ASSOCIATES

ANTHONY KNERR & ASSOCIATES