In 3rd grade, William was assigned to a special education resource room, but by the end of his third year of high school he had completed College English 101 and 102 at California State University. By his fourth year of high school, he had already been accepted at the University of California, Riverside, a number of other Cal State campuses, and several private colleges. He hoped to earn a degree in communications and electrical engineering so that he could lead a team of colleagues to "design you something that is going to be revolutionary."
This young man was not the exception in his high school of underprepared students, but a member of a cohort of students who moved steadily toward college entrance with college credits under their belts. His story is emblematic of the many successes of early college programs.
Among those concerned with high school reform, early college is emerging as an effective strategy for improving the outcomes for high school students. Early college schools are demonstrating the truth of the original premise underlying the Early College High Schools Initiative launched by several private foundations and nonprofit associations in 2002. Challenge, not remediation, coupled with substantial supports and free college courses in high school, can result in college success for students underrepresented in higher education.
Our demographic and achievement data show that early colleges are succeeding with low-income and first-generation students entering high school from weak education backgrounds. A number of the nearly 208 schools in the Early College High School Initiative are doing especially well in preparing black and Latino young men for college success, graduating them and sending them on to college with good grades, self-confidence, and the will to succeed.
We have found that during the 2008–09 school year, Latino males enrolled in early college schools accumulated an average of 17.7 college credits and earned a 2.96 grade point average (GPA) for the college-level courses they took. This compared very favorably with the overall average for all groups attending early college schools of 17.3 college credits earned and a GPA of 2.9 in their college courses. Black males collectively earned an average of 17 college credits and a 2.64 GPA in their college courses. The young black student described at the beginning of the article is a case in point.
What is going on here? Why would students considered particularly vulnerable to school failure—black and Latino males—respond so well to academic challenge?
Getting on the "Smart Track"
Early college schools put young people on what used to be called the smart kids' track—the track in which you skip grades rather than repeat them. Early college students accumulate more college credits during their high school years than most suburban students gain in advanced placement credits.
Approximately 42,000 young people in 24 states are getting a serious college-preparatory education through early college programs. Several states are building statewide initiatives in which versions of early college make up a major pillar of their high school reform strategy. North Carolina has 71 such schools on community and four-year college campuses, with more in the pipeline. Texas, which has 42 early colleges, is extending a modified version of the model to its regular district high schools.
In the usual model, early colleges are small schools, with 100 students or fewer enrolled in each grade to ensure individualized support. Although all early college schools are designed so that students can earn both a high school diploma and up to two years of transferable college credit (or an associate's degree), specific structures vary. Eighty-four percent of early college schools are stand-alone high schools. The others are small learning communities or academies within an existing school.
More than half of early colleges are located on a college or university campus, with most of the remaining schools providing transportation to and from such a campus so that students can take college classes. Several are located far from their college partner and offer college courses at the high school site or use distance learning and weekend or summer programs to provide the college component.
Early colleges use a variety of criteria to select students, including lottery or membership in a group that is traditionally underrepresented in higher education. As high school freshmen and sophomores, early college students experience comprehensive academic and social supports to help them succeed in a challenging course of study that may include college courses. During the junior and senior years, students' college course-taking is accelerated.
If you ask early college students about themselves, as we did recently in a visit to rural North Carolina, they define themselves not as geniuses— although sometimes the neighborhood kids say that about them—but as average young people with dreams and plans to be filmmakers, scientists, nurses, youth advocates, lawyers, and the like. What sets them apart is their confidence that they can do college-level work and make those dreams a reality. They wear their college credits like scout badges of success. The North Carolina students enthusiastically reeled off for us the names of college courses they had passed: math, animal physiology, Psych 101, African-American studies. One student simply stated proudly, "I've got 20 credits, and I'm only a junior."
These students certainly love being out of their high school and mingling with college students. Indeed, we hear over and over about the thrill of blending into a college class so well that neither the professor nor their classmates ever find out that they are really high school students. The stakes are very high—and the experience is risky in a good way for a teenager.
Striving for Equity
The Early College High School Initiative has had a strong equity agenda from the start and a big stretch goal: not only to improve high school graduation rates but also to get young people through a postsecondary credential. The partner organizations that started the initiative have held themselves to a set of five core principles, the first of which concerns recruiting students "at risk of dropping out of high school, not matriculating to college, and not completing a degree (that is, students with poor attendance, struggling learners, students who are overage and under-credited)."
Sometimes achieving this equity goal means refusing to admit students who are already well on their way to academic success. For example, Georgia College and State University, that state's public liberal arts institution, hosts an early college in its school of education where "underpreparedness" is an entrance criterion. It admits students in the 7th grade who fell within the 25th to 45th percentiles on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in 6th grade. The school gives these students the support they need, along with very rigorous academics. The result: This population, which is 95 percent low-income and 99 percent first-generation college goers, is outperforming the district average substantially within a year of entering early college.
Investing in Students
Early colleges have three different designs: grade 6–12 schools that incorporate two years of college by the time a student completes a high school diploma, four-year schools that incorporate up to two years of college credits by the end of 12th grade, and five-year programs that start in 9th grade and incorporate an additional year to enable students to take a full load of college courses in order to complete an associate's degree.
All such options provide students with academic challenges beyond what traditional high schools offer. All introduce students to college-level academic expectations and seek to help students make a seamless transition to post-secondary education. Formal assessments identify gaps in students' cognitive and noncognitive skills and the attributes required for success in college.
The small size makes it possible for early college schools to program regular time for one-on-one counseling and advisement. Summer bridge programs offer academic and cultural induction to a college-preparatory program. Soon after students begin 9th grade, a number of early college schools introduce students to such college-readiness programs as AVID, which emphasizes learning how to learn—how to take good notes, how to organize time, and how to study effectively. Early colleges also offer college success courses that stress the importance of taking advantage of professors' office hours or studying in groups. In advisories, study groups, and regularly scheduled tutoring and mentoring sessions, students receive formal help and progress monitoring.
