Seventy percent of King County’s low-income students live in South Seattle and South King County, and 58 percent are students of color and 69 percent English Language Learners.

These statistics are the impetus behind a new project focused on education that seeks to close the achievement gaps in the area serving these 55,000 low-income students.

It’s called The Road Map Project for Education Results. It is a partnership supported by many people and organizations. Those supporters include King County Executive Dow Constantine, all seven school district superintendents, Auburn Mayor Peter Lewis, Kent Mayor Suzette Cooke, Renton Mayor Denis Law and Tukwila Mayor Jim Haggerton and all four community college presidents. Their goal is to double the number of students in South King County and South Seattle who are on track to graduate from college or earn a career credential by 2020.

“I believe very strongly that we have to improve education; I also believe, though, that if we don’t change the way we’re doing business right now that we’re going to leave a whole generation of kids behind,” said Mary Jean Ryan.

Ryan is leading the charge as the executive director of the Community Center for Education Results, the creator of the Road Map Project.

She serves on the Washington Board of Education and has held various positions within the City of Seattle and in the Clinton Administration as the associate deputy administrator for economic development for the U.S. Small Business Administration.

She explained the details of the 10-year regional project in an unveiling at the Seattle Foundation offices on Wednesday. Participants in the project were to launch a kick-off for the project today (Thursday) at the Westin Hotel in Seattle with mayors, community officials and education experts attending.

Ryan said the project is not an indictment of current school district administrators and teachers.

“If there is an indictment, it is a broad one that we all have to shoulder,” she said.

Nor is it intended to create a new stand-alone program but rather bring together allies and build community partnership. Their aim is to get dramatic improvement in education results from early learning through getting a college credential to career with the help of a broad base of stakeholders in South Seattle and South King County, Ryan said.

CCER is made up of four full-time staffers and includes Ryan. They started last January collecting data.

For proficiency in third-grade reading for 2010, low-income students in Auburn showed 68 percent proficiency compared to 83 percent of the non-low-income students. For Kent it was 52 percent low income versus 79 percent non-low income and for Renton is was 59 percent low income versus 85 percent non-low income. Tukwila’s achievement gap showed low-income students at 49 percent efficiency compared to 77 percent of their non-low income counterparts.

This is just one of the indicators the group measured.

So what will the project look like? The following projects will launch on Thursday.

The area’s superintendents and community college presidents will join forces to develop an agenda for 2011 and beyond. They hope to reduce the need for recent high school graduates to take extensive remedial courses.

Modeled after the successful Harlem Children’s Zone, one aspect of the project seeks to focus attention to zones or neighborhoods where student achievement is particularly poor. One example is Building Better Futures project in the East Hill neighborhood of Kent, led by the King County Housing Authority and a group of committed partner agencies.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, has endorsed the Road Map Project and will align the Families and Education Levy proposal and the city budget for youth services with the project on Thursday.

Literature from the group says that education reform advocates who share the “cradle to college/career” outlook will be kicking into high gear calling on leaders to “scale up what works and to stop doing what does not.”

The groups Powerful Schools, Seattle Jobs Initiative and Community Schools Collaboration will use the Road Map to focus their work on high impact interventions and to more effectively partner for better results. And, the College Success Foundation will commit to expand into South King County to help students prepare for college.

CCER will also track what programs they find aren’t working and will share this information with the public.