[The following final update was written by the organization and then sent to us for further sharing.]

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (Partnership) is grateful to LA2050 and the Goldhirsh Foundation for the generous support of Partnership’s K-PhD program in the amount of $75,000 to advance the LA2050 issue area of K-12 STEAM education. With your support, we expanded this program during the 2024-25 school year, allowing us to offer intensive academic enrichment and experiential learning opportunities to 13 of the Partnership’s 20 historically under-invested schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LA Unified, District).

Piloted in the 2020-21 school year, K-PhD has grown both in number and support over the years. In school year (SY) 2024-25, 371 students across our network were enrolled full-time in a K-PhD program, while 9,544 students accessed K-PhD programming at their school sites. K-PhD provided low-income, Black/African-American and Latinx/e students in Los Angeles with opportunities to develop and sharpen their STEM skills. Participants engage in a coherent, intensive, school-based enrichment program designed to prepare them to become future STEM leaders. Students participated in advanced STEM coursework, where they benefited from direct support, and engaged in activities including STEM competitions and on-site visits to workplaces in various STEM industries.

The K-PhD program measures our impact on students’ academic skills and personal mindsets through a number of metrics that include academic assessments, program engagement, and surveys of social-emotional learning (SEL). We monitor academic growth through standardized test results, such as the SAT, other content assessments and grades. To assess student participants’ personal growth and engagement, we used surveys to measure changes in attitudes and beliefs towards STEM. We also monitored attendance and enrollment in the program, along with the successful completion of coursework.

Though we did not recruit any volunteers for this program, K-PhD Leads, school leaders and Partnership staff worked tirelessly to ensure that our students obtained high-quality K-12 STEM education. K-PhD Leads are current educators who are selected annually to head programming during and/or after school, and serve as the face of K–PhD at their school sites. Leads receive targeted professional learning (PL) across the year for alignment and collaboration with each other.

The K-PhD program was implemented in SY 2024-25 as outlined in our grant proposal. Led by the K-PhD Director, we established a clear framework for advanced STEM enrichment that provides the flexibility for each school to adapt the program to fit the needs of its specific school community. In addition to overseeing all program work, including supervising, training, observing and coaching the K-PhD Leads, the K-PhD Director provided one-on-one (1:1) mentoring to program participants with extraordinary abilities and interest in STEM fields. With the K-PhD Director’s experience in leading STEM-related enrichment programs, a proven record of success working with students in historically under-resourced schools and deep knowledge of

STEM content areas, this opportunity for mentorship gave students an extra layer of support to pursue STEM interests.

Over the course of the grant period, the K-PhD program hosted three “Lunch & Learn” sessions, serving four school sites. A total of 62 students attended these events, including 22 of the students who were receiving 1:1 mentoring. Students had the opportunity to speak with STEM industry leaders about their experiences, ask for advice and learn more about various industries. Of the speakers invited, 87% identified as women and 92% identified as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). Companies and organizations whose representatives talked to our students include the National Science Foundation, Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, Southern California Gas, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As our K-PhD program continues to grow, we are excited to develop new relationships and cultivate existing partnerships to offer our students more opportunities.

The work being done through K-PhD can also be seen in individual student stories.

Below are snapshots of K-PhD participants who have benefited from engaging in our programming:

Janet, 6th Grader

Janet logged the most class hours on Beast Academy, a rigorous math curriculum taught through an online, interactive platform that uses a comic book-style to teach math concepts. She was assessed for the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM) Discovery 2025 and received the highest math score at her school on the state-required Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) in SY 2023-24. She plans to pursue a PhD in Math.

Clemente, 11th Grader

Clemente spent over 75 hours in the STEM Enrichment program. He took a number of advanced placement classes, including AP Calculus. He competed in the Moon Base Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) competition and Math Field Day, where he placed first in both competitions. He also reached the final rounds for the MIT Camp. He plans to pursue a PhD in Engineering.

These students are just two of the many K-PhD participants who have been positively impacted by our programming. Thanks to the support of LA2050 and the Goldhirsh Foundation, we were able to continue the momentum of success of the K-PhD program and provide high-quality, necessary supports for students looking to pursue higher education and careers in STEM fields.

