Early Colleges A National Initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Coordinated by Jobs for the Future

Early Colleges

                      A National Initiative of the
                   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

                 Coordinated by Jobs for the Future

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in partnership with the Carnegie
Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg foundation, is launching
a major effort to create networks of Early Colleges—small high schools from
which students leave with a two-year Associate of Arts degree or sufficient
college credits to enter a four-year, liberal arts program as a sophomore or junior.
By changing the structure of the high school years and compressing the number
of years to the AA degree, Early College has the potential to improve high school
and college graduation rates and to better prepare students for entry into high-
skill careers.

Most states now have dual-enrollment programs in which students earn college
credits while in high school, and some community and four-year colleges
currently house high schools and encourage high school students to take college
courses. Such programs save time and money for families and taxpayers, and
they accelerate students into college-level work as soon as a young person is
intellectually ready. The new model draws on lessons learned from programs that
blur the lines between high school and college, as well as lessons from the many
small high schools created over the last decade and from several decades of
experience in strengthening access to and success in higher education for low-
income students and students of color.

While Early College may eventually be a choice for many students, these first
schools will focus on students for whom a smooth transition into postsecondary
education is now problematic—for example, students who are highly motivated
but unprepared for high school, students who are at risk of dropping out because
they find school boring, students whose family obligations keep them at home,
and students for whom the costs of college are prohibitive.

The Gates Foundation has asked Jobs for the Future to coordinate the Early
College Initiative and to support the participating networks and the initiative as a
whole. JFF is a national policy and research organization that seeks to
accelerate the educational and economic advancement of youth and adults
struggling in today’s economy.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                        Jobs for the Future

Expected Impact

The Gates Foundation’s Early College Initiative will result in a network of schools
and models that have the potential to influence education policy on a broad
scale. Early Colleges improve educational outcomes for young people by:

    •   Making college more affordable for disadvantaged students;

    •   Demonstrating that 14- to 18-year-old students can and should engage in
        serious intellectual work that leads to programs in both high technology
        and the liberal arts;

    •   Reducing the social and economic costs of dropping out and of
        remediation;

    •   Raising the rates of high school graduation and the completion of two-year
        and four-year college degrees;

    •   Creating shared standards between high school and college faculty; and,

    •   Providing a cost-effective strategy for states to increase the accessibility
        and capacity of their higher education systems.

Why Early College: The Problem

The high school years and the first two years of postsecondary education—
grades 9 through 14—constitute a developmental period that should launch
students toward further education and work, but too many young people fail to
make a successful transition to fulfilling adult work and lifelong learning. Within
the big impersonal schools that most U.S. students now attend, too many
students wander purposelessly along a path of least resistance and low
expectations. To these students, higher education is often out of reach. The gap
between high school exit standards and college work, the costs of college, and
the complexity of the admission process itself—all these factors work against
smooth transitions.

As a result, many students, especially low-income students and students of color,
drop out of high school. In the 18- to 24-year-old group, about 90 percent of white
students complete high school but only 81 percent of African Americans and 63
percent of Latinos. While three-fourths of high school graduates now go to
college, over half fail to complete a degree, and one-third never even see their
sophomore year. African Americans, who represent 16 percent of the 15- to18-
year-old population, earn only 10 percent of all Associate degrees. Hispanics,
who constitute 14 percent of the this population, earn only 7 percent of Associate
degrees. Upper-income students are seven times more likely than low-income
students to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24. This is not acceptable in the

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                    Jobs for the Future

knowledge economy—today, higher education, not a high school diploma, is a
ticket to the middle class.

Over the last decade, policymakers have sought to improve the high school-to-
postsecondary transition in a variety of ways: by beginning college awareness
and academic preparation as early as middle school, by setting higher standards
for high school graduation, and by ensuring that each student has an adult to
provide advice and guidance. In addition, there is now general agreement that
advancing to college should depend upon academic competence rather than the
mere accumulation of credit hours. Options to do college-level work while in high
school—for example, advanced placement courses and dual-enrollment
programs that allow students to take college courses while in high school—give
students a taste of college and aim to ensure that high school graduates have
knowledge and skills consistent with the academic demands of the first year of
college.

Yet even as these improvements take move forward, adolescents need a wider
array of educational options if we are to accelerate progress into postsecondary
education and high-skill careers. Among the most promising of these options is
the Early College.

