Why are so many high school graduates in America not going to college? And what can be done about it? In a new report, "A Shared Agenda," an alliance of education organizations and funders seeking to improve college attendance among the nation's students issues both an eye-opening reality check and a detailed call-to-action.

The alliance, called the Pathways to College Network, begins the report starkly. "In a nation where equal opportunity for all is a bedrock democratic value," it reads, "getting a college degree still depends far too much on one's economic circumstances or ethnic heritage."

Sobering data underscores what the report calls "an educational divide in this country that in some respects has not narrowed in decades." The divide has racial dimensions. For instance, only about half of African American and Latino ninth graders graduate from high school within four years, compared to 79 percent of Asian Americans and 72 percent of Whites.

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With more than 3.4 million residents, it has more people than 21 states. But most Californians probably couldn't tell you where the Inland Empire is located. And for too long, the region has been missing from philanthropy's map as well. The Irvine Foundation is working to change that.

Home to booming population growth and large numbers of low-income Californians, the Inland Empire, defined as Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, is a region of rising strategic importance to the state. Growing numbers of Californians are moving there, drawn by low housing prices. Located just inland from Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, the Inland Empire has become a classic bedroom community to those high-profile coastal areas. It also has the state's highest average commute time—31 minutes—to prove it.

"It's not only one of the fastest growing regions in the state but in the entire United States," says Irvine Foundation President & CEO Jim Canales. "Yet it has traditionally been underserved by philanthropy. Much the same way we approached the Central Valley in the 1990s, we see our work in the Inland Empire as the opportunity to invest in a region at a pivotal moment when it's experiencing major change."

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In the summer of 2001, choreographer Amelia Rudolph developed "Crossing," a mountaineering dance piece set in the Sierra Nevada. Nearly three years later, she was performing a new multimedia version of the work at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. What took her from mountain range to urban performance, from nature trek to national tour, was a process of artistic development made possible by a unique program called the Irvine Fellowships in Dance.

"The program looks at artists as individuals, not as service providers," says Dance USA's Julie Carson, director of the project. "Usually, it's, 'What dance product can you make, how fast and for how many people?' The fellowship program says: 'What do you need to be a better dance maker?' It speaks directly to the growth of the art and the artist."

Funded by the Irvine Foundation and administered by Dance USA, the fellowship program is designed to support California dance artists in researching and developing a broad range of voices, genres, cultural traditions and community connections across the state. Since 1998, 24 "dance makers" from California have been selected as fellows, based on both the quality of their work and their role as leaders in the dance field.

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Sandy Close, executive director of New California Media, got a taste of the power of polling when she saw the headline in The Wall Street Journal. "Bush Gambit to Woo Hispanic Voters Fizzles." The article described mixed reactions among Latinos to the Bush Administration's new immigration proposals, citing a recent New California Media national poll as a main source. Weeks later, the president amended a specific portion of the proposed legislation. It was a striking example, says Close, of how "unmediated voices can have direct impact on policy."

The immigration survey was part of a major effort by New California Media to tap the opinions of ethnic populations, in California and nationwide. Large numbers of residents have been excluded from traditional polls because the surveys are not given in their primary languages. Nowhere is this truer than in California, where demographic shifts have rendered the state "majority minority." New California Media is conducting multilingual "flash" polls designed to capture the opinions of ethnic groups affected by major events—and to do so quickly, while the events are still newsworthy.

Polls have long been used by politicians and journalists to track shifts in public opinion about various issues of the day. Now they're being used as a tool to bring once-quiet voices into the center of public debate.

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Too many youth between the ages of 14 and 24 are falling through the cracks, says Anne Stanton. In an Irvine Quarterly Q&A, the foundation's Program Director for Youth discusses the challenge of finding new ways to engage adolescents, the role of expectations, and what she learned running a community-based organization.

IQ: What did you do before coming to the Irvine Foundation?

Stanton: I've spent my career working in the community, both here in San Francisco and in New York City, with the most disenfranchised youth—youth with minimal support and skills trying to make transitions in their lives. I came to California to run Larkin Youth Street Services in San Francisco, where we focused on addressing the needs of runaway youth on the street. A lot of very disconnected runaway youth end up in San Francisco and are preyed upon in the street economy. It poses big challenges. How do you build a system that provides these young people with what they should have had in a family?

IQ: What interests you about youth development?

Stanton: The phrase "youth development" tends to have softer connotations and is perceived by some to be about self-esteem and leadership. I might instead call it "basic rights" because we're focusing on the development of academic and job skills. But whatever we call it, what excites me most about this work is the generation of young people between the ages of 14 and 24. Some people say that it's too late to work on these populations, that programs have to start with younger youth. However, my experience suggests the opposite. If you help them build skills, they will always surprise you and usually inspire you, too.

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California high schools operate in much the same way today as they did 50 years ago, leaving most of today's young people without the academic preparation they need to be successful in college, work and their communities. A new charter school program that blends internships with rigorous academic coursework promises to create a stir—and results—too loud for the state's education system to ignore.

