About Us | Center for Educational Partnerships

About

The Center for Educational Partnerships (CEP) at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education is a consortium of ten core education programs and initiatives that, together with additional affiliate organizations, encourage, facilitate and participate in partnerships that support and sustain quality K-12 education in South Carolina. CEP’s three main areas of concentration are professional development, engagement and educational research and policy, particularly as it applies to low-performing schools. Discover more about the CEP!

CEP Mission and Goals

The CEP’s mission is to provide educational extension services to schools, families, and communities that facilitate collaboration among diverse education stakeholders, leverage existing resources, and build local capacity to improve student achievement and ensure every child in South Carolina has equal opportunity to succeed in school and beyond. The CEP’s activities are aligned with the goals set for the CEP by the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee:

To provide timely training and professional development to educators, families, and communities;
To establish collaborative educational enterprises with schools and school divisions that support dissemination of proven practices, rigorous field trials of promising models, and development and testing of innovative research-based models in collaboration with other state primary educational partners;
To provide the best possible ideas and resources available to educators, families, and communities to ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed in school and beyond; and
To develop broad-based partnerships with schools, communities, agencies and businesses for educational impact.

CEP Core Partners

The CEP was created pursuant to a proviso to the SC General Appropriations Bill of 2013-2014 (H.3710, Proviso 1A.52). The ten Core Partners are:

Accountability

In addition to regular leadership meetings to review data and propose operational changes, the CEP is formally reviewed by the USC College of Education’s Quality Assurance Committee (QCom). The committee, made up of faculty and administrative representatives from the College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences, principals and teachers from the public school system, alumni, and the SC Department of Education, is responsible for managing, monitoring, and reviewing assessment plans and data within the College of Education. Core CEP partners were reviewed by QCom in 2014. Review findings for each core partner were compiled and shared with the Dean’s Executive Council, program directors, and the CEP’s Co-directors.