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A Commitment to Texans' Education from the Earliest Years

At the University of Texas System, we are widely known for higher education at our university and health campuses. But our commitment to Texans' education begins in their earliest years.

From prekindergarten through high school, students need to master and build on skills like reading and math that are fundamental to learning for the rest of their lives. We founded The Institute for Public School Initiatives, or IPSI, to coordinate and encourage more effective education for all our public schools — so that Texas students will be well-prepared to succeed in college and the workforce.

IPSI staff members attend a core reading program training event.

Ideally, IPSI will serve as what writer Malcolm Gladwell calls a "tipping point," changing the direction of public education to help students thrive and learn. Working with Texas students and teachers through the elementary, middle and high school years, IPSI's programs address student performance, reading, and high school and college graduation rates.

The reasons for IPSI are compelling. Texas has fallen behind much of the rest of the nation in its percentage of college students. To be competitive with the national average, we need to increase our college enrollment from 1.2 million to 1.6 million students by 2015. This 400,000-student increase represents a third of our existing college enrollment.

IPSI was created to increase college participation and success rates by engaging UT universities, other colleges and universities, school districts, state agencies and community and business partners in joint initiatives to enhance students' performance.

At present, IPSI is engaged in one of the largest statewide efforts to implement scientifically based reading research in the nation. The Texas Reading First Initiative, federally funded through the Texas Education Agency, coordinates research at UT institutions with teacher training in Texas. IPSI has 66 specialists who train teachers in 715 schools in 200 districts. Across the state, almost 500,000 students in kindergarten through third grade are affected by this program.

IPSI was also involved in the founding of The University of Texas Elementary School, the first university-sponsored charter school in the state, which serves a diverse student body in East Austin. Operated by U.T. Austin, the elementary school's staff works with researchers from the U.T. Austin College of Education, College of Social Work, Priscilla Pond Flawn Child and Family Laboratory, Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, and the Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education at the UT Health Science Center at Houston. At U.T. Elementary, teachers apply educational research from U.T. institutions directly to the classroom.

To address recent national scores showing that 17-year-olds have made little progress in reading and math since the early 1970s, IPSI is expanding its focus to include high schools and transitions to college. A recent program, in collaboration with the Texas High School Project, is the development of five Early College High Schools. These schools blend high school and college courses into a program allowing students to earn two years of college credit while they work on their high-school diplomas. Three of these schools are in San Antonio school districts and two are in Hidalgo ISD, in partnership with UT San Antonio and UT Pan Am respectively.

Other IPSI programs, in cooperation with other partners with grants from Houston Endowment, Meadows Foundation, and the Texas Education Agency include:

• A three-year research project between IPSI and UT Austin's National Center for Educational Accountability, called the Assessment of Teacher Preparation Study, which will look at the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs at UT System institutions. Such shared research and knowledge will help universities train the best teachers for Texas schools.
• TAKS Readiness and Core Knowledge, a free online diagnostic and learning tool in English language arts, science, math and social studies. This program, developed with the UT TeleCampus, prepares students for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test (TAKS) high school students must pass before graduation. More than 50,000 students in the 10th and 11th grades have used the program's practice tests and learning materials. In the spring of 2005 alone, the site received more than 5 million hits. See it online at www.track.uttelecampus.org/index.htm .
• Project Core, which provides free professional development training and instructional support for high school teachers to fully understand the subject areas tested by TAKS.
• MyAccess!, which helps improve writing instruction from kindergarten to 12th grade and even into college by allowing students to write frequently and receive immediate feedback. About 7,000 students in eighth through 11th grade will participate in and evaluate this program.

IPSI's agenda is ambitious and complicated, but its purpose is simple. We want to be part of the tipping point that moves Texas from the bottom to the top in higher education participation and success.

-- Marina Ballantyne Walne, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Institute for Public School Initiatives

Read more about the Institute for Public School Initiatives.