Hoping to give underserved kids a head-start on college, UC Davis has joined with Sacramento City College and the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento to launch an innovative charter school: Students will have the opportunity to graduate with both a high school diploma and as many as 30 college credits, or the equivalent of two years of college.

West Sacramento Early College Prep opened its doors on Wednesday, Aug. 22, to about 120 6th- and 7th-graders. The school will expand by one grade level each year. By 2012, it will enroll as many as 630 students in grades 6 through 12.

"The school will provide an exceptional opportunity for historically underserved students to achieve the promise of a postsecondary degree," said Harold Levine, dean of the UC Davis School of Education. "At the same time, it will permit the School of Education to engage in deep and prolonged research on the conditions that impact school success and student achievement, yielding insights that will assist educators and schools throughout California and the nation."

Housed in a wing of the Evergreen Elementary School campus at 919 Westacre Rd. in West Sacramento, the new school is open to students who live in the Washington Unified School District. Admission priority goes to students who do not speak English as their first language; come from low-income families; attend low-performing schools in the district, as measured by the California Academic Performance Index; and whose parents did not graduate from college.

The school will offer small classes, tutoring, community service, caring relationships and engaging school work and investigations. All students will have the opportunity to build strong relationships with their teachers, college student mentors and college professors, and will make regular visits to college campuses. The school day will be 30 minutes longer than at other Washington Unified School District schools.

"We view West Sacramento Early College Prep as an opportunity to address the disparities in educational opportunities and benefits faced by poor students and students of color in California," said Paul Heckman, professor and associate dean of education and director of the early college initiative at UC Davis. "One of our primary goals is to collaboratively create and research solutions to the troubling high school drop out rate, which hovers at over 50 percent or higher among the most underserved populations in the state."

West Sacramento Early College Prep will serve an area of the Washington Unified School District in which 23 percent of students in the 2006-2007 school year were classified by the California Department of Education as English learners. For the 2006-2007 school year, 40 percent of the district's students were Hispanic or Latino and 37 percent were white, many of them from Russian immigrant families. Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaskan natives made up another 16 percent of district students; 7 percent were African American. In addition, about 78 percent of students district-wide received free or reduced-price meals in the 2005-2006 school year, the latest statistics available.

"Many of our students will be the first in their families to go to college," said Deborah Travis, interim president of Sacramento City College. "All of us -- faculty at the school, in the Washington Unified School District, at Sacramento City College and UC Davis, and in the West Sacramento community at large -- will learn and demonstrate how to have all of our students graduate from high school, prepared to be successful in higher education."

In West Sacramento as a whole, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees is less than half the state average and the percentage of those with graduate degrees is less than a third the state average.

"The district is pleased to have the opportunity to provide an innovative and flexible way to meet the needs of students in the community and a new paradigm for ensuring more district graduates are eligible for college," said Steven Lawrence, superintendent of the Washington Unified School District. "We are excited about our collaboration with Sac City College and UC Davis, and pleased to provide the facility, as well as administrative, managerial, maintenance and operations support for West Sacramento Early College Prep."

Educators and administrators from the Washington Unified School District, Sacramento City College and UC Davis spent the past year working together to plan the new school and hire a principal and teachers.

West Sacramento Early College Prep is part of a larger movement that since 2002 has helped to establish more than 130 "early college" schools in 24 states. To help launch the local school, UC Davis' School of Education received $400,000 in 2006 from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's Early College High School Initiative. The Woodrow Wilson foundation is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation's Early College High School Initiative aims to partner colleges and universities with secondary schools to make academic excellence the standard for all students. Of every 100 low-income students who start high school, only 65 will graduate, 45 will enroll in college and 11 will complete a college degree. In contrast, young people from middle-class and wealthy families complete two- and four-year college degrees at nearly five times that rate. Because a four-year college graduate earns two-thirds more than a high school graduate, the problem perpetuates itself.

The school is part of a University of California trend, in which UC campuses partner with K-12 schools to provide support and resources to improve how schools serve all students, particularly those who face a number of social and economic barriers to academic success.

The UC-Network of University-Assisted Schools was established in May to research the conditions that lead to college-going and success among at-risk students, evaluate college entrance requirements and undergraduate curricula and inform state and national policy on such issues as college access and readiness, school finance and school development.

A 2006 study by The Education Trust showed that California consistently posts among the nation's worst achievement gaps for fourth- and eight-grade Latino and low-income students on the reading and mathematics portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Another recent study by The Civil Rights Project showed that California's African-American and Latino students are three times more likely than whites to attend a high school in which graduation is not the norm -- one where at least 40 percent of students drop out before earning a diploma.

West Sacramento Early College Prep will operate as an independent charter school through a nonprofit public benefit corporation made up of the school district, community college district and university. The Washington Unified School District approved the charter plan April 12. The Regents of the University of California authorized the affiliation on July 19. The Los Rios Community College District, which includes Sacramento City College, approved it Aug. 15.