Early College High School News

Welcome to EARLY COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL NEWS, a resource for practitioners and policymakers who plan, launch, operate, and wish to support and promote these pioneering new schools.

Early college high schools are small schools designed so that students can earn both a high school diploma and up to two years of credit toward a Bachelor’s degree. Early college high schools have the potential to improve graduation rates and better prepare students for entry into high-skilled careers by engaging all students in a rigorous, supportive college preparatory curriculum and compressing the number of years to a college degree.

Jobs for the Future publishes ECHS NEWS as part of its work as national organizer of the Early College High School Initiative. In four years, the initiative has started or redesigned over 125 schools that will serve, at capacity, 45,000 students in 23 states. Through the initiative’s continued efforts, the 13 partner organizations will ultimately open about 240 pioneering small high schools serving over 95,000 students.

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Creating and Sustaining Early College High Schools:
State Policies that Support 9-14 Education
Writing in the December issue of The State Education Standard, published by the National Association of State Boards of Education, JFF’s Joel Vargas discusses the secondary-postsecondary alignment issues that the Early College High School Initiative has brought into the spotlight. He makes the case for policy changes that not only support early college high schools but also can improve the transition of all students from high school through college. Other articles in this issue, which focuses on “Reforming America’s High Schools,” will be of interest to early college high school developers including, “Preparing All Young People for College, Work, and Citizenship,” by Stefanie Sanford; “High Standards and High Graduation Rates,” by Alissa Peltzmann and Craig Jerald; and “The Vital Role of State Policy in Education Reform,” by Scott Plamer, Amy Starzynski, and Jonathan Furr.

Click here for more information.

Click here to download Creating and Sustaining Early College High Schools.

The Early College High School Initiative: At a Glance
This two-page fact sheet provides an up-to-date profile of the initiative, with a map of schools, data on the number of schools and students, and other key information.

The Early College High School Initiative: By the Numbers
This report provides key data on the Early College High School Initiative as a whole, along with information on all schools currently open and opening by 2006.

Advance Notice >>> Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It.
Watch for this forthcoming book from Jobs for the Future and Harvard Education Press. High School Through College, which will be released during a national conference this fall, advocates for an integrated secondary/postsecondary system, one in which a post-high school credential is the default end point, and in which the transition between sectors is eliminated to the greatest extent possible.

Movement Gains Momentum
The number of early college high schools has been growing steadily since the initiative’s inception and is accelerating. In Tennessee, Governor Phil Bredesen wants to increase the number of such schools in order to improve student achievement and the state’s graduation rate. He sees early college high school as a way of providing more incentives for students to finish high school and attain a college degree at the same time. This idea is in its nascent stage in Tennessee, with definitive plans yet to be developed.

Rule Making for Federal Financial Aid
Cece Cunningham from the Middle College National Consortium served on a rule-making committee considering student eligibility for the new SMART (Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent) and ACG (Academic Competitiveness) grants. SMART grants are for college juniors/seniors that are studying specific technical fields; ACG grants are for freshmen/sophomores who complete a rigorous high school course of study and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average while in college. Under current regulations, early college high school students are ineligible for one year of grants because the U.S. Department of Education considers them as being previously enrolled in college. At the convening, negotiators articulated concerns that the current regulations penalize motivated students and proposed regulatory revisions to address the situation.

Pell Grants and Early College High School
Federal rules allow transfer students to get Pell Grants until they complete their Bachelor’s degree as long as they make “satisfactory” progress toward a degree—with satisfactory considered to be 150 percent of standard program time as defined by the institution. There had been some question about whether early college high school graduates entering Bachelor’s degree programs would be strictly limited to two years of financial aid funding.

Initiative Partner Newsletters
A number of newsletters published by the partners in the Early College High School Initiative regularly feature the schools they are launching across the country. Check out:

>> Fullfilling Promises (Middle College National Consortium)
>> Gateway to College Newsletter (Portland Community College)
>> Impact (Community Foundation of Texas)
>> InFocus (Foundation for California Community Colleges)
>> Innovator (New Schools Project)
>> KnowledgeNews eNews (KnowledgeWorks Foundation)
>> Woodrow Wilson InFocus (Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation)

Opportunity Knocks: UC Berkeley’s Public Charter
The cover story in the inaugural issue of Connected, published by the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education, highlights California College Preparatory Academy, an early college high school partnership of the university, Aspire Public Schools, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Grants for Early College High Schools
Two initiative partners, Portland Community College’s Gateway to College Initiative and the Foundation for California Community Colleges, have recently been awarded major grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue their work developing networks of early college high schools.

