C2C Partner Highlight: Butterfield Elementary

Beginning in the 2021-22 school school year, C2C began working with five schools in the Marana Unified School District (MUSD) to improve student achievement in reading. C2C staff worked directly with teams of educators to develop and implement strategies to improve student reading, as well as provide ongoing professional development and support throughout the process.

This ongoing work with MUSD has resulted in district-wide shifts in practice that have impacted 3,378 students and 146 teachers.

Josh Bayne, Principal at Butterfield Elementary in MUSD, spoke about the positive impacts of working with C2C. Check out the video interview below.

Partner Highlight: Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative (TREC)

Our partners at the Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative (TREC) recently announced Dr. Raul Gonzalez as their new Director. TREC is a group of educators committed to supporting meaningful teacher professional development in the Tucson Region. We are excited to share this message from Dr. Gonzalez:

Dear TREC Community,

I am honored and excited to introduce myself to you as the new director of the Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative. It has been amazing to see from the outside what Dr. Kinser-Traut, staff, and the TREC Advisory Board, have been able to accomplish these past five years supporting educators throughout the greater Tucson area. And now, I am both thrilled and humbled to help continue this work.

Though originally from the Texas/Mexico borderlands, I have called Southern Arizona home for the past eleven years where I have immersed myself in the educator community — serving first as a teacher at Pueblo High School in Tucson, and then later as director for the Arizona Teachers Academy here at the University of Arizona.

Along this path, I have had the privilege of working in professional development spaces with educators from across the state. I intend to bring the insights I have gained from these experiences to further expand TREC’s relationships with those state and local partners already working with PK-12 educators. What’s more, I aim to focus significant efforts and resources on engaging with area teacher-leaders who are eager to serve.

I look forward to working with — and learning from — Southern Arizona’s educator community, and I encourage you all to be on the lookout for what TREC has planned for the rest of 2023 and beyond.

Learn More

Data Highlight: Pandemic Learning Loss

New data from the Education Recovery Scorecard from researchers at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project shows the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on students in math and reading, giving a fuller picture of the scale of learning loss across Arizona and the United States.

Arizona school districts on average lost over seven months (-0.69 grade equivalents) of learning in math between 2019 and 2022, and less than a month (-0.06) in reading. Data for individual school districts varies widely, with some experiencing over a year of achievement losses in math.

This data illustrates the important role Cradle to Career will play in helping Pima County districts recover this learning loss. By sharing data and strategies across schools and districts, we can create lasting impacts for all students.

View the full dashboard from the Education Recovery Scorecard at the link below.

View Data

Cradle to Career Updates

United Way Invests $200,000 to Goodwill Metro for Youth Reengagement Centers

United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona announced that it will invest $200,000 to Goodwill Metro of Southern Arizona over the next two years for the expansion of their Youth Reengagement Centers (RECs) with two new sites in Tucson. Goodwill’s new REC locations will be strategically placed in northern and eastern parts of Tucson to fill service gaps, address community inequities, and improve the accessibility of programs.

Check Out Photos from the Goodwill REC Opening

On April 28th, the Cradle to Career Partnership and United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona joined our partners from Goodwill of Southern Arizona to celebrate the opening of a new Re-Engagement Center on Tucson’s East Side. At the event, United Way’s President and CEO Tony Penn presented Goodwill with a $200,000 check for United Way’s investment in the continued work of providing education and career pathways for young people across Southern Arizona.

C2C Celebrates End of the School Year with Marana Leaders in Literacy Teams

On May 8th the Cradle to Career Partnership welcomed educators from the Marana Unified School District (MUSD) to celebrate the end of the school year and the achievements of these early grade reading teachers. Thirty educators were in attendance for the event and were welcomed by C2C staff and special guests from United Way, including Allison Titcomb, Chief Impact Officer.

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