Former Texas state representative Dr. Michael Villarreal is working to make the new Urban Education Institute at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) a trusted community partner for education stakeholders looking to improve educational attainment, outcomes and economic earnings for San Antonio’s students.
Seed-funded by the Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation and embedded in UTSA’s College of Education and Human Development, the Urban Education Institute will support teacher preparation efforts and establish, among other initiatives, an interactive website with data visualizations and research for education administrators, philanthropists, policymakers and more to make evidence-based decisions that support the success of the city’s P-20 students.
“When I looked across the landscape in San Antonio, I saw that we could really maximize our current investments in education by creating the Urban Education Institute at UTSA,” said Villarreal, the institute’s director. “People want to know what works for different students and under what conditions do education programs work best.”
Much of the institute’s early commitments have been directed at helping organizations answer questions such as what happens to students who receive a financial award to go to college, Villarreal said.
“But the deeper question is, ‘What would have happened if these students had not received our scholarship investments?’” the director added. “That’s really the question that I’m helping a number of organizations answer in our first year.”
Observers can similarly look to a current partnership between the institute and Pre-K for San Antonio, a city initiative to raise the quality and accessibility of pre-kindergarten for children in the community, for an idea of what to expect from the institute in the coming months.
The partnership will assess the impact of the Pre-K for San Antonio program, and this year is the first year that students who participated in the program completed third grade, meaning that the institute has test scores for these students and their peers.
