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Some of the recent activities of the E3 Alliance are outlined here.
Univision Outreach
After a fruitful meeting with Univision, board member Sylvia Acevedo has begun doing weekly broadcasts around education topics of interest to the Latino community. These interviews will include much of the data E3 Alliance has gathered from the Central Texas region. The interviews will air Tuesdays during the 5 pm local news on Univision KAKW Channel 62 (Channel 13 TWC). Thanks, Sylvia!
Information Focus Groups
E3 Alliance is holding focus groups with our target school districts around new data sets. The E3 Alliance has been working for months building Essential Student Indicators through input from experts across the region to develop a target list of data elements that are not collected today but are potentially important in predicting student outcomes. Now they are doing the “feet on the street” test with teachers and counselors in every target district around key student transition points. Hannah Gourgey has also been meeting admission officers from every area college/university as a way to start the higher education new data definition process.
Launching of the Achievement Gap Deliberative Dialogs
E3 Alliance has just completed launch meetings for Achievement Gap Deliberative Dialogues to be held in seven communities across the region. E3 is actively forming 7 planning teams that will be meeting over the summer and early fall in order to start off the actual dialogs process after school begins. They plan to involve over 500 people across the region in a series of structured dialogs about the implications of achievement gaps on all of us. Those communities will then send delegates to a regional planning forum in late October that will then roll up into our Leadership Planning Summit next January. This work is based on the Kettering Foundation national model, but they are excited to be the first region in the country to hold the dialogs. They are working in partnership with Texas Forums, Austin Voices for Education and Youth, and United Way. The implications to all of us are clear: the Texas state demographer has determined that there can be a $300B annual benefit by 2040 to the economy of Texas if we can close the gaps to college while continuing to raise expectations for all students.
Institution Specific Data Sets
E3 Alliance is working on providing customized Central Texas Education Snapshots for district and higher ed partners. These data sets are valuable tools to each entity as they look for best practices and focus areas, and they will also be used as reference materials for our Achievement Gap Dialogs. Round Rock, San Marcos, and ACC are completed and others will be forthcoming soon.
Other Deliverables
Recent deliverables to the community include:
- College Readiness Considerations –a policy guidance paper to provide input on the state’s process to define college readiness
- Barriers to Effective Evaluation –a “white paper” view of the policy and structural barriers to being able to access and use educational information to increase outcomes
- Review of post secondary Developmental(remedial) Education – trends and implications in the region (in process)
- “System map” of the education performance ecosystem in the region – a look at who’s doing what around data performance sets – at the request of Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (in process)
