What is P-20 Education?

When you think about it, an education is the culmination of all your experiences: all your teachers, the penguins unit in Kindergarten and the Egyptian unit in 5th grade, the administration at your pre-school, your physics teacher in college, the requirements you are bound by when you select your courses in graduate school. In a P-20 education system, education partners work together to align each level of education – preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, two and four your colleges and post-graduate education as well as workforce training—in an effort to better prepare students for the 21st century.

Why is ASU talking about it?

We need a strong education system to ensure the future economic and social vitality of Arizona. But here, as in many states, we are facing significant challenges in education. Arizona is the seventh lowest-scoring state in reading attainment. Less than 1/3 of our students are meeting the proficiency level on national mathematic assessments. And while 85% of projected new jobs in Arizona will require post-secondary education and work experience, only seven out of ten Arizona students are completing high school in four years. Of those students who do complete high school, only a little over 43% meet basic university eligibility requirements.

This means that there are gaps in our education system that need to be addressed to ensure the future success of our children, especially between high school and postsecondary education. So in order to make sure we are providing a truly excellent education to our students, and turning out graduates who are ready for the jobs that await them, we need to help bolster the P-20 education system in this state.

What is ASU doing about it?

ASU is the largest producer of teachers in the state, so the way we prepare those teachers influences education in general at many levels. We also have faculty, administrators, students, and staff with valuable expertise, so we are finding ways to appropriately connect those people with the schools that need assistance. We are building additional programs to support teacher preparation and professional development for teachers. We are forging preK-12 school partnerships with the university. And we are working with the local and state governments to create public policies that recognize the challenges we face and offer constructive, creative solutions to them.

How is UI involved?

In a university the size of ASU and with hundreds of education-related efforts, UI plays an important role by identifying what is happening, making connections, and figuring out how to make the biggest possible impact on education in Arizona. We work across the university to develop and build model education initiatives.

This means we may work with a group of faculty to write a proposal for funds for a new preK-12 education project, participate on working groups focused on moving education projects forward, or work with staff to bring visibility to initiatives. We provide support to presidential education efforts that are run by other units, like the new public schools that are going to be connected to each of the four ASU campuses, which is housed in the Office for Education Partnerships. It also means that we work with organizations like Teach For America to create large scale collaborations that simultaneously advance an organization’s objectives and our own.

Regarding education policy, UI is President Crow’s liaison to the Governor’s P-20 Council and the State Board for Education. UI’s role is to ensure that these education stakeholders are informed of what we are doing at ASU in education, to identify additional ways in which ASU can engage, and to communicate information from the P-20 Council and the State Board back to the people at ASU who need to know what is taking place at the state level.