Higher education is the key to our children’s future. The Master Plan for Higher Education is designed to ensure access to affordable and high quality higher education for every qualified student.
The Governor’s Budget continues the state’s commitment to affordability, accessibility, and accountability, with support for quality instruction and enrollment growth in all segments of higher education. To maintain quality in a period of rapid growth, funding must be linked to higher performance.
The Budget for K-12 education reflects the Administration’s goal of forging stronger links among California’s public schools, colleges, and universities. This commitment extends to teacher preparation more closely tailored to the needs of California’s K-12 schools, to student preparation for college, and to partnerships between colleges, universities, and public K-12 schools. The Administration believes that higher education can and should play a key role in supporting K-12 educational quality. The process begins with recruiting talented and academically successful individuals into the teaching profession and ensuring them access to high quality teacher preparation programs. Ongoing efforts in this area include the Governor’s Teaching Scholars Program, which was implemented last year, and improvement of the state’s many teacher preparation programs.
College Affordability—The Budget maintains the fee reduction which last year reduced higher education fees to 10 percent below fiscal year 1997-98. Fees remain at their lowest level since 1992-93. For students who need financial aid to attend college, the Budget proposes an increase of $30.5 million to the Cal Grant program—enough to provide grants for an additional 7,000 students. This new funding also increases the maximum grant award for students who choose to attend the state’s independent colleges and universities. Also, as noted earlier in the K-12 Education section, the Budget proposes $118.0 million in scholarship funds to assist high‑achieving high school students in financing their college or university education.
Accessibility—In the Central Valley, where college attendance rates are the lowest in the state, the Governor has pledged to accelerate the opening of UC Merced to fall 2004. The Merced campus is the first UC campus to be built since 1965. In addition to the $9.9 million for continuing operational support, the 2000-01 Budget provides $14.3 million for initial infrastructure development at the new campus. The Governor signed Executive Order D-12-99 creating a “UC Merced Red Team” to streamline the regulatory approval processing by coordinating the efforts of local, state, and federal agencies. Co-chaired by the Secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency and the Chancellor of UC Merced, the Red Team has been directed to report to the Governor by April 2000, regarding additional resources needed to expedite the opening of the campus by fall 2004.
Accountability and Partnership—For the past year, UC and CSU have worked together with the Administration to develop a new partnership agreement that will include funding components to address enrollment; core budget needs such as maintenance, technology, and libraries; capital outlay needs; and other cost issues. New or expanded initiatives in high-priority areas such as Internet2, Teacher Professional Development, development of Advanced Placement online courses, and California Digital Library are funded above the partnership. In this way, UC and CSU may rely on a stable funding base, and the State has a means of predicting the funding needs in these areas. These annual funding commitments will be contingent on progress in achieving certain accountability goals. A number of principles that have guided the development of this partnership are as follows:
Ensuring admission for all eligible California students.
Improving outcomes, such as graduation rates and timeliness to degree attainment.
Increasing the number of the CCC transfers.
Assuming a greater responsibility to help improve K-12 schools, including improved outcomes in the area of teacher preparation.
Increasing utilization of existing facilities.
Continued discussions into the spring of 2000 between the Administration, UC, and CSU will focus on finalizing the accountability goals for the systems. UC and CSU are encouraged to review the currently drafted partnership criteria to identify areas where accountability goals and system performance can be enhanced.
Partnership for Excellence—For the CCC, the Budget proposes to increase the Partnership for Excellence Program by $25.0 million. However, this funding is contingent on modification of the proposed Partnership for Excellence goals. The goals provided to date are not ambitious enough to meet the higher expectations of the Administration. Ongoing discussions through the spring will be directed toward increasing the CCC commitment embodied in the goals. This will ensure that discretionary funding contained in the Partnership for Excellence produces cost effective outcomes for students.
Links with K-12 Education—As
discussed earlier, the Administration proposes more than $75.0 million in
the UC budget for several initiatives intended to assist K-12 teachers and
students. Most of the Initiatives
represent collaborations among UC, CSU, private colleges, and K-12 schools
to improve the quality of K-12 teachers, help students prepare for college-level
work, and expand the use of technology to deliver programs to teachers and
students in K-12. UC will
take the lead in designing and administering these statewide programs, but will collaborate with CSU, independent institutions, and
K-12 schools in the
implementation of
these initiatives.
The Budget provides a total of $69.6 million to implement the Governor’s Teacher Professional Development Initiative, a package of new and expanded programs intended to help K-12 teachers achieve a better command of the subject they teach and master the classroom techniques necessary to deliver instructional material in an engaging and effective manner. These teacher training programs will be operated in full partnership with CSU, several private colleges and universities, and K-12 schools. This package includes:
$20.0 million to expand the successful California Subject Matter Projects, a UC-administered network of discipline-specific professional development projects. The program provides year‑round direct services to teachers through summer workshops and institutes and through support during the academic year. Emphasis is placed on efforts to raise Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) test scores and help students prepare for the High School Exit Exam. The curriculum presented in these projects is fully aligned with State academic content standards.
