Early college schools are partnerships between public secondary schools and higher education institutions. These small schools are designed so that students accumulate high school and college credit simultaneously. Going beyond typical dual enrollment programs, the early college curriculum is a coherent unit, with high school and college-level work blended into a single academic program that positions students to leave high school with one to two years of college credit. This initiative funded by conventional revenues but augmented by numerous foundations aims at breakthroughs with youth underrepresented in college enrollments.

A stunning example of using almost every progressive reform idea is that of the Empowering Students program of the Georgia state colleges. It begins in the 7th grade with schools on college campuses, uses students as resources, involves community volunteers, integrates curriculum and impressively raises student aspirations.

This astonishing movement is a striking example of an institutional bypass! A major initiative is coordinated by the Early College High School program of Jobs for the Future. There are others as has been noted on this weblog earlier.

Their book, Minding the Gap details how strong academics, financing and support can sustain an integrated secondary-postsecondary program. The Early College High School Initiative website coordinated by Jobs for the Future offers resources and an eight minute explanatory videotape on the web.

Empowering Students: How Georgia College Early College Changes Student Aspirations (2008) gives an update on a succesful program beginning with seventh graders. This 10 page report highlights the program’s critical features.

While a variety of programs serve at-risk students, other programs include independent study, magnet schools, middle colleges and alternative schools of choice. For some of these schools, the Superintendent of Public Education can waive any provision of the California education code except those for health and safety.

Much of this astonishing array of programs arose from a comprehensive report by the California Commission for Reform of Intermediate and Secondary Education (RISE Commission, 1975).

Among the goals of alternative schools and programs of choice, as stated in Education Code Section 58500, are the following:

-Maximize the opportunity for students to develop the positive values of self-reliance, initiative, kindness, spontaneity, resourcefulness, courage, creativity, responsibility, and joy.

-Recognize that the best learning takes place when the student learns because of his or her desire to learn.

-Maintain a learning situation in which maximum use is made of student self-motivation and in which students are encouraged to use their own time to follow their own interests. These interests may be conceived totally and independently by the student, or as a result of a presentation by the student’s teacher(s) of choice.

Strategy: Devise new institutional forms for secondary education: “Early college” high schools, small high schools, schools-within-schools, charter schools, “KIPP” high schools, virtual high schools. Much has been said and done on this front, and the innovations take many shapes, as do the choice schemes whereby young people and their parents can access the version that works best for them.

Problem definition: The circa-1950s, one-size-fits-all, “comprehensive high school” is dysfunctional and off-putting for many, besides being an inefficient, out-moded vehicle for teaching them what they need to learn.

Theory of action: Create new options for delivering and receiving secondary education, using technology, modern organizational theory, out-sourcing and the like, then give young people choices.