Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 4 | Alternative Pathways to College, page 3 (low bandwidth)

“How do you teach kids to be autonomous if they’re not given any freedoms?” asks Listhaus. “We have an open campus because we want to teach kids to be responsible, to handle their time and make those decisions.”

Like Alex Panesso, almost every student initially “messes up” but then realizes his or her error. “At first, I did take advantage of how they treat you like an adult,” admits Nurys Benzant, an 18-year-old junior from Queens. “That’s why I’m a junior. I was supposed to be a senior. …Now I’m grateful they did teach me responsibility.” Benzant plans to get a B.A. in education and teach literature and writing.

Pedagogy also reflects respect for students’ minds. “The teachers want you to know what and why you’re doing something rather than just saying, ‘Do this,’” explains senior Valerie Fernandez, 17, who wants to study computer graphics at a four-year college. Instead of simply memorizing geometry formulas, for example, students derive them.

Now MCHS is ratcheting up expectations by piloting its Middle College-Early College (MCEC) High School program with 17 students. Community college courses have always been optional for 11th and 12th graders, but MCEC students, who will graduate with an AA degree, must take 12 quarterly courses at LaGuardia Community College during those years and one each summer, as well as a full load of college classes during an extra “13th grade” year.

They also attend a 70-minute seminar four times a week where MCHS teacher David Grodsky coaches students through their college courses. That means everything from giving them vouchers to buy books and helping them understand their assignments, to working with their college instructor when necessary. For example, when MCEC students told Grodsky agitatedly that they had to role-play joining a gang, he explained to their Theater as Communication instructor that the issue was still too raw for them.

But his biggest task, says Grodsky, is nudging students toward the maturity demanded by college culture. They have to be self-starters, prepared and on time, and adjust to lectures and tests rather than projects, he says. Furthermore, college professors are less personal and flexible than MCHS teachers.

“Here, teachers have kind of mothered and fathered them through by being friendly and funny and getting to know them as individuals,” explains Grodsky, a 34-year-old Princeton graduate. “College professors are nice enough people, but a little less interested in running a student-centered classroom.”

Other Gates partner organizations are designing Early College High Schools along distinctly different lines. Some examples:

In Washington State, eight early colleges will integrate Native American culture into their programs. Antioch University of Seattle is redesigning six high schools and launching two others for students in grades 9-14.

All students will graduate with college credits, some with an AA degree. Curriculum at the new, year-round program will include native literature and arts and possibly courses in the Lummi, Salish and Lushotseed native languages. The project aims to shift expectations for Native Americans away from remediation and toward rig-orous academics.
Students in Portland Community College’s College Bound program in Oregon are high school dropouts who enter with an average 1.89 GPA, but leave with both a high school diploma and enough college credits to take them through freshman year. Twenty-two percent graduate with an AA degree. The Early College High School initiative will give Portland Community College $4.85 million to replicate its 400-student College Bound program at eight community colleges nationwide over the next five years.
Faculty from nearby universities will teach university-level math and science courses at six math and science charter schools created by the Utah Partnership for Education and Economic Development and the state governor’s office.

Unlike many other early college high schools, these “New Century High Schools” will emphasize traditional “direct instruction” integrated with a lesser amount of project-based learning, says Rich Kendell, deputy to Utah Governor Mike O. Leavitt and project director for the Utah New Century High Schools. Forty-eight local high tech firms have already agreed to provide help ranging from curriculum advice and teaching to sponsoring summer school and providing internships.

Utah has a state program that pays up to 75 percent of state university tuition for students who have earned an AA degree by the September following high school graduation. The
Utah Partnership for Education and Economic Development is working to extend it to students who complete the new charter schools’ university-level math and science core.
Emphasizing the liberal arts and links to major research universities and colleges, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will redesign one school and create nine others based on the model of Bard High School Early College (BHSEC), a two-year-old New York City public school. Eleventh and 12th graders at BHSEC take four Great Books/critical reading and writing seminars, and college-level courses in subjects such as philosophy and math, many taught by Ph.Ds. They graduate with an AA degree.

While BHSEC students are chosen chiefly for their motivation—dean of studies Pat Sharpe says the school wants students “who thirst for ideas”—the Woodrow Wilson schools will target “disadvantaged students, largely minority urban poor,” says Anthony W. Marx, former director of the Woodrow Wilson Early College High School Initiative who took over the presidency of Amherst College in July 2003.

Four-year liberal arts colleges and universities including CUNY-Hunter, Brooklyn College and California State University, Los Angeles are helping the Woodrow Wilson schools develop curriculum and select teachers. The aim is to broaden the reach of liberal arts training. “Given the future of the global economic division of labor, the U.S. economy is going to be increasingly requiring critical thinking, which is the mainstay of the liberal arts,” says Marx.

Creating a College-Bound Culture
For some students, getting to college depends on having more time to finish high school. Twenty-eight-year-old Lisa Dormevil is one such student. Growing up in foster homes—her mother spent 27 years as a drug addict—Dormevil left high school in 10th grade. Pregnant and accompanied by her one-year-old son, she moved from Virginia to New Jersey in 1991, sleeping some nights in cardboard boxes, begging passersby for change. In 2003, Dormevil graduated from the Daylight/Twilight High School, a three-year-old public school in Trenton for students 16 and older who want to finish high school.

Open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Daylight/Twilight offers a largely remedial curriculum. Its flexible schedule allowed Dormevil—who now has four children and works as a cook at Pizza Hut—to attend two days a week from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. Serving 3,000 students, of whom 80 percent are African-American, at its main campus and six satellites, the school offers no frills, except a prom. Most students try the high school several times before staying. “Our students are older, better-focused and directed. They want to patch a big hole that’s been missing in their lives,” says principal Bill Tracy.

Next page: “Given the future of the global economic division of labor, the U.S. economy is going to
be increasingly requiring critical thinking.” —Anthony W. Marx, president, Amherst College

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