By ANN RICHARDS
Mott Middle/Early College High School (MMEC) graduated its first “dual-enrolled” class this June — a group of 40 hardworking students, a number of whom also graduated with a two-year associate degree.
“At a minimum, our first 13th year students graduated with 10 college credit hours,” said Chery Wagonlander, principal of the middle college/early college high school for the past 18 years. “These students are a great example of what we’re striving for here — a seamless, deeply embedded academic transition between high school and higher education.”
The first multi-district middle college model in the country, MMEC opened in 1991 on the campus of Mott Community College in Flint, Michigan. A member of the Middle College National Consortium in New York City, the school is designed as a dropout prevention specialty school option for students who may not be succeeding in a traditional high school setting. Since 1993, the Mott Foundation has provided more than $2.6 million to develop and replicate the instructional model and its innovative curriculum. Via the consortium, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also supports the model.
Across the country, school districts concerned with low graduation rates, particularly for low-income, low-performing students, are experimenting with a variety of reform strategies. Known collectively as Secondary-Post Secondary Learning Options (SPLOs), these high school redesign efforts range from increasing the number of Advanced Placement (AP) courses to extending high school for an additional “fifth year” to encourage students to graduate with dual degrees.
According to The College Ladder: Linking Secondary and Post-Secondary Education for Success for All Students, published by the American Youth Policy Forum in 2006, these models provide “many of the important elements that have been missing from high school for most students: challenge, engagement, access to the adult world, and support.”
“Our reform work focuses on producing students who are college-ready,” Wagonlander said. “There are a lot of students out there who have a high GPA (Grade Point Average) but they are not prepared socially, emotionally or financially to survive the college experience.
Every student at MMEC is dually enrolled in high school and college classes, and this daily exposure to the habits and behaviors of students on a college campus is critical to building a sense of personal responsibility and academic success, she said.
The size of MMEC — less than 100 students at each grade level — also contributes to teachers’ ability to provide more customized learning experiences for each student. At Mott, ongoing professional development is a priority for staff, and new teachers are mentored to help them understand the challenges that confront their students as well as the innovative curriculum and teaching methods that are used. The personal and academic growth of every student is tracked by pre- and post-assessment and this data is used as part of MMEC’s ongoing research to determine best practice.
“This is truly a reform movement — we are redefining what ‘college readiness’ and ‘work readiness’ means,” says Wagonlander. “To accomplish this, teaching and learning have to change.”
Now a hub for middle/early college high school research and implementation, Wagonlander and her staff provide technical assistance and professional mentoring for a network of more than a dozen middle and early colleges around the country. In 2008, the Mott Foundation provided $700,000 to continue this ongoing work, conducted through the Center for Middle and Early College in Michigan. MMEC also has been selected as a model for replication by the national early college initiative and the Michigan Department of Education, which hopes to open 12 early colleges throughout the state by 2011.
MMEC also continues to operate its GAPS (GAPS: Success Connection Program), a summer remedial program to prevent school dropout by preparing eighth grade students for high school. In a five-year study beginning in 2000, the high school retention rate for students participating in GAPS remained at 97 percent.
“These transitions — from elementary to high school and from high school to college — are difficult for many students. Too many learners fail to make these transitions and too many don’t even try,” said Wagonlander.
“At Mott, both levels of institutions — high school and college — are learning to adapt and change. Middle/early college is a truly collaborative approach to education — Mott Community College has been a full partner in this effort. They understand that they can move away from the remediation business if they work with us to do the college prep.”
Over the past two decades, Wagonlander is most proud of the strides that MMEC has made in terms of “equity and access.”
“We support persistence. Middle/early college offers a path for those with fewer resources to break through the financial and academic barriers that stand in their way.
“For decades, we’ve been saying that we need more college graduates. With the middle/early college model, we are able to give students the opportunity to break out of a culture that doesn’t see the need for an education and give them the chance to envision a different future.”