Colleges start their own K-12 schools

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Frustrated with students who come to college ill-prepared and an applicant pool that lacks the diversity of the nation’s high schools, universities around the country are creating their own K-12 schools.

The University of California, Davis, opened a school in West Sacramento this fall; the University of the Pacific launched a high school in Natomas, Calif., last year. Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley and at San Diego, the University of Chicago and others around the country also have started high schools in recent years.

All of them focus on steering disadvantaged kids toward the university gates. And educators say they are making headway.

“The reason these are happening more is that the universities are trying to do something to increase the number of minority students that come on their campuses and can be successful,” said Rob Baird, who funds school-university partnerships as vice president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

“Universities are now seeing these schools as laboratories for learning how to do something about remedying the achievement gap between more affluent, typically majority population kids, and poor urban minority kids.”

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[RethugAssKicker]

1. Will these be free ?...as with public schools.... or is

this just another way of creating private schools ?

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3. From the article ...

Both the Natomas and West Sacramento schools are charter schools, which means they receive public funds but are not governed by school districts. Around the country most schools run by universities are charter schools, said Baird, of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

[Buzz Clik]

2. A lot of universities in the country take a different approach --

They invest thousands of hours in reaching out to K-12 students in hundreds of programs. Both approaches are productive and necessary.