by Joan McRobbie, former Senior Policy Associate at WestEd
This article appeared in the May/June 2001 issue of Leadership, published by the Association of California School Administrators.

It's an education truism: K-12 systems and their higher-education counterparts stand as silos. They may be virtually side by side, but—for reasons rooted in institutional origins and tradition—the twain rarely meet. Though recent forces like higher student standards, the shortage of qualified teachers, high stakes accountabilityand a competitive economy are pushing these institutions closer nationwide, a sense of real kinship generally remains an elusive, if not outright unpopular, goal.

Not so in Long Beach. There, you can find an English professor working part time in high schools so that his university writing program for prospective teachers will be grounded in real student needs. Or you come upon a group of faculty from the university, the community college, and the middle schools huddled together on campus, developing a new seventh-grade assessment. A professor in a third-grade classroom guides and supports a brand-new teacher. Or she may be there to observe an ace veteran—and thereby update her own knowledge of how to teach reading.

These are glimpses of "seamless education," the flagship initiative of the six-year-old Long Beach Education Partnership that has won accolades and spawned imitators nationwide. It moved former U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley to give his state-of-American-education address in Long Beach in 1999, wherein he called seamless education "the wave of the future."

In launching this effort, the Long Beach Unified School District (now 95,000 students), California State University at Long Beach (31,000 students), and Long Beach City College (25,000 students) acknowledged being parts of the same whole, serving the same community. They committed to working jointly toward a high-quality, smoothly linked education system that would improve both student achievement and teacher preparation.

Now, seven years later, their strides have exceeded even their own expectations. They have jointly developed core values, high standards for students and teachers at all levels, and aligned course outlines. They are aligning assessments from pre-school through the masters level and developing articulated exit and entry expectations.

How they've managed to move so quickly beyond lip service to actually "getting into each other's business"—a leap called as essential as it is daunting—is a case study in leadership and how to "grow" it. At the helm are LBUSD Superintendent Carl Cohn, CSULB President Robert Maxson, and LBCC President E. Jan Kehoe, a triumvirate that Long Beach's mayor recently honored as "the dream team."

By all accounts, one key has been these chief executives' ability to set vision and direction, then let leadership flower throughout the ranks. By putting power where the knowledge is—in subject-by-subject, cross-faculty teams—they've sparked a contagion of innovation.

Roots in City's Economic Troubles

The roots of the initiative date back to Long Beach's economic tailspin in the early 1990s. In the wake of Rodney King-related riots and fires, the loss of the naval shipyard, McDonnell Douglas downsizing and major demographic shifts, the city's then mayor created an economic development task force in 1994. The group determined that rebuilding this community of 500,000 required attracting new employers. One key in doing that, they said, was shoring up education. Student test scores were poor, lower and higher education lacked instructional consistency, and there was little communication between the systems. With an influx of new immigrant families, teachers were ill-prepared for the cultural and linguistic challenges they faced in the classroom.

Enter Carl Cohn and Robert Maxson. Both relatively new to their jobs, the two were painfully aware of complaints, echoed nationwide, on both sides: "You're sending us students not ready for college." "You're sending us teachers not ready to teach." Both had unilateral reforms underway and could see fast-forward potential in joining forces.

Maxson looked at Cohn and saw "one of the best superintendents in the country." In Maxson Cohn found a university president who believes that "we need the K-12 system more than they need us."

Along with LBCC's then president, the two convened a retreat with about 40 people representing each of the systems, broached the idea of collaborating, and gave birth to the Long Beach Education Partnership. They committed some $60,000 among them to get started. Pinpointing problem areas, including K-3 literacy, middle grades reform, and high school math and writing, they evolved to a decision that these would be projects under the agreed-upon overall focus: seamless education.

Some partnerships get this far and then stumble - on such barriers as a college faculty belief that working with the K-12 system is "not scholarly activity." Maxson reports hearing none of this. He credits his faculty, but also his own top-down clear message that seamless education is not only in the self-interest of the School of Education faculty, it is "a front-burner issue" for the entire university. His twist on the African proverb, "It takes a university to educate a teacher," became CSULB's credo.

Another potential stumbling block—competition for control—was averted by hiring Judy Seal, a Long Beach educator with no ties to the participating institutions, to be the partnership administrator. Seal took a simple approach to getting underway: give people ways to get to know each other, beginning with the executive leadership staffs. Trust will build; ideas will percolate.

Cohn recalls how effective that turned out to be. As one who prides himself on hiring excellent leaders, he had high expectations of his own people. "But what you find out," he says, "is that CSU also has an excellent group. You put together the job alikes of highly talented people - a provost with a deputy superintendent, a dean with an assistant superintendent - and you create a synergy that's fascinating to watch. You get bold programs coming out of that dynamic."