During the grant period, we accomplished the following goals:

• Goal 1 (Participation) During SY 2024-25, we had 371 students enrolled full-time in K-PhD across the Partnership, exceeding our goal by 71 students. We also established a 1:1 cohort mentoring program for students with the greatest abilities, led by our K-PhD Director. In SY 2025-26, we launched affiliate STEM clubs at our schools and added another Partnership school site to our list of participating schools. Affiliate clubs sparked a boost in interest in extracurricular STEM programs at 14 school sites. This initiative is on course to double the number of students to around 750 students directly served through our program in SY 2025-26.
• Goal 2 (1:1 Cohort) From October-May, 22 high school students across four school sites received 1:1 mentoring through our 1:1 Cohort initiative. Attendance at our 1:1 Cohort events far exceeded this number, reaching 62 students interested in advanced degrees in Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics. We conducted start-of-year surveys with 1:1 cohort members to have a baseline for progress monitoring.
• Goal 3 (Feedback) Students in the 1:1 cohort completed end-of-year surveys, as well as informal interviews to capture anecdotal experiences from their time in the program. They reported overwhelmingly positive feedback around our events narrowing the gap between classrooms and careers. Participants specifically noted that the Lunch & Learn series was highly beneficial.
• Goal 4 (Activities) In SY 2024-25, our elementary students completed over 500 Beast Academy hours – an advanced online learning platform for mathematics. In middle school, students completed industry-based engineering design challenges sponsored by AltaSea and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. At the high school level, students competed in MESA competitions at UCLA, some for the first time, and medaled 11 times across three school sites.
• Goal 5 (Data and Impact) Student club rosters are nearly finalized for clubs across our network. On November 1, 2025, student achievement data will be pulled for all students on our finalized rosters to begin an analysis of the program’s academic landscape and identify opportunities for strategic support and extensions. We are collaborating with the Partnership’s Data and Impact Team to add a “K-PhD” indicator to identify students in our programs. This will allow us to identify areas of impact and opportunities for growth and easily extrapolate data for our participating students when we execute quarterly data pulls.
• Goal 6 (Professional Learning and Observations) We retained 100% of our participating school sites from SY 2024-25 to SY 2025-26. Last year, K-PhD Teacher Leads completed five full-day professional-learning seminars, as well as quarterly observation-and-feedback cycles. Both the PL schedule and observation cycles are taking place in SY 2025-26. In September 2025, K-PhD Leads gathered for their first seminar, which provided PL around persistent problem-solving (Math) and low-barrier, high-rigor tech tasks (STEM); the Leads also began observation cycles in September and October.
• Goal 7 (Summer Institute) In August 2025, all K-PhD Teacher Leads gathered at the Partnership’s Summer Institute to gain insights into designing engaging, high-impact STEM enrichment programs for the 2025-26 school year. K-PhD activities launched throughout September and October and included the administration of start-of-year student surveys. At their December 2025 professional learning seminar, the K-PhD Leads will reconvene to learn from each other’s work and analyze student surveys to continue building student-centered programming.

Our 100% retention rate for participating schools, coupled with the positive feedback we received from K-PhD students, is encouraging to the Partnership. Students are also giving us feedback on how they would like to see the program grow in the future and how it can be improved to better address our scholars’ academic and social-emotional needs.

In addition, based on student feedback, we will refine and work to add new components to our available K-PhD programming. We are planning to continue the “Lunch & Learn” series with the goal of building bridges between classrooms and community. When students were asked how they would like to see the program grow, they asked for career shadow days and paid internships they could do throughout the summer. Students are craving hands-on experiences to learn about

the vast range of burgeoning STEM careers and build personal connections with people in those industries.

K-PhD continues to amplify a campus culture that encourages students to be curious about and engage with STEM activities, thereby increasing the demand for STEM learning. The program plays a key role in providing enrichment activities and curricula, along with culturally responsive supports, at high-need elementary and secondary schools—places that have historically offered few STEM opportunities to their scholars. By providing equitable access to crucial resources, K-PhD invests in Black and Latinx students of color to equip them for future success in the STEM pipeline.

The Partnership greatly appreciates LA2050 and the Goldhirsh Foundation for your support of the K-PhD program. We see K-PhD shining as a scalable model for empowering future Black and Brown STEM graduates and professionals, including PhDs. This grant has given us confidence in our ability to solidify new sources of funding for K-PhD to complement a multi-year grant from Carina Initiatives, whose funding helped us launch the program. We are excited to see how K-PhD grows and what our incredible students can accomplish with new opportunities.