Colorado Debates How to Send More At-Risk Students to College

When one public high school offered to pay students' full tuition to a local community college, they signed up in droves

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By BEN GOSE

It was the first assembly of the school year at Abraham Lincoln High School, and the principal had a question. How many of you, he asked, want to go to college?

A few hands shot up.

Then the principal gave a slide show that showed how much more money a college graduate could earn over a lifetime than someone who didn't go to college. He concluded by asking the students, most of whom were from low-income families, another question: "What if you could do this for free?"

The auditorium erupted with excitement.

That was in the fall of 2004. This year 60 students at Lincoln are taking community-college courses across town — free. Scott Mendelsberg, the principal who spoke that day, has gone on to a state job aimed at helping more students in Colorado make the often dicey transition from high school to college.

The assembly marked the beginning of College Now, a program that allows Lincoln students to stay in school after their fourth year, even if they have enough credits to graduate, and to spend that fifth year attending classes at the Community College of Denver, about five miles away. Lincoln picks up the tab, using the same state funds that it receives for its regular students.

Colorado has one of the most highly educated work forces in the country — fueled by out-of-staters moving to cities like Denver and Boulder — but its college-going rate is below the national average, particularly among low-income students. The dichotomy is known here as the "Colorado paradox."

The state is taking that problem seriously, with plans to raise standards, make instruction more relevant, and pay for new programs aimed at helping more students graduate from high school and be ready to do college-level work.

Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, recently convened a council made up of 30 school-district superintendents and college and business leaders to ensure that the state's high-school graduates have the skills that colleges and employers are seeking. Colorado is one of only three states without statewide graduation requirements. Nearly a third of Colorado graduates who enrolled in the state's public colleges in fall 2004 needed remedial classes in mathematics, writing, or reading, according to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.

Michael F. Bennet, superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, whose district includes Lincoln High, last November unveiled his "Denver plan," and it immediately stirred controversy. Among other things, it would require students in sixth through ninth grades to double up on math and literacy courses — and to give up some electives — if testing shows that they are not performing at grade level. The plan also calls for new after-school programs and summer school. Only one in 10 ninth graders in the district is proficient in math, and nearly half of those who go on to college need remedial work.

Yet one of the most talked-about ideas for raising the college-going rate in Colorado is Mr. Mendelsberg's creation — College Now. The program overlaps with the broader movement afoot in Colorado to help students meet evolving standards. But first and foremost, College Now aims to give students hope.

"When you have 75 to 80 percent of kids on free and reduced lunch, college isn't even on their radar screen," says Mr. Mendelsberg. "My kids say, 'Forget it — give me my diploma and let me go to work.' This is an issue the State of Colorado has to address."

In 2004, Mr. Mendelsberg's first year at Lincoln, 17 percent of the 238 graduating seniors went on to college. In 2005 73 percent did so, with more than two-thirds of those students using College Now to attend the Community College of Denver or a nearby vocational-training institute.

At least two other Colorado high schools have attempted to use education funds to help low-income students attend college. But Mr. Mendelsberg's experiment has been the most controversial because he made no effort to keep it quiet. "It sounds cocky," he says, "but I wasn't afraid to fight."

Several top state officials, including the attorney general and William J. Moloney, the education commissioner, argue that while state law guarantees students an education until age 21, those funds are intended for K-12, not college.

After news of College Now hit the press, "every senior in the state called up wanting a free year of college tuition," Mr. Moloney says. "We were inundated with calls."

Many states have "dual enrollment" programs, which allow students to take college classes while in high school, but no publicly supported programs allow students to stick around for a fifth year to earn college credit once they have the credits to graduate.

Mr. Mendelsberg, however, thinks programs like College Now should be established throughout Colorado. In December he began trying to do just that. He was hired as the Colorado head of Gear Up, a federal program designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in college.

Lincoln high school is an austere, four-story brick building situated among modest ranch-style homes, just across a bustling commercial road from a Dairy Queen and a Checkers Auto Parts store. A nearby billboard announces, "We buy ugly houses."

The year before Mr. Mendelsberg arrived, the school averaged a fight a week among students.