He was less certain that teachers would embrace what they might perceive as one more thing imposed from on high. But a pivotal event doused that concern. Seal organized a dinner for professors and teachers that would feature a talk by Education Trust Director Kati Haycock, followed by small-group discussion. Cohn's reaction was, "You're crazy. They've taught all day, then you expect that they'll sit through dinner, a speech, and a hour's discussion?" The upshot: Discussion went on for 90 minutes, and even then, some were loath to leave.

"I was dead wrong," says Cohn. "The teachers were so eager. There was genuine enthusiasm for having this conversation with their subject-matter counterparts from the university."

To LBUSD Board Member Karin Polacheck, the dinner met a great need. "Our teachers were so isolated and working so hard. This gave them a comfortable place to begin to say, 'we need help.'"

Work across faculties blossomed from there and has evolved into a range of projects, led by teachers and/or professors, that have, over time, attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. A look at major accomplishments reveals two clear story lines: curriculum/assessment and teacher development.

Curriculum and Assessment

A first order of business was addressing the problem of too many incoming freshmen failing CSU's writing and math entrance tests, thus requiring remedial courses. Two cross-faculty task forces—writing and math—examined the freshman assessments as well as what was being taught and required. Were the high school math courses rigorous enough? They were. Grading, however, was inconsistent. One solution: over time, the faculties developed end-of-course exams now required in the high schools.

Another discovery was that many entrants had not taken math since junior year. So CSU faculty designed tutorials for seniors that were then delivered at the high schools by graduate students.

The writing task force found that the high schools emphasized narrative composition, while the entrance test required expository or persuasive writing. So the faculties jointly developed a curriculum for teaching how to write about a controversial issue. A companion assessment, jointly developed and piloted, is now required at the end of 11th grade. It's scored by a cross-faculty team.

"It took a lot of work, but it also initiated a theme of writing across the curriculum," says LBUSD Deputy Superintendent Christine Dominguez "Every teacher is a teacher of writing" became a mantra as all three faculties formed subcommittees in language arts, math, science, history/social science, and foreign language. These subcommittees meet throughout the year and work on ways to teach writing that enhances subject learning and vice versa - ways to teach the subject that also reinforce good writing.

The middle school teachers, working with professors, then developed a history/social science assessment aligned to state history standards and scored not only for historical knowledge but for writing capability. All eighth graders began taking this test, and the teachers have since developed a bank of such assessments for every seventh- and eighth-grade history/social science unit. Their model (a writing prompt and a series of multiple-choice questions) is now being followed by the high schools and is spilling over into other disciplines.

"All this grew out of that discussion about CSU freshmen needing remediation," marvels Dominguez.

Teacher Development

The change in professional norms has profoundly bolstered Long Beach's ability to address one of California's most urgent challenges: how to attract and keep good teachers, especially in urban schools. As the push for "faster-better" preparation reveals needs as well for better recruitment, induction, and ongoing teacher support, seamless education offers a template for an organic approach.

For starters, it is knocking down barriers for would-be teachers. As candidates attempt to move between systems, they are often de-motivated by lost credits or confusion. "But we're determined not to lose anyone," says LBCC president Jan Kehoe.

Hired in 1997 in part because of her commitment to seamless education, Kehoe can now point to an interlinked program of teacher preparation. Candidates can get underway at LBCC's new, grant-funded Teacher Learning Center and finish at CSULB. They follow a curriculum developed over two years by both faculties, one that's now a prototype being used by other community colleges and their respective CSUs.

This linkage is part of seamless education's larger effort to revamp teacher preparation, starting with the multiple-subject (elementary) credential—key to improving K-3 reading. The path once entailed four years of Liberal Studies followed by a year of methods courses and student teaching. Today, candidates finish in four years, under the partnership-developed, grant-funded Integrated Teacher Education Program. ITEP blends content and methods and involves extensive co-teaching by K-12 and university faculty in both settings.

The faculties have also created professional development centers at an elementary and a middle school—clinical laboratories where both K-12 and college classes occur.

Meanwhile, veteran teachers have bid farewell to dreaded "foisted-upon-them" inservice. "[Seamless education] provides teachers with the opportunity to define their own professional development," says Cohn. "That's very positive. They are talking about 'what I really need to help me design a standards-based classroom.'" Once-fragmented professional development offerings have been replaced by a coherent system of support and growth for all teachers, from pre-interns to seasoned veterans. Structures to help interested teachers move into administrative leadership roles are being explored.