Relation to the K-16 Reform Agenda

The Early College Initiative is a logical development in the education reform
movement that began with A Nation at Risk, the influential 1983 report of the
National Commission on Excellence in Education. Until the mid-1990s, state and
federal reform strategies (and dollars) targeted the early years of
schooling—particularly young people’s readiness for school and early literacy.
More recently, education reformers and funders have paid increasing attention to
high schools, seeing that gains in grades K-4 diminish as students move through
their school years. The many alternative, charter, and small high schools
springing up are positive outcomes of reform, as is the attention to providing
adolescents with challenging academic work. Indeed, there is substantial
evidence that challenge and acceleration may inspire many students—average,
low achieving, and gifted—to work hard and stretch themselves intellectually.

Nonetheless, the task of changing high schools is so daunting—especially in
large cities—that the goal of college entrance without remediation may be lost,
given the need to get students even to “basic” levels on the now almost
ubiquitous high school assessments. Early College acknowledges that success
in postsecondary education through at least the AA degree is now a necessity for
entry into careers with middle-class wages, and that the liberal arts and science
BA should be the goal of many more students. Early College makes the transition
to higher education more central to the reform agenda and asks postsecondary
education to engage in real world, on-the-ground work in schools that fully
integrate high school and the first two years of postsecondary education.

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                      Jobs for the Future

With about 400 students each, Early Colleges advance the high school reform
agenda in several ways:

    •   K-16 Pipeline: Some improvements in the transition to higher education
        have resulted from two decades of programs to prepare low-income youth
        and youth of color for college access and success (Upward Bound, for
        example) and more recent policy efforts to align high school exit standards
        and college entrance standards. Early College goes the next step and
        creates schools that abolish the physical transition between high school
        and college: students gain the AA degree within the same small school in
        which they do high school work.

    •   Dual-Enrollment/Acceleration for All Prepared Students: Many states and
        some school districts enable students to enroll simultaneously in high
        school and college courses and receive credit for both. Dual-enrollment
        programs save college dollars for families and taxpayers and reward
        students for meeting performance standards. For example, Minnesota,
        New York, and Washington, among other states, have extensive
        postsecondary-option programs. Utah students who attain the AA degree
        while still in high school receive a 75 percent reduction in state higher
        education tuition for their final two years of higher education. However,
        data from these programs suggest that the benefits are unevenly
        distributed: although many students see the advantages of acceleration,
        they are shut out of participation by the lack of rigorous high school
        curricula, the costs of transportation and books, and, in some states,
        substantial fees. Clearly, the accelerated advancement that Early College
        offers yields the greatest economic benefit—i.e., savings in the total cost
        of college—and the greatest educational benefit—i.e., the opportunity to
        try college work early—to students for whom college is least accessible.

    •   A New Way to Configure the American Education System: States now
        have standards specifying high school outcomes, with assessments
        usually implemented in the tenth grade to ensure that students have
        ample chance to pass by the twelfth grade. Students who are on track can
        achieve high school-exit level in the tenth grade. At the same time, college
        students largely begin a major in their junior year, and specialized
        education usually requires a master’s degree. Inadvertently, the standards
        movement has created a period between eleventh grade and the second
        year of college for which new institutions may be needed. Early Colleges
        are new institutions designed to serve the needs of late adolescents.

Partners in Implementing Early Colleges

Over five years, the Gates Foundation will sponsor the development of roughly
70 Early Colleges. Jobs for the Future will coordinate the group of seven
intermediaries sponsoring networks of schools.

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                      Jobs for the Future

Jobs for the Future

Jobs for the Future is dedicated to helping the nation’s young people and adults
acquire the skills needed to succeed in a complex, rapidly changing world. JFF
was launched in 1983 to achieve this goal by helping states revamp their
education and workforce systems to meet changing economic needs. In today’s
high-skill, technology-driven economy, innovative approaches to education and
workforce preparation are more important than ever, and at all levels: local, state,
and national. JFF identifies, develops, and advocates for systems that enable
individuals to acquire the skills they can use in pursuing education and family-
supporting employment throughout their lives. Jobs for the Future’s mission is
clear and challenging: to expand economic and educational opportunities for all,
and the organization has a special concern for young people and adults who lack
access to employment or the resources needed to build a rewarding career.

As the lead coordinator, convener, and policy advocate for the Early College
Initiative, Jobs for the Future will contribute in several ways to this $40+ million
effort to increase the number and impact of Early Colleges. Jobs for the Future
will examine key questions about what it takes to improve, launch, and expand
Early College models. It will also help inform educators and the public about the
value and need for this strategy for helping low-achieving young people succeed.
Most important, Jobs for the Future will bring together and assist the seven
networks that form the core of the initiative’s strategy for fostering the
development of 70 Early Colleges by 2007.

