El Paso MSP
El Paso Meets the Millennium
With the help of the ongoing partnership between the National Science Foundation and The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence, students in our city’s public schools have been making steady and substantial progress in math and science. The achievement gap between White and Hispanic students passing Texas’ state assessment in mathematics decreased from 21.2 percentage points in 1994 to just 5.7 points in 2002. Enrollment in college preparatory math and science courses is at an all-time high, with more than three-fourths of all students in our partnership districts taking Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Chemistry in the 2002–03 school year. Pass rates for math and science courses in 2002–03 ranged from 75 percent for Algebra II to 94 percent for Physics. In 2002, the high school completion rate for students in El Paso’s three urban school districts reached an all-time high of 77.8 percent. Our high school graduation rate was highest among all major cities in Texas, including Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
Looking ahead, though, we know that all of us must do more to prepare our students to succeed in tomorrow’s competitive workforce. Toward this end, MSP brings together our 12 school districts and our institutions of higher learning — University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and El Paso Community College (EPCC) — making El Paso an active learning community that serves all of our students. In the same way, we align the resources, needs and expectations of all grades and institutions, from kindergarten through college, to build a system that will anticipate and meet the needs of our students in decades to come.
America’s prosperity depends on a steady supply of mathematicians, scientists, innovators and problem solvers to create the jobs that increasingly define the global marketplace. In the same way, our children rely on their schools to nourish their natural zest for learning and lay the foundation for successful careers in a high-tech world. But to do that over the long term, schools themselves need to be better prepared, with a reliable supply of teachers skilled in these content areas, as well as the leadership, practices, standards and accountability to ensure these teachers can do their jobs effectively.
Through The Mathematics and Science
Partnership (MSP), The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence is helping schools in our area meet these challenges. Supported by a $29.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, MSP is ensuring that opportunities to succeed in math and science are available to all El Paso students at every level of the curriculum, from pre-kindergarten through college and into graduate school.
Links
El
Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence
National Science Foundation
University of Texas
at El Paso
Region
19
El Paso Independent
School District
Ysleta
Independent School District
Socorro Independent
School District
Center
for Research and Evaluation of Educational Reform
The El Paso Collaborative for Academic Excellence
Education Building 413
500 W. University Avenue
El Paso, TX 79968-0683
915-747-5778
© 2005
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|