Forum addresses educational accessibility

  BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff CSU executive
vice chancellor David Spence addresses State Sen.
Richard Alarcon Wednesday.

By Shelina Sayani
Daily Bruin Contributor

State Sen. Richard Alarcon, chair of the Committee on College
and University Admissions and Outreach, met with education reform
advocates Thursday to discuss ways of combatting the inequity in
college preparedness in California’s high schools.

The forum, which took place at the James West Alumni Center,
marked a joint effort by University of California officials,
California State University chairs and a myriad of public school
heads and analysts in increasing accessibility of higher education
to students whose educational opportunity are below par.

At the meeting, the committee heard various reports attesting to
the lack of adequate facilities and resources in state K-12
schools. There were also presentations geared at improving the
shortcomings within the educational system. Alarcon said he would
use the proposals when working on future legislation.

“California is doing miserably … and LAUSD is a prime
suspect,” Alarcon said about the state’s educational
system. “Tell me what we need to fix.”

Presenter Russlynn Ali, executive director of Education Trust
West, charted ethnic and socioeconomic minorities and their
progress through grade school.

She presented a graph which showed that nationally, black and
Latino 17-year-olds read at about the same level as white
13-year-olds. At the state level, only 2 percent of black high
school graduates and 3 percent of Latinos are eligible for the UC
system, Ali reported.

But improvements in educational opportunity are possible, said
Phyllis Hart, who presented the report with Ali.

“Change doesn’t have to take forever, and often we
hear that it does,” he said.

Hart and Ali suggested creating a college preparatory curriculum
at all California high schools and creating programs to ensure
teachers are implementing what they’ve learned at
teacher-training programs into the classroom.

Another proposed cure to inequities in access to higher
education, according to Pat McDonough, associate professor at
UCLA’s Department of Education, is the creation of a
“College Culture” at public high schools statewide.

Students must be introduced to the possibility of higher
education early on and well guided through the process of getting
there, McDonough said. Integral to this would be the increase of
resources available, specifically the training of high school
counselors in college admission practices.

McDonough cited a 513:1 counselor-to-student ratio on the state
level as unacceptable and conducive to neglect of students
needs.

He also called for high school counselors with a “divested
responsibility for college advising.” Some high school
students hesitate to take a third or fourth year of math, McDonough
said, because they were not properly informed of the UC’s
entrance requirements.

Susan Banoff, an administrator at North Hollywood High School,
agreed to the importance of counselor influence, stressing the
dissemination of “accurate info, early and often.”

Many who testified said they hope these techniques will prove
effective in UC efforts to expand the system’s
accessibility.

“We must invest in it systematically with political
will,” said Manuel Gomez, interim vice president of the UC
Outreach Program.