Web site: www.jff.org

Antioch University Seattle

Antioch University established its Seattle campus in 1975, and it
remains—deliberately—a small institution offering undergraduate liberal
education and graduate professional studies. Antioch has had a productive
decade of experience working with tribes in Washington State, especially in its
graduate and undergraduate education programs. Antioch has offered
reservation-based degree programs, written policy for Native language teachers,
developed the state’s first indigenous language endorsement, hosted Indian
Education Conferences, hired Native faculty and administrators, and established
a First Peoples Education Initiative.

Antioch University Seattle will work with tribal communities in Washington to
start-up, pilot, and transition eight Early Colleges serving students in grades 9-
14, with students receiving an Associates degree by grade 14. Six of the eight
schools will be redesigned from existing high schools and two will be new.
Schools will be year-around, thus helping meet the need to remediate after
summer break. The Initiative will include three types of school: two Bureau of
Indian Affairs schools; two public schools with a tribal focus and that serve Native

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                      Jobs for the Future

youth exclusively; and four public schools with diverse populations that include
high concentrations of Native students.

These schools will implement an Early College curriculum consisting of three
integrated strands: 1) a standards-based, basic education high school program;
2) the Associate of Arts transfer degree requirements of participating tribal and/or
community colleges; and 3) a local, culturally relevant emphasis. This curricular
focus emerges from research that attributes the underachievement and dropout
rates of Indian youth to the absence of Native-American curricula in K-12
education.

Web site: www.antiochsea.edu

KnowledgeWorks Foundation

KnowledgeWorks Foundation is Ohio’s largest public education philanthropy. It
provides funding and leadership for education initiatives throughout the state,
focused on removing barriers to quality education. The foundation is committed
to sharing knowledge gained and lessons learned with others in Ohio and across
the nation to help inform public policy. KnowledgeWorks Foundation is
headquartered in Cincinnati and currently holds more than $200 million in assets.

KnowledgeWorks will develop an Ohio-based network of five Early College high
schools, located in large urban as well as rural Appalachian school districts. The
goal is to develop new small high schools that genuinely engage
underrepresented populations in challenging academic work that transfers to
postsecondary degree or credit. Each new school will be a collaborative effort
between a public school district and an accredited higher education partner. The
objective is to use the network as a state-level action research laboratory to
better understand and refine school models that link secondary and
postsecondary educational systems.

To sustain innovation and to share the lessons learned, Early College network
schools will also be expected to send principals and lead faculty to the
Leadership Training Institute that has been created for the Ohio Urban School
Redesign project.

Web site: www.kwfdn.org

Middle College High School Consortium

The Middle College High School National Consortium, with the support of the
Pew Charitable Trust and the DeWitt Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, was
formalized in 1993. Committed to educational reform, it fosters cooperation
among member schools and disseminates information about the national Middle
College High School network. High school principals and college deans of
member schools (24 at present) convene to share ideas and concerns at least

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                                 Jobs for the Future

once a year. The consortium creates a forum for professional growth and
creative dialogue about effective education.

The consortium will design Early Colleges that will allow “at-risk” youth to follow
an accelerated path leading to a combined high school diploma and Associate’s
degree in five years. Plans are to start eight Early Colleges on community college
campuses across the country, as well as to redesign twelve existing middle
colleges. Based on the successful middle college model, all Early Colleges will
serve no more than 100 students per grade in a teaching environment that
stresses small learning communities and student-teacher interaction.

Web sites: www.mcconsortium.org, www.lagcc.cuny.edy/mchs

National Council of La Raza

The National Council of La Raza, established in 1968, is the largest constituency-
based national Hispanic organization in the United States and the leading
Hispanic advocacy organization. Its network reaches more than four million
people. Among NCLR’s top programmatic priorities is closing the educational
achievement gap for Latinos—specifically by dramatically improving high school
and college graduation rates.

Over the next five years, NCLR will create fourteen Early Colleges—eight new
schools and six redesigns—most, if not all, of which will be charter schools. Each
school will have a distinct educational vision and mission, often focusing on bi-or
multiliteracy, bi- or multiculturalism, the arts and humanities, technological
proficiency, and occupational, technical, and professional workforce preparation.
Students attending these schools will graduate with a high school diploma and a
two-year Associate degree or two academic years of credit toward a BA. All La
Raza Early Colleges will enroll large percentages of low-income Latino youth and
challenge them with a rigorous and accelerated academic program that bridges
the traditional gaps between high school and college. Schools will have longer
days and longer years than traditional public schools and offer a middle school
component that promotes Early College awareness.

