NACAC - Spring 2020 - 9

10th grade students take part in a
human rights course offered though
Partnership for Success!

ENCOURAGING COLLEGE ACCESS
Partnership Paves the Way for Underserved Students in Pasadena
Can independent and public schools work
together to better serve students? This is the
question Partnership for Success! in Pasadena,
California, seeks to answer.
"We kind of started as a little mom-and-pop
operation here at Polytechnic School in Pasadena.
The idea came from our former head, Mike
Babcock, who wanted to develop a partnership
with Pasadena Unified Schools and wanted to
develop a collaboration that wasn't going to be
a program that poached students from public
schools but one that shared resources," said
José Melgoza, executive director of Partnership
for Success! and a teacher at Polytechnic, an
independent, coeducational school serving
students in grades K through 12.
"From that idea, we started off as a middle
school program. But we realized that if we
wanted to help students to ultimately pursue
a college education, we obviously needed to

expand to the high school years," Melgoza added.
As we did that, we realized that we really had
to start working with them at a younger age. So
we've settled into a program where we work
with them from the fifth grade to what we call
the 13th year-the summer before college."
A collaboration between private and
public schools, Partnership for Success!
provides a fully funded summer program for
students that "show academic promise, have
good attendance, some evidence of parent
involvement, and are on free/reduced lunch."
About 60 fifth grade students are selected
by their principals in the Pasadena school
district to join the program each year. That
cohort of students stays together for the
next nine consecutive summers. Melgoza
said they have about a 93 percent return rate
each year, losing some students who move
out of the district.

For the younger students, Partnership
for Success! is a full-day summer program
that features academic offerings, as well as
art, music, and physical education. When
participants hit high school, there is an adjusted,
shorter summer schedule to help accommodate
students who work. They take math and writing
classes, as well as a "wild card" class such as a
Chinese language course or a class focused on
human rights.
Participants in the "13th year" program can
earn a college credit from the University of
California system. That program serves as a
college orientation program, with the goal of
preventing summer melt, Melgoza said.
Partnership for Success! will celebrate its
30th summer program this year, expanding
from "just an idea" in one counseling office to a
program serving 400 students each year.
As the program grew, organizers at
Polytechnic started reaching out to other
independent schools in the area to help with

SPRING 2020

9
NACAC - Spring 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NACAC - Spring 2020
