ALUMS MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Kati Haycock Director, The Education Trust

In 1973 Kati Haycock was less than two years out of college when the California legislature passed a bill mandating that undergraduate enrollment at UC campuses reflect the state population as a whole. At the time Haycock was working at the University of California Office of the President, and she was asked to take the lead. "At age 24, I was put in charge of making sure that all the colleges in the system had an equitable enrollment pattern. I've been working on that same issue ever since-closing the gap between groups," she said in a phone interview from her office in Washington DC.

From her work as the first director of student affirmative action for the UC system, Kati Haycock went on to do her master's in education at Cal. There her emphasis shifted to K­12 education and policy, and after graduating she founded and directed the Achievement Council, a California group devoted to closing the achievement gap for poor and minority students. In 1989 she moved to Washington DC to become executive vice-president of the Children's Defense Fund. Her work there led her to start a unit within the American Association for Higher Education that aimed to restructure school and college collaboration, to focus more on making the broad systemic changes necessary to improve outcomes for minority and low-income young people. "Eventually we got bigger than the organization we were a part of," she said. So in 1994 Education Trust became its own entity, with Kati Haycock as its director. The non-profit now has a staff of 30.

"The bulk of our effort is local-Education Trust is now working in 45 cities in 22 states," she said. "We help districts and states develop and put into place strategies to close gaps between groups. We involve communities in coming up with plans of action. Then Education Trust trains instructional coaches and teachers to improve the rigor of what the schools do, to replace watered-down assignments with more focused, high-level work." "I'm astounded that kids in some middle schools are given more coloring assignments than writing and math work," she said. "Even in some high schools the kids are asked to do a lot of coloring. 'Read To Kill a Mockingbird,' says the teacher, 'and when you're through, color a poster on it.'

"And when our staff says, 'How about writing an analysis of it?' the typical response goes something like this, from an actual 11th grade English teacher in a low-income school in Philadelphia: 'Write? Not these kids, they're too poor. I think of it as a criminal act to assign these kids an essay of over three paragraphs in length.' We think it's a criminal act not to. So what we do is help teachers bring state standards off the shelf and actually implement them," she added.

Kati Haycock serves as the principal spokesperson for the Education Trust, and as an outspoken policy advocate for poor kids in both national and state debates on education. "We try to talk about what's right for kids, not simply for adult groups," she said.

When Kati Haycock thinks back on her student years at Cal, she remembers her professors, Charles Benson and John Ogbu. "Charles Benson had a big influence on my ideas, with his research on school finance and his passion for social justice. John Ogbu forced me to attend to the part of the equation I was less willing to look at, the non-school component. He's an enduring influence as a teacher and a friend." Kati Haycock admits she actually uses the statistics courses she took with David Stern and Leonard Marascuilo: "I learned enough to keep up with the crazy statisticians and researchers I deal with almost every week. Because of the courses I took I don't get sucked into the statistics wars without knowing what I'm seeing."

She likes the fact that her job involves the three worlds of research, policy, and practice. "Education Trust is uniquely positioned to translate research for practitioners and policy makers," she explained. One of the services of Education Trust that she feels could be more widely utilized is their Education Watch Online. "It's a statistical resource that can be used by researchers, graduate students, or policy makers-anyone interested in achievement and attainment patterns by race and class." The web address is www.edtrust.org and then click on the Education Watch Data option. "

I hope the Education Trust will eventually work itself out of a reason for being," said Haycock. "Meanwhile, we will continue to press policymakers and educators to do what is right for poor children and children of color. At the moment, we are especially focused on assuring that these children get at least their fair share of the best teachers and on securing an accountability system that doesn't allow schools to mask the underachievement of minority and poor students by averaging it into overall achievement."

Kati Haycock