Web site: www.nclr.org

SECME

SECME, Inc.,1 a premier pre-college alliance, was established in 1975 by
visionary engineering deans at seven Southeastern universities. At the heart of
the comprehensive SECME model is the partnership of K-12 and higher
education with ultimate employers and customers for cutting-edge technical
talent. Together they pursue a shared goal: improving the achievement of all

1
    SECME was formally called Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering.

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                         Jobs for the Future

students. Today SECME links 43 of the nation’s outstanding engineering
universities, 110 school systems (and more than 1,000 K-12 schools) in 17
states, the District of Columbia, and Grand Bahamas, and 70
corporate/government investors. Its mission is to increase the pool of historically
underrepresented, underserved, and differently abled students who will be
prepared to enter and complete postsecondary studies in science, mathematics,
engineering, and technology, thus creating a diverse and globally competitive
workforce.

From the beginning, SECME’s primary focus has been on transformational
change in K-12 education by building the capacity for more inquiry-based,
“hands-on, minds-on” approaches to teaching and learning. Beginning in the fall
of 2003, SECME will establish eight high schools of no more than 400 students
each. These schools will be located in SECME school districts and on or
adjacent to SECME member campuses, among them both historically black
colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions. Each new high school
will be identified by subject-matter themes that reflect rapidly advancing frontiers
of science, mathematics, engineering, or technology and equate to high-demand
career opportunities for graduates. Their designs will feature curricula rich in
intellectual challenge and excitement, coupled with academic partnerships that
contribute creative, innovative, and standard-setting learning experiences, make
optimum, productive, and focused use of time, and result in improved student
achievement and outcomes.

The ultimate goal is to enrich and enhance learning, accelerate progress,
increase productivity, build a better-prepared and more diverse workforce, and
create skill sets and a passion for lifelong learning and achievement that will
enable many more students to discover and develop their full potential and lead
to rewarding and fulfilling careers and lifestyles. SECME’s schools will target
students historically underrepresented in technical occupations and underserved
by traditional public schools.

Web site: www.secme.org

Utah Partnership Foundation

Formed in 1990, the Utah Partnership Foundation is a statewide collaboration
among business, education, and government to strengthen the state’s economy
through education, training, and research.

The Utah Partnership will act as the fiscal sponsor of the New Century High
Schools Initiative in Utah. Over five years, the Initiative will be instrumental in the
creation of six high-tech magnet schools that are state-authorized charter
schools. The Utah Partnership will take the lead in each inter-local agreement
between the college or university and the school districts involved in the charter.

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation                                       Jobs for the Future

New Century High Schools are structured around the premise that many
students have the interest, ability, and desire to move through the formal
schooling process much more quickly than is currently possible, and that they
can earn at least the equivalent of the first year of a college/university program at
the same time a high school diploma is awarded. With additional study during
any two summer semesters, students would graduate from high school with an
Associates of Arts or Science degree. Students who achieve an Associates
degree would be eligible for a New Century Scholarship awarded by the state,
which would provide them with a 75 percent tuition credit at a state university to
complete a Bachelor’s degree.

Web sites: www.utahsbr.edu/html/new_century.html,
www.utahpartnership.utah.org

Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Founded in 1945, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has
dedicated its energies and resources to improvement in educational
opportunities, to the support and encouragement of outstanding students, and to
the enrichment and development of teachers. The Foundation has a presence in
a variety of national organizations of universities and has sponsored additional
networks of graduate schools, undergraduate colleges, and high schools
dedicated to the improvement of teaching and to the creation of educational
programs that serve students throughout their intellectual and working lives.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will start nine Early
Colleges and redesign one existing program, based on the Bard Early College
High School model, which emphasizes the liberal arts. One of the great
achievements of the Bard effort is its rapid development from concept to reality in
only a few months. This achievement was made possible by the initiative and
commitment of Bard College and by the affiliation with Bard of Simon’s Rock, a
school that provided some experience with high school issues and curricula. It is
this combination of initiative and experience that the Foundation seeks to extend
into other sites.

This project will support the creation of Early College models that encourage
cooperation and integration between high school and college programs around a
liberal arts theme. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will
engage research universities and liberal arts institutions in this work. The “Early
College” model is intended to accelerate progress through the educational
system, to foster a high degree of intellectual involvement and excitement, and to
enable a student to make substantial headway through college material during
the traditional high school years, with students receiving two years of college
credit by the end of what is traditionally grade 12.

Web site: www.woodrow.org

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