UNITE-LA is leading a new effort to ensure more young people in Los Angeles County graduate high school with clear pathways to college, careers and economic mobility.

Through the California Purposeful Pathways Project, funded by the Gates Foundation, UNITE-LA and the California Community Foundation will support proof points in the Long Beach and South Bay subregions of the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative. The effort will demonstrate how high schools and community colleges can better align advising, dual enrollment and career-connected learning into more coherent and equitable pathways for students.

Grounded in the Commission on Purposeful Pathways, the work is centered on a clear goal: every student should be able to say, “I know who I am, I know where I’m going and I know who can help me get there.” In Los Angeles County, UNITE-LA will work with Centinela Valley Union High School District and El Camino College, as well as Long Beach Unified School District and Long Beach City College, to strengthen pathway models that build students’ sense of belonging, purpose and social capital while improving transitions from high school to college and careers.

Over the next three years, participating partners will work to better align advising, accelerated coursework and career-connected learning so students experience clearer, more connected pathways. The project will also support stronger cross-system collaboration, improved use of data and shared learning about how to create high-quality, student-centered pathways that can be sustained and scaled. Learn more about this work in the Gates Foundation's blog, "What a Model Airplane in a California High School Reveals about Building Stronger Education Pathways for Students."

In March, UNITE-LA joined fellow grantees to launch the work through statewide learning activities, including the Accelerate Ed convening in Columbus, OH, and a community of practice meeting in San Diego, CA, that brought together partners from four California sites. These gatherings helped build alignment across regions, strengthen relationships among grantees and reinforce UNITE-LA’s role in advancing this work in Los Angeles County.

For more information, contact UNITE-LA's Adam Gottlieb at [email protected].