$14.0 million to expand the Governor’s Reading Professional Development Institutes, which in its first year is providing 6,000 K-12 teachers with week-long intensive seminars in the summer and 80 hours of continued professional development activities during the regular school term (participants received a stipend funded through the K-12 budget). This funding will allow expansion of the program to an additional 14,000 teachers in preschool and grades K-3.
$2.5 million to establish the California Algebra Institutes, a program modeled after the Reading Institutes both in terms of intensive focus and stipend support, but aimed at improving the skills of algebra teachers in grades 9 through 12. Nearly one-half of the middle and high school teachers currently teaching mathematics do not have a major or minor in mathematics, and therefore lack the minimal preparation required for a credential. This program will train 2,500 algebra teachers, and provides an opportunity for all high school algebra teachers to receive intensive training.
$7.5 million to create the California Mathematics Institutes for teachers in grades 4 through 6. This program is designed to create leadership among teachers in elementary schools for improving mathematics education. Many elementary teachers lack an academic background in mathematics or mathematics teaching methods necessary to help students meet or exceed California’s high academic content standards. The California Mathematics Institutes will build instructional leadership and capacity at schools to develop the talents, knowledge, and skills of upper grade elementary school teachers. These 5,000 teachers, with the support of the institute and follow‑up experiences, will then be prepared to work effectively with fellow teachers at their schools to design and refine both curriculum and lessons, analyze instructional practices, and diagnose and evaluate student work and performance.
$5.0 million to double the funding for English Language Development Professional Institutes (ELD‑PI), and provide training for 5,000 English Language Learner (ELL) teachers in grades 9 through 12 who do not hold cross‑cultural or bilingual cross‑cultural certificates. The purpose of the ELD‑PI is to support teachers in their efforts to help the ELL students move beyond conversational English, and achieve proficiency in the use of English as it applies to various academic content areas.
$20.0 million to establish High School Math and English Professional Development Institutes ($8.0 million for math teachers and $12.0 million for incorporating English into all other teacher skills). These institutes will also be modeled after the Governor’s Reading Institutes and focus on specific subject areas (such as geometry, calculus, trigonometry, literature, composition, etc.) for 20,000 teachers in grades 9 through 12, emphasizing improved student achievement on the STAR examination, the High School Exit Exam, and academic preparation for college including Advanced Placement (AP) coursework.
$600,000 for the expansion of the New Teacher Center currently housed at the UC Santa Cruz campus. Already recognized as a statewide center for the promotion of teacher quality, the New Teacher Center will expand its capacity to meet the demands for its services. The Center will provide consultation and technical assistance to schools, colleges, and universities statewide, all of which will be hiring or training unprecedented numbers of new teachers over the next eight years.
In addition to teacher development initiatives, the Higher Education budget includes funds for three initiatives directed at K-12 students, as shown below:
$3.0 million augmentation (for a total of $7.0 million) is included for expansion of the AP On‑Line Initiative, a program developed by UC to deliver AP courses to students who attend high schools that offer few or no AP courses. UC began this program as a pilot project in 1999-00, which includes the following courses: calculus, microeconomics, and honors psychology. UC will broaden its AP course offerings for fall of 2001 to include biology, English composition, chemistry, and physics.
$1.0 million is provided to expand the California State Summer School for Math and Science. Initiated in 1999‑00, this program is a multidisciplinary academic development program to enable high school pupils with demonstrated academic excellence in math and science to receive intensive education enrichment in these subjects through advanced academic coursework, on-line experiences, internship opportunities, field visits, and research. This program is currently offered at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz campuses. This augmentation will provide resources to implement the program at two more UC campuses.
$1.7 million to allow UC to design Algebra and Pre-Algebra Academies for students in grades 7 and 8. These Academies will link one-week teacher training institutes with local summer instructional programs for students. Seventh and eighth grade students completing the summer school program will have the skills and understanding to successfully complete algebra as part of their school’s regular instructional program. Teachers providing instruction for the academies would attend a one-week summer institute prior to the beginning of summer school. Upon conclusion of the institute, teachers and program institute leaders would serve as co‑teachers in classrooms of 30 students.
California Institutes for Science and Innovation—State investments in science and technology are critical for California to maintain its leadership in an increasingly competitive technology-based economy. The Administration is committing $75 million annually for the next four years to the University of California to launch the California Institutes for Science and Innovation at three campuses of UC. The new initiative will create world-class centers for strategic innovation that combine cutting-edge research with collaboration and training for our next generation of scientists and technological leaders.
Teaching Hospitals—UC’s academic medical centers comprise one of the largest health care systems in California and one of the two largest Medi-Cal providers in the state. In 1999‑00, the UC medical centers will have a combined licensed capacity of 2,740 beds and are expected to generate more than 579,000 patient days and more than 2.7 million outpatient visits (these figures exclude UC San Francisco Medical Center).
While UC’s medical centers are similar to other hospitals trying to survive in a price-sensitive managed care environment, they have added responsibilities that distinguish them as academic institutions. Cutting‑edge treatment and biomedical research have the potential to affect millions of lives. Maintaining a state-of-the-art equipment inventory is critical to the ability of these medial centers to stay competitive in a managed care environment. The Budget provides $25.0 million, on a one-time basis, for UC teaching hospitals to purchase new equipment.
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