The close ties to CSULB make it easier for teachers to earn their master's degrees while teaching. Several outstanding K-12 teachers also have opportunities to reside part time at the university. Compensated jointly by CSULB and LBUSD, they learn, teach, and help redesign teacher education curricula.

Gauging Success

LBUSD can now boast that between 1996-97 and 1998-99, the percentage of its third-graders reading at or above grade level increased from less than 40 percent to more than 60 percent. Though it's difficult to draw a causal connection to seamless education, Judy Seal also notes that it's difficult not to. "This is not about discrete programs for 20 students. It's about aligning expectations and creating an environment where all 95,000 students can succeed. Not to point to that when things improve is to be blind to the influence of the whole."

Seal and others cite a list of other improvements. At a time when high new-teacher turnover is the bane of many urban districts, Long Beach—which has hired 500-600 new teachers each year for the past four years—finds 86-92 percent of its second-year teachers opting to stay on the job. More LBUSD students—including a more diverse group of students—are applying and enrolling at CSULB, and considerably more are completing their degrees. Robert Maxson also notes a three-year decline in the percentage of incoming CSULB freshmen needing remediation. Moreover, in a state begging for teachers, Jan Kehoe can say, "we can now literally guarantee that we will prepare teachers in four years, who then go back into the K-12 system"—increasingly to Long Beach rather than the suburbs.

Not surprisingly, community support has also surged. For evidence, school officials need only point to the $295 million bond measure, requiring a two-thirds vote, that passed in March 1999.

Lasting Change

As for lasting systemic change, the Holy Grail of education reform, everyday interactions continue to make the case. Members of each institution's executive teams now work in two if not three of the systems and feel free to call each other—at home, if need be. Second-grade teachers tap professor-colleagues for help on teaching dilemmas. Professors have ease of access to school system data for studies and presentations—which they may be doing jointly with K-12 teachers. Each month, cross-faculty teams meet for a status check. When they identify problems calling for policy adjustment, they can go to the top and say, "This changed, so now we need to fix this…," confident that the likely response will be, "Let's do it."

The green light for faculties to share and brainstorm has led, in short, to new knowledge, new roadmaps to higher performance, and a new organizational definition of leadership. Taking stock, Polacheck says: "This probably sounds old fashioned to say, but people just set out to do the right thing. I don't think anyone knew what we were capable of." What she sees now is "an emotionally created culture that builds caring and respect. That allows for opportunities. It's very hard to quantify, but it's easy to see."

Asked what accounts for the success of seamless education in Long Beach, leaders interviewed offered the following: Driven by community priority. Not conceived in a vacuum, seamless education stemmed from the city's identification of education as one key to its economic turnaround. That community urgency and the ongoing support of civic and business leaders have helped fuel rapid progress. Top-down, bottom-up balance. Top leaders set the vision, charge, and focus. ("You know the saying, 'It's the economy…?'" says Robert Maxson. "Well, our message is, it's the student.") They committed their institutions and created incentives and support, but then let faculties take the lead - subject by subject. A hired-from-outside partnership administrator whose role is to "facilitate, facilitate, facilitate." Reporting to the partnership, Judy Seal underscored from the get-go an emphasis on relationship-building and a sense of "ours," not "mine." She conducted surveys to identify concerns and needs and brought faculties together with groundrules such as "check your ego at the door," "focus on solutions, not blame," and "anything can be revisited at any time." Hard work. Says Maxson, "I can't tell you how many hours faculty members from these institutions have put in. How many afternoons, in the classrooms in the district, at the superintendents office, in conference rooms at the university…it's a huge amount of work." Adequate resources. An early measure of commitment from the top was the level of institutional funding made available to support faculty efforts. "Dollars flowed without question," Karin Polacheck recalls. Soon clear, however, was the partnership's power to open foundation doors. "More folks in higher education will discover that tremendous soft money supports go along with working with K-12," predicts Carl Cohn, whose district's reputation for bold reforms has long made it a magnet for grants. Today, seamless education's funding partners include the Boeing Company, the National Education Association (all three faculties are represented by NEA affiliates), the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the Arthur Vining Davies Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Visionary and consistent top leadership. Though Jan Kehoe is a relative newcomer, Robert Maxson and Carl Cohn have had lengthy tenures. (Cohn is the nation's longest-term big-urban superintendent.) Held in exceptionally high regard by their staffs, these leaders are admired for their ability to bring people together, pick the right battles, and allow others to shine and grow.

The second annual "California Pre-K to 18 Partnership for Student Success" conference will be held at CSULB from June 20-23. For further information, contact David Dowell at (562) 985-5385.