The academic rigor, individualized support, committed staff, and unusual opportunity to get as much as two years of college completed free while still in high school appears to motivate students to work hard. The schools send a subtle signal that educators believe so strongly in young people's need to attain a postsecondary credential that they are willing to invest money in their success. And the students learn that success is possible. A young Latina student who was heading to the University of California, Davis, after having completed college courses in economics, chemistry, philosophy, history, and English said of her upcoming transition, "I'm a little scared [but] I did this already. … Yeah, it's no big deal."
What Makes It Work?
For the last five years, Jobs for the Future has commissioned a research team to follow students in two schools—one in Ohio with a majority black student body and the other a heavily Latino school in California. We have also been collecting data on individual high school achievement and postsecondary enrollment patterns among graduates of early college programs.
We know more at this point aboutwhat the students accomplished thanwhy the model works, but we have come to several tentative conclusions about what "goes right" for students, especially young men of color, in early colleges. As more data become available, we will back up these preliminary findings with more rigorous studies.
The Power of Place
According to educators and students in early college schools, the results can be attributed in part to what we call the "power of place." In the 2007–08 school year, early colleges averaged five college courses per student. Students benefit from becoming a part of the college community, not only because of the opportunity to conquer the academic challenge but also because of the window college opens to a diverse world filled with possibilities they may not have imagined.
Eighty-five percent of early colleges offer at least some courses on a two- or four-year college campus. Students who take classes at a college site achieve a higher percentage of college credits earned versus credits attempted than early college students who do not study on a college campus. Of the 11 percent of early college graduates who also earned an associate's degree, all took most of their college classes on a college campus.
The campus experience is especially powerful for first-generation students. They interact with college professors in multigenerational classrooms where they learn about the good (and bad) choices their classmates have made. They attend guest lectures, and they use college writing and math centers, the library, and athletic facilities. They accept with pride the responsibility that comes with freedom from the high school building. (The college cafeteria is a big favorite, but so are such activities as performing in college theatre productions, as students in an arts-themed early college linked to San Diego City College have done.)
A black male student who was admitted, associate's degree in hand, to several competitive universities said this of his experience in early college:
For what we missed, like "the high school experience"—because this is not a typical high school—we gained in life experience. We're probably much more mature than most high school students. And we know where we're headed. Since we went to college classes early, we know that we can really work now. And I don't think when we go to college it will be too difficult for us.
The Power of Support
In addition to the power of place, early colleges offer the strong academic and personal supports necessary to help students from low-income families and students who lack strong academic skills. More than a third of early college schools have adopted an extended-day schedule, often including weekends, summers, and breaks. Eighty-five percent of early colleges provide formal tutoring programs, and many offer College 101 or critical-thinking courses that teach metacognitive skills.
One school in New York City offers a course on the brain that is very popular with 7th graders. Students at this school also get to read a novel with students in a junior-level college course called the Fiction of the Civil War; the 7th graders discuss the book with the college students for several class periods during the semester.
The strongest of the schools embed academic support within the core curriculum. It is not an add-on. One innovative example is what early colleges have come to call "stretch courses"—a one-semester college course taught over a year so that students learn in greater depth and at a slower pace. In some cases, college professors and high school teachers coteach, not only benefiting the students with whom they work, but also providing a nice check on the alignment of high school and college curriculum and expectations.
Surmounting the Challenges
So if early college is so effective, why aren't more schools starting such programs? What are the challenges to starting and supporting a program?
First, funding can be a barrier. The target student population must be able to take college courses for free, which requires a large outlay of money. Some states have funded early colleges through dual-enrollment appropriations, but modifications or waivers for some provisions have been required in a number of cases. Both North Carolina and Texas have intermediary organizations— public/private partnerships that create an "innovation space" and provide ongoing support to new schools, putting some distance between the schools and the state bureaucracy.
Second, state and district high school credit requirements can limit the possibilities. For early college to work, students must be allowed to replace high school courses with college courses.
Regarding the schools themselves, experience has taught us the value of several conditions for early colleges. Autonomy is important, especially in the design of academic programs; but such autonomy is more of a challenge for a school within a larger school, as opposed to a stand-alone early college. Schools need flexible scheduling to align with the college schedule, a dedicated budget, discretion over hiring staff, and permission to disaggregate data for early college students from the overall school if the school is within a larger building.
Sixty percent of early college schools opened as brand-new schools—and these were the most successful. Nearly 20 percent were "conversion schools"— existing schools that became early colleges. These schools faced the added challenge of creating a wall-to-wall culture of college going, which hadn't existed previously.
In all instances, a memorandum of agreement should stipulate the roles and responsibilities of each participating entity: school, school district, and postsecondary partner. This includes, among other things, details about curriculum and instruction; student supports provided by each partner; the use of facilities; and how tuition, fees, and textbooks will be paid for.
Perhaps the most important factor in starting and supporting an early college high school is the belief system of the leaders. They must believe that every student will develop an identity as a college goer from day one, and they must act on this belief not by exhortation but by preparing students to enter and pass college courses.
Establishing a New Culture
The researchers who are following the two schools noted that students who completed college courses over the summer got a major confidence boost that transformed the school culture:
In them we could see a shift from hope that they could succeed in college to a belief that they could do so. … The shift from hope to belief seemed to extend beyond the students who succeeded in their first dose of real college coursework. Their peers benefited by association. Many strong students who did not enroll in the summer courses still discussed their peers' experiences in the interviews. They talked about [how the school] was preparing its students to succeed in college, and used their classmates' success experiences as evidence.
This is what creating a college-going culture is all about.
