Early College program gets millions to expand

The distance between high school and college at Tulalip Heritage School is a few dozen feet, a minute's walk from one of the school's roughly half-dozen portable classrooms to another.

The educational journey is much longer. Most students at this school on the Tulalip Indian Reservation don't earn a high-school diploma. So it seems an unlikely place to add college courses.

But the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks it's the kind of school where students would benefit from more-challenging courses. The foundation believes mixing high school and college is one way to help raise graduation and college-attendance rates, especially among low-income and minority youths.

Yesterday, the foundation announced it will give eight organizations $30 million to open 45 more Early College High Schools across the nation, adding to about 120 already open or in development.

The grants include $6.1 million to Antioch University, which used an earlier $3.3 million grant to bring college classes to Tulalip Heritage and help open seven other Early College High Schools in this state, all serving mostly Native Americans.

The new grant will allow Antioch to start work on 10 more schools in five to eight other states.

Two other grant recipients also are looking at Washington as a possible site for new schools — the Middle College National Consortium, a network of high-school programs on community-college campuses, and the Portland Community College Gateway to College program, which works with students who have dropped out of high school or are close to doing so.

In total, the Gates Foundation has devoted about $114 million to support Early College High Schools.

Affluent students have long been able to earn college credits in high school, especially through Advanced Placement courses, Tom Vander Ark, education director at the Gates Foundation, said during a news briefing yesterday.

"This initiative seeks to provide that same benefit to students with limited incomes in a highly supportive environment," he said.

There now are about 50 Early College High Schools in 19 states. By 2008, there could be more than 170.

In Washington state, the other Early College High Schools are in Ferndale, Whatcom County; Shelton, Mason County; Spokane; Suquamish, Kitsap County; and Wellpinit, Stevens County. The seventh school will open in La Conner in January, and an eighth school is in the works for a yet-to-be-named urban area.

Washington high-school students also can take courses at community or technical colleges as part of the statewide Running Start program, but in Early College they get a more coordinated series of courses offered on one campus, not two.

The Early College idea is relatively new, with a limited track record. But the Gates Foundation, known for bold initiatives, believes the concept has great promise. At LaGuardia Community College in New York, for example, an Early College program for high-school students has a much lower dropout rate than New York City schools as a whole, although most enter the program below grade level. More than 90 percent pass their college classes, said Principal Aaron Listhaus.

"It removes the divide between high school and higher education for students who might not think of themselves as college material, or college as an option," said Nancy Hoffman of Jobs for the Future, which received $7 million from the foundation to coordinate its Early College grants.

"The idea is that academic challenge, not remediation, is the best way to motivate students."

Tulalip Heritage, part of the Marysville School District, is starting slowly. Working with Everett Community College, it is offering three college courses this fall: study skills/reading, a beginning computer course and art. Meanwhile, the teachers work to raise students' literacy skills so that they'll soon be ready for college-level work in core subjects as well, for which they can earn both high-school and college credit.

Forty-five of the school's 60 students are enrolled in college classes, said Linda Campbell, director of Antioch's Early College for Native Youth program.

Before this fall, she said, only one student had attended a dual college/high-school program.

Many Tulalip Heritage students aren't sure what to make of the college classes. Many enrolled before the program started and chose the school because it was close to home.

Administrators and students say Tulalip Heritage is working to overcome a bad reputation as a place without strong academics or discipline. And the hope is that the college classes will inspire current students and attract new ones.

Some students welcome the challenge of college, and say the classes give them confidence.

"I thought college would be really, really hard," said Lashina Edwards-Martin, 15. But it's not as difficult as she imagined.

Other students aren't sure.

"A lot of kids don't realize how big of an opportunity this is," said Carolyn Sheldon, 17, who is taking college courses at school, at night and by mail so she can graduate on time.

Linda Campbell acknowledges that it is a challenge to transform Tulalip Heritage into a much more rigorous school.

"It's an experiment, but one worth taking," she said, noting that Native American students have the highest dropout rate of any ethnic group.

"We've got to begin," she added. "This is the beginning."

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com