• Brazosport’s student success course, Learning Frameworks, is now offered to all dual/concurrent students in the college’s service district. Learning Frameworks (PSYC 1300) is a 3-credit hour, college-level, transferable course. Since spring of 2007, Brazosport College has offered 134 sections of Learning Frameworks to over 3,000 students at the college.
  
  

COLLEGE OF THE MAINLAND

College of the mainland is working area ISD superintendents, principals and administrative staff regarding an ongoing initiative in curriculum alignment for high school English III to college level credit English Composition I and high school Algebra II to College Algebra.  A request has been made for each high school principal to identify one English III teacher and one Algebra II teacher to work with COM college faculty members.  The ISDs include:

• Clear Creek High School (CCISD)
• Clear Springs High School (CCISD)
• Dickinson High School (DISD)
• Friendswood High School (FISD)
• LaMarque High School (LMISD)
• Hitchcock High School (HISD)
• Texas City High School (TCISD)
• Santa Fe High School (SFISD)

The COM college faculty identified to work on the curriculum alignment include:

• Ms. Tami Allison, Math Professor and Department Chair (Developmental Education)
• Mr. Leslie Richardson, Math Professor and Department Chair (Math/Science)
• Mr. Steve Romellino, Associate Professor (English) Humanities
• Dr. Bernie Smiley, Professor (English) Humanities and College/High School Liaison

High school principals were asked to designate high school English and Algebra teachers by December 7, in order to schedule January meetings. Informal meetings will be held with high school faculty and administration in January, preparing for the group workshops, set to be scheduled for late February - early March.

HOUSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE

• Houston Community College’s (HCC) main involvement with CCRS has included distributing the College Readiness Standards to various high schools for both faculty and parents. The schools include HISD dual credit high schools: Lamar, Madison, Yates, Sterling, Worthing, Houston Academy for International Studies, and Incarnate Word Academy (a private Catholic school downtown).

• P-16 Coordinator, Brenda Jones, has worked with five other HCC P-16 Coordinators at HCC to form a council for the discussion of the Early College High Schools, dual credit in numerous ISD's (HISD, Katy ISD, SPISD, North Forest ISD, Stafford ISD, Fort Bend ISD), and college readiness standards.

• HCC has five Early College High Schools which all received Exemplary rating from the state. These high schools are all embedded in, or are adjacent to HCC campuses.

LEE COLLEGE

• In October 2010, Goose Creek ISD (a main feeder to Lee College) hosted several focus groups at each of the district's high schools. These groups included 14 Lee College faculty members, were open to the community, and concentrated on identifying the characteristics of a college and career ready student. Using this standard, the district has set out to "backwards plan" their entire curriculum, from high school through elementary.

• Physics workshops for two-year college and high school instructors will be taking place summer of 2011. This project has been a collaboration of Lee College, Estrella Mountain Community College and the National Science Foundation.

• In summer 2011, Lee College hosted workshop STAAR: Leading Forward in Times of Change with over 100 educators and seven school districts. The workshop provided educators with tools necessary to begin the transition to the new assessment system and stimulated dialogue concerning curriculum alignment and college readiness.

LONE STAR COLLEGE SYSTEM DISTRICT

• Lone Star College (LSC) - Victory Early College (VEC) opened with 105 entering freshmen on August 27, 2007. In the 2010 - 2011 school year, VEC welcomed a full student body: freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

• LSC - North Harris began a pilot with high school seniors in one service area ISD in 2006 to improve students' math skills and prepare them for college-level math. Courses were patterned after the LSC - North Harris course and used the Introductory and Intermediate Algebra text.

• Six LSC faculty participated in the Pilot Instructor Recruitment for the Texas College and Career Readiness Initiative for faculty specializing in the areas of biology, chemistry, physics, Math, English/language arts, government, and history (Fall 2009).

• THECB/EPIC College & Career Readiness Activity - Sixteen LSC faculty and administrators participated in the Math/Science Symposium in Austin.

• THECB/EPIC College & Career Readiness Activity - One LSC faculty participated in the development of CTE Reference Course Profiles (ITSC 1401). Other faculty were involved (Fall 2009) in the review of materials developed

• The LSC ADNursing program engaged faculty from each college to identify college readiness standards necessary in entering nursing students and to convey that information to area high schools.