>> “PCC's Gateway to College Rewarded with Additional $3 Million from Gates Foundation”
>> “New Investment to Launch Early College Programs at Eight California High Schools”

In Ohio, Dayton Power and Light Co. Foundation has donated $50,000 to the University of Dayton to support the Dayton Early College Academy. DECA is a Dayton Public Schools high school developed in partnership with the university’s School of Education and Allied Professions and located on its campus.

Champions for Change
KnowledgeWorks Foundation enlists “champions of change” from every area of society—engaging policymakers, business leaders, and others in helping improve Ohio’s public schools. The KnowledgeWorks Web site features a number of champions of change and invites others to become champions by filling out a brief online form to show their interest in helping.

CBS Evening News: Making the Grade
Watch this video featuring early college high schools in North Carolina, part of a statewide solution to raise graduation rates. This CBS segment originally aired on December 28. For a related online story from CBS, see “Will High Schools Be a Relic of the Past?”

Dropout Policies
Dropout policies are the focus of the latest National Governors Association Honor States Newsletter, which includes news from the Early College High School Initiative.

Addressing America’s Dropout Challenge:
State Efforts to Boost Graduation Rates Require Federal Support
This report, from JFF and the Center for American Progress, delineates the vital role that Congress can play in closing the high school graduation gap. It calls upon Congress to enact the Graduation Promise Act of 2007. This act would: establish a federal commitment to partner with states, districts, and schools to raise graduation rates; seed and scale up effective policies, strategies, and school designs for keeping high school-aged students in school and achieving at a high level of academic performance; and immediately put proven strategies to use in the worst-performing high schools.

America's Perfect Storm:
Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future
This Educational Testing Service report looks at the convergence of three powerful sociological and economical forces that are changing the nation’s future: substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math), seismic economic changes (widening wage gaps), and sweeping demographic shifts (less education, lower skills).

Funding Gaps 2006
School finance policy choices at the federal, state, and district levels systematically stack the deck against students who need the most support from their schools, according to this report from the Education Trust. The report builds on the Education Trust’s annual studies of funding gaps among school districts within states.

Relationships, Respect, and Revitalizations:
A Guide for Native American Education and Philanthropy
Last year, Grantmakers for Education brought together funders, American Indian educators, directors of innovative native educational programs, and scholars to discuss cultural and educational issues in Indian country and appropriate strategies for grantmaking. This report, a summary of key findings from the briefing, provides an overview of contemporary topics in native education, as well as a clear set of strategies grantmakers can employ to make policy and funding decisions. The report was prepared by Nicole Adams, new director at the Center for Native Education at Antioch University Seattle.

Resources for First-Time College-Goers
What Kids Can Do/Next Generation Press has new resources to help young people get the information and support they need to prepare for and succeed in college. First in the Family resources include two books, a DVD, and a Web site.

Foundations and School Reform: Bridging the Cultural Divide
In this book chapter, JFF’s Nancy Hoffman and Robert Schwartz of the Harvard Graduate School of Education examine the relatively new role that intermediary organizations play in mediating between foundations and local school districts and schools. The chapter uses two case examples: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-supported Early College High School Initiative and the Pew Network for Standards-Based Reform, supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The chapter appears in Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital, edited by Ray Bacchetti and Thomas Ehrlich.

The New Math: Is 7-12 a Better Formula for Urban Schools?
K-8 schools have become popular, but Rochester, NY, opted to put middle and high schools together instead. A wholesale reconfiguration of the city’s schools created a system in which most students will attend grade 7-12 schools.

Listed here are recent highlights from among the many articles about early college high schools appearing in the media in the past two months.

Ferndale High Students Find Advocates: Grants Pay 3 People to Help Kids Pass Washington Assessment of Student Learning
Bellingham [WA] Herald, February 12, 2007
“Peter Kaynor keeps fortune cookies in his Ferndale High School office to help students stay on track. . . . As family coordinator for the school’s Early College Program—an intensive academic program for American Indian, Hispanic and low-income students who would often be first in their family to go to college—it’s Kaynor’s job to help keep families up to date on how students are doing.”

Program Helps Young Women “Become” What They Want: BecomeX Offers a Different Path for Students Who Want to Grow, Conquer Challenges
The Beaverton Valley [OR] Times, February 8, 2007
“Melissa Rico vividly recalls attending last spring’s graduation ceremony for the BecomeX program. . . . ‘At that point, my self-confidence and self-esteem was really low because I wasn’t graduating from high school,’ said Rico, who also is enrolled in the Beaverton School District’s Early College High School at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek Campus.”