With support from the Irvine Foundation, Aspire Public Schools is developing and piloting in two sites the "Hire and Higher" Program, a work experience program that offers internships to high school sophomores and juniors with local employers while providing a real world context for a rigorous academic program. Students will meet the requirements for admission to California public universities, conduct career explorations during the regular academic year, and utilize structured summers for a combination of work experience, college-based academics, and life skills preparation. During the summer, students will be simultaneously employed in part-time internships, enrolled in a community college class in a related subject, and meet regularly with Aspire staff to develop the skills and habits required in the workplace and higher education.

"When retention rates in the California are so bleak, support needs to be focused on programs like these that might capture kids' interest and help them not only decide to stay in school, but to also do well in school."

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In today's competitive funding environment with accountability being key, nonprofit organizations must demonstrate that they efficiently and effectively manage programs. A new educational resource for professionals in the nonprofit sector can help participants develop the skills to meet that challenge. If you conduct or manage evaluations, consult for nonprofits, or work as a corporate trainer or change agent, you could benefit.

With support from the Irvine Foundation, Fielding Graduate Institute (FGI) offers a 12-week graduate certificate program through its Center for Innovation in the Nonprofit Sector that assists nonprofit executives, board members, philanthropists, and consultants to develop their skills in designing and conducting evaluations of program effectiveness that support organizational learning and change.

Having found that such evaluations contribute to increased knowledge about best practices, organizational effectiveness, and policy development, the Irvine Foundation has partnered with Fielding Graduate Institute to strengthen the professional skills of program evaluators and organizational development consultants to strategically design and use evaluation for organizational learning and improvement.

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A college degree has never been more critical to career success and to promoting a democratic society than it is today. At the same time, there are stark socioeconomic and racial gaps in college enrollment and achievement, gaps that threaten to widen as California undergoes dramatic demographic change.

Amidst this change, at 28 independent colleges and universities across California, administrators and faculties have been participating in the Irvine Foundation's Campus Diversity Initiative (CDI), a five-year, $29 million effort designed to improve college access and retention rates of underrepresented students and to identify ways to better serve the needs of a rapidly changing student body.

The CDI was designed with the recognition that many campuses were already supporting a wide range of diversity-related projects—but that these efforts often did not achieve their full potential because the programs lacked integration with broader institutional goals and planning. As a result, the CDI has largely focused on institutional development as the key to long-term success.

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Dramatic shifts in the funding environment have created new complexities for arts leaders planning for the continued success of their organizations. In the words of one executive, "After ten years with a tailwind, it's hard to adjust to being in a headwind. We're trying to figure out how you make smart decisions for the future in an environment where everything has changed."

Believing that these challenging times demand both innovation and a sharpened focus on effective management practices, the Irvine Foundation and National Arts Strategies (NAS) undertook a year-long study with a group of leading arts organizations in California to determine immediately relevant approaches that would benefit the sector and strengthen nonprofit leadership.

Learning from the Community: Effective Financial Management Practices in the Arts provides a framework and tools that arts organizations can use to start evaluating their own approaches to financial management.

As is true for managers everywhere, arts leaders have limited time to explore emerging concepts. Benchmarking, however, is a common approach for learning from other organizations in the sector. With this in mind, NAS interviewed executives and investigated the financial management approaches of leading arts organizations to understand how effective practices might be identified and adopted across the sector to build more sustainable arts organizations.

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Over the last several years, youth advocates, and policy makers have increasingly recognized the positive impact of after-school programs on children and youth. The James Irvine Foundation has played a leading role in this movement by developing the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) Initiative to support a few California communities in providing high-quality education enrichment programs during out-of-school hours. Across California, 10 museums are also using Irvine support to provide educational programs to young people during after-school hours. They're participants in the Foundation's Museum Youth Initiative (MYI), a broad grantmaking strategy to mobilize out-of-school resources to help young Californians succeed in the classroom.

Museum Management Consultants, Inc. (MMC), a San Francisco-based firm, is conducting a four-year evaluation of the implementation and outcomes of the Initiative. In 1999, MMC began work with Irvine to evaluate the Museum Youth Initiative at the 10 museums involved. The museums broadly range in discipline, scope and size and are located throughout the state. Designed as a multi-year program, the Initiative intends to catalyze institution-wide change. MMC has conducted extensive interviews with staff and participants in order to carry out an evaluation with participating museums.

Participants in an MYI after-school program.

"By integrating evaluation into the Inititative, it has strengthened the programs," says Diane Frankel, Irvine's program director for Children, Youth and Families who served as director of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services before coming to Irvine. "The role of evaluation in this Initiative is what really makes the project unique. MMC is working closely with the museums to evaluate goals of the project to help strengthen their efforts and inform the ability of all California museums to educate young people by working collaboratively with schools to provide students with after-school experiences."

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