It’s a Mathematical Certainty That Saturday Classes Are Paying Off

I have seen California’s future, and it is working. The future is a group of eighth-graders from Santa Ana and Compton who recently participated in a graduation ceremony at UC Irvine.

They and their parents were celebrating completion of a Saturday-morning algebra instruction class set up by the campus and kindergarten through 12th grade educators as part of the University of California’s Outreach program.

The aim is to give these youngsters a shot at the college-preparatory classes they need to gain admission to higher education. One part of the university’s Outreach program pairs each of the nine UC campuses with high schools and their elementary and junior high feeder schools.

Right now, nearly 200 of those schools have formed educational partnerships with UC. The number will grow in coming months to allow UC and the lower-level faculties to work together to improve academic preparation.

Many of the schools whose graduates currently don’t apply to UC also don’t offer the classes needed for admission. The partnership program seeks to remedy that situation.

As an example of how the partnerships work, one junior high school represented at the graduation had not offered algebra for 15 years before UC Irvine arranged the Saturday classes. That program started with just a few youngsters and now enrolls hundreds of students who get up early on a Saturday morning and start learning about algebra at 8 a.m.

I talked with a father who takes time off--and is docked in pay--to go to school with his sons and demonstrate to them in the most personal way that education is important.

Is the program working?

Let me answer by reporting that as part of the morning’s graduation program, one of the students did a computerized PowerPoint presentation on algebra. Four other students gave speeches--one from memory--explaining how the Saturday classes and their new knowledge of math had changed their lives.

They said they began to believe they could succeed. They began seeing themselves as winners. Because of UC Outreach, hundreds of young people are discovering that they can go to college, whether it is the University of California, California State University, a private college or one of California’s excellent community colleges.

Many tell me that for the first time they believe that, once they have completed the required academic preparation, they can compete on a level playing field with anyone who sits next to them in a high school or college classroom. For a young person from a family that has never had a college graduate--that never even considered college a possibility--it is a thrilling revelation.

Of course, one student learning about computers and mathematics does not constitute a statewide educational renaissance. But UC has allotted $144 million a year to invest in the Outreach program and is working to make a difference in thousands of young lives. The university is serious about meeting the challenge of enrolling more underrepresented young people.

There are some hard-headed economic facts of life behind UC’s Outreach program, of course, and they have much to do with California’s future. Every demographic indicator points to the fact that California, already the most diverse society on Earth, is becoming even more so.

It is increasingly obvious that if the Golden State is to continue its role as a world leader in today’s technologically oriented, global economy, its young people from all ethnic and economic backgrounds must be provided with the higher education that will enable them to live up to their potential.

To be blunt, the only way we are going to continue the economic success of the last half dozen years is to create a society that equips all its brains to contribute. If we fail to do that because we don’t prepare enough of our young people to do advanced university work, we will start to fall behind gradually in a world where wealth is more and more produced by innovation and research--products of a highly educated work force. UC’s Outreach program, as exemplified by the recent Saturday graduation, offers hope that we will succeed.