Congress Should Help Students Get Through College
Modesto [CA] Bee, February 4, 2007
Opinion piece by the president of California State University, Stanislaus: “Last month, the House of Representatives, under the leadership of the Democrats, approved legislation to cut student loan interest rates by half over a five-year period. . . . Why not provide funds for early college high school programs?”

Educated Work Force Vital to State's Future Economic Prosperity
Midland [TX] Reporter Telegram, February 3, 2007
“The importance of education beyond the high school level is becoming more and more apparent, and thousands of young people across Texas and the nation are anxiously awaiting news of their applications to various colleges and universities.”

Early College High School Set with Judson District
[Alamo Community College District] Ranger, February 2, 2007
“Board members of Judson School District and Beth Lewis, vice president of Northeast Lakeview College, traveled to Challenge High School in Houston earlier this month to observe how better to undertake the opening of Alamo Community College District's Early College partnership with the school.”

Students Digging into Back Bay Restoration
[Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, CA] Daily Pilot, January 28, 2007
“Candace Leuthold's students aren't just learning about the environment this year. They're also doing their part to save it. Every month, the Early College High School biology teacher leads her ninth-graders to a restoration site on the Back Bay, just blocks away from the campus.”

National Governors Association Visits GCSU Early College
WMGT-TV News, January 26, 2007
“Today visitors from states involved in the National Governors Association Honor States Program—particularly lawmakers from Delaware, Virginia, Maine and Michigan—were among 55 state policy leaders visiting Georgia College.”

Carver High Students Begin College Early
The [Atlanta] Story Group, January 26, 2007
“While many students are focused on taking the SAT, maintaining their grade point averages and working on obtaining recommendation writers for college applications, students at Carver High School in south Atlanta have already begun their studies at Georgia State University through a collaborative program between the Board of Regents, Atlanta Public Schools, and Georgia State University.”

Hart District's Early College High School Shaping Up
[Santa Clarita Valley, CA] Signal, January 21, 2007
“The first early college high school in the Hart district is taking shape, and its purpose, mission and setting has become less of a hypothetical and more of a near-future reality, according to a demonstration given at a board meeting Wednesday night.”

A Shot at a Diploma and College Credits
The [Raleigh] News & Observer, January 17, 2007
“Pablo Soto wants to be the first person in his family to go to college. Pablo's college ambitions are financially daunting for someone whose father works as a laborer and whose mom stays home to raise his younger siblings.”

Degrees Within Reach:
Early College High Schools Recruiting Next Freshman Classes
Wilmington [NC] Star-News, January 17, 2007
“For Karina Hernandez, the choice was pretty clear: Go to high school and graduate with little chance or opportunity to attend college, or go to the new Pender Early College High School and graduate in five years with a high school diploma and an associate degree, well on her way to achieving her dream of becoming a lawyer.”

Davie Panel to Get Plan:
Schools to Ask for $583,201 for Early College Program
Winston-Salem [NC] Journal, January 16, 2007
“Davie County students who are in the ninth grade could get a chance to graduate in four or five years with a high-school diploma and an associate degree from Davidson County Community College under a program that officials with Davie County Schools are proposing.”

Teen Blazes Path in the Sky
Greensboro [NC] News-Record, January 13, 2007
“Most 16-year-old boys are focused on getting their driver's license, but not R.J. Gritter. . . . Gritter, a 10th-grader at the Early College at Guilford Technical Community College, is shooting higher, literally.”

College Possible in High School
WXIA-TV News (Atlanta), January 12, 2007
“The nationwide movement to overhaul the nation's high schools is taking hold in Georgia.”

Bryan Schools Get $360,000 Grant
The Bryan-College Station Eagle, January 12, 2007
“The Bryan school district has received a $360,000 grant from the Texas Education Agency to fund an early College High School.”

Jobs for the Future, the national organizer for the Early College High School Initiative, prepares ECHS NEWS to link you to useful resources as you plan, launch, and operate early college high schools.

To add your name to the distribution list, simply send a note to Eliot Yaffa, eyaffa@jff.org.

Everyone receiving ECHS NEWS also receives NEWSWIRE, JFF’s electronic newsletter about our efforts to create successful transitions for youth and build economic opportunity for adults. If you don’t currently receive NEWSWIRE, please email info@jff.org. Put “subscribe to NEWSWIRE” in the subject line.