• LSC faculty evaluated two History (1301, 1302) and two government (2301, & 2302) courses to identify a correlation with the college readiness standards and identify which standards are taught in these specific college courses.

• Five college faculty (one from each college) completed an alignment of math learning outcomes for Math 0306, 0308, 0310, and 1314 with College Readiness Standards (Spring 2010) based on feedback from ISD faculty and curriculum representatives at the Math Summit.

• LSC CRS Awareness Activity - Disseminated “College Knowledge” books to key individuals at each college and placed a book in each college library.

PRAIRIE-VIEW A&M UNIVERSITY

• PVAMU hosted one-day symposiums in 2010 with PVAMU faculty and Bellville, Hempstead and Navasota high schools. As a result, the group proposed periodic discipline-based seminars/meetings, PVAMU student visits to the respective high schools (and vice-versa), and collaborations between teachers for “best practices” on implementation of standards.

SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY

The overarching goal is to improve teacher capacity at the 9 area ISD high schools in each of the 4 core subject areas. The plan, decided July 2011 by the CCRS steering committee and subsequently endorsed by participating superintendents and higher education  officials, is as follows:

• Designate a Higher Education liaison from a 4-year and a 2-year institution in each of the 4 core areas to serve on the CCRS committee and to initiate and inform practice by providing lessons, projects, and guidance to high school teachers.
• Dr. Linda Luehrs-Wolf from Lone Star College has committed to appointing one teacher from each core subject area from Lone Star College, and Blinn College will participate in Math.
• Sam Houston will designate one professor from each area as well.
• High school superintendents, through their principals, will appoint high school teachers in each of the four core areas (from 9 ISD’s) to serve on this CCRS committee. 
• Region 6 will train both Higher Ed and High School teachers on how to access and use the Epsilen and Texas Project Share websites.
• The committee will meet in person at least twice, and electronically at least monthly during a period of 2 long semesters.
• Shared assignments, videos of class lectures, syllabi, etc. will be implemented.  Each core area has come up with a set of objectives and actions based on curriculum specific needs.

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

• UH continues to work on two projects for the Gulf Coast area: a website to spread news to include new projects and resources to share and a monthly newsletter that is sent to over 300 recipients.  The new and improved Empowered for Success aims to have one article on K-12 and another on higher education to serve its constituencies.  In addition, news from the Education Service Centers of Regions 4, 5, and 6 are highlighted.  

• Besides these two projects, two UH professors, Dr. Amy Mulholland and Dr. Cameron White worked with their classes in Fall 2011 to develop sample lesson plans for social studies classes. This project provides student teachers firsthand experience to incorporate CCRS into their new lesson plans. Two of the plans can be found on our K-12 Classroom Resources page.

• UH also actively participates in the West Houston P-16 with Dr. Marshall Schott serving as the Vice Chair of the group, assisting its Chair, Ms. Maggie Cuellar, Area Superintendent of Alief ISD.

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON - CLEAR LAKE

• Faculty in the School of Education and School of Human Sciences and Humanities  worked together to provide training to help teachers foster college-ready students. The focus was on equipping teachers to lead students to develop complex analytical skills, as well as creating opportunities for the student to use their skills in real-world applications. In each workshop, a veteran social studies educator  partnered with a pre-service social studies educator who has little experience in the field. Togethr they will identified imperative knowledge and skills needed to create a critical and rigorous learning environment.
  
  

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON – DOWNTOWN

• Beginning in spring 2010, the four universities within the UH System began a CCR project that focused on first-generation students. A resource guide was developed for these students, and personal stories of UHD faculty and staff as first-generation students were included.
  
  
• UH-D and GEAR UP/Project Grad have a rich history of collaboration, including an annual symposium for secondary teachers. As an outgrowth of this association, UHD established four teams to work on aligning performance expectations in each of the four major disciplines: ELA, Math, Social Sciences, and Science. .

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SYSTEM

• Two planning meetings were held between ISD and IHE representatives. Upon deciding to use Mathematics curriculum alignment as a starting point, the four UH institutions sponsored a Math Summit.
• Coordinated activities amongst the other three sister campuses and acted as a resource venue.