CHEC strategies will directly relate to the Mission and to the Student Achievement Expectations

Guaranteed College Admission to SDSU or transfer through SDCC

• Beginning with Hoover’s class of 2011, students meeting specific criteria will be guaranteed admission to SDSU through an agreement with the University, the College Avenue Compact.
• An alternative path for college and career is enrollment in SDSU-City College Connect in which students who decide to attend the community college can, before they leave the Hoover campus, sign on to receive special services such as SDSU advising so that transfer to SDSU is guaranteed if they meet university criteria. While at San Diego Community College, students will participate in small learning communities aimed at promoting success at the college level. 
• Through internships, career preparation through Hoover’s small learning communities, and other career-technical training experiences, students who have attended Hoover will leave prepared for the next phase of their lives.       
• All CHEC students and families, beginning in elementary school, will receive comprehensive information and experiences aimed at creating a college-going culture.  All 4th grade students participate in "I'm Going to College" which includes classroom lessons taught by SDSU/SDCC Advisers, information sessions for parents, and culminates with a visit to SDSU.

Rigorous Curricula and Effective Instructional Organization

• As part of college readiness, faculty from SDSU’s undergraduate studies work directly with the teachers in English and math at Hoover High School. Beginning in 2007-2008, SDSU staff from the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Department worked with Grade 9 and will work with each successive grade over a 4 year period to revise teaching approaches, content, and pacing.

• Using a “Best Practices” benchmarking approach similar to that of business, staff from SDSU’s National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST) identifies high achieving schools across the nation with urban demographics. The CHEC and the NCUST Executive Directors will implement a process for improving student achievement with CHEC school leadership teams. NCUST will assist with the development of apprenticeship relations between the Collaborative and model schools creating a network of best practice schools for the CHEC to draw upon.

Personalized Learning

• With support from ConnectEd, all Collaborative schools will continue to provide and increase the number of small and personalized learning environments with small learning communities at the high school level (e.g., the Academy of Information Technology, Visual And Performing Arts) and “Houses” for students at the middle school, and at School-In-The-Park for the elementary level.

Highly Qualified Staff

• To improve teacher preparation, the Teacher Education Department of SDSU’s College of Education will continue the City Heights Block to include competencies that reflect the knowledge and skills teachers need to effectively teach in urban communities.
• The CHEC will investigate ways to increase release-time for teachers because teachers work best in small collaborative teams with common planning time, where lessons are studied as a learning community and where accountability for student success is a shared responsibility.

High Expectations for All Student

• College and career readiness for all students is being promoted and will be accomplished through the College Avenue Compact and the SDSU-City College Link.  All students (and their parents) will be familiar with and understand the UC/CSU a-g college entrance course requirements, will have access to the a-g sequence of courses, and will be supported to become proficient in core courses to be ready for success in college.
• Middle school students will be prepared for success in Algebra to be ready for success in high school.
• Stronger, more coordinated, and consistently/universally taught structured English language development curriculum and instructional strategies.  
• A coordinated, comprehensive system of school academic counseling based on the national standards of the American School Counselors Association (ASCA).

Assessment and Accountability

• Students and teachers will have adequate access to technology to use it effectively in student learning, classroom instruction, data management and communication.
• Electronic assessment that provides immediate access to student progress data for teachers, students and their parents will become part of the CHEC services.
• Using DataDirector, CHEC schools will be able to disaggregate and analyze both process measures and outcome measures and be able to monitor the school’s inputs, processes and outcomes using data.

Parents/Families as Partners

• The extensive and comprehensive services of the Community School component of the CHEC will continue to serve the students and their families.
• Parent Centers at each CHEC school staffed by Parent Center Directors and social workers and comprehensive Health Centers staffed by nurses at each school provide services to students and their families.
• At Rosa Parks, a Parent Academic Liaison (PAL) program enhances the Parent Involvement efforts so that an earlier Price Charities program for parents of Kindergarten students, Success For Life, could be continued along with on-site services for all grades.

Collaborative Practices

• The schools in the CHEC work together to create a continuous educational experience for the students and their families. To do so, the CHEC will have P-16 advisory councils to develop Collaborative-wide recommendations for curriculum, instruction, assessment, budget, etc.