"Why would you not fight?" Mr. Mendelsberg says. "The saddest thing in the world is a 14- or 15-year-old kid who doesn't think the world is out there for him. Revolutions are made of this stuff."

Last year, when the first crop of high-school seniors could sign up for College Now, only eight fights were reported.

Mr. Mendelsberg's enthusiasm for College Now has rubbed off on teachers, who pitch the financial benefits of the program as a way to keep students motivated in their classes.

"It's hard not to know about College Now," says Gabe Zuniga, a senior who plans to use the program to attend the community college this fall. "The teachers are always reminding you about it."

Analise Alarid, a College Now student pursuing a degree program in multimedia studies, lives at home with her mother, who is disabled but formerly worked as a nurse. Ms. Alarid's income from working at a Mexican grocery is "pretty much the income for the household," she says.

College Now "gives kids hope that after school ends, they're not going to be stuck at some dead-end job," Ms. Alarid says. She dreams of someday using her new skills to open her own business — "kind of like an Internet lounge, but for art."

The Community College of Denver has worked closely with Lincoln. Professors travel to the high school to teach a handful of classes each semester, including remedial courses. The college's math instructors have met with Lincoln's math teachers to make clear exactly what they expect first-year students to know.

"We ought to be fostering relationships like the one we have with Lincoln," says Christine Johnson, the college's president, who herself is a former principal at Lincoln. "We need more partnerships between higher education and schools."

Lincoln pays for Christina Chavez-Ingrum, a guidance counselor, to spend a day and a half each week working with College Now students and their professors on the college's main campus, in downtown Denver. She spends the other half-day at a technical-and-vocational institute, where 20 College Now students have enrolled.

Nine of the roughly 70 students who started at the Community College of Denver have dropped out of College Now, says Ms. Chavez-Ingrum, and several others struggled with poor grades in the first semester but are sticking with it. Without the program, she believes, "some of them would have been awarded financial aid, and I think some would have enrolled in college. But I don't know how many would have been retained for the second semester."

Finding money to keep College Now going may be a challenge. The program will cost about $265,000 this year, says Mr. Mendelsberg.

State Rep. Fran Coleman, a Democrat who represents Lincoln's school district and a nearby district that has a program similar to College Now, plans to introduce legislation this year that would allow students statewide to take a year of college — and perhaps more — with funds provided by local schools. Like Mr. Mendelsberg, she believes that language in the state constitution permits such uses of education funds until students reach age 21. "You'll get a more educated graduating class, and that will drive up the economy," she says.

Even supporters of the bill believe that only a more narrowly crafted version — one that would limit the program to one year of college for low-income students — stands any chance of success. The fate of such legislation will go a long way in determining what Mr. Mendelsberg can pull off in his new job.

Ms. Johnson, of the Community College of Denver, says a strong economic-development argument can be made for such programs. "We're accelerating the education of students," she says. "They're not going to drop out of school and come back to us five years later."

Equally challenging for Lincoln is seeing that students are prepared to make the best of the opportunity provided by College Now. Even students who earn A's and B's in math at Lincoln typically end up needing remedial work in college, says Mr. Mendelsberg. About three-fourths of the College Now participants are taking one or more remedial classes at the community college. Such classes do not count toward the associate's degree.

"What I've been conveying to teachers is that we have that carrot dangling in kids' faces right now, but we have to make sure they have the tools and are prepared to take advantage of it," says Antonio Esquibel, Lincoln's new principal.

In Colorado students are flagged for possible remedial work based on their scores on college-entrance exams, like the ACT. They then take another test to establish how much help they need. Lincoln gives that test to ninth and 10th graders, so that they know how much they need to improve in order to be ready for college.

Next year more than 100 ninth graders at Lincoln will probably be required to double up on math or literacy classes — or both — under the Denver school superintendent's reform plan.

Meanwhile the Colorado Education Alignment Council, which was convened to look at high-school graduates' skills, is also considering changes that could affect the school. It may require all students to take four years of math. In 2003 the Colorado Commission on Higher Education adopted stricter standards for admission to the state's public four-year universities, including four years of math, starting with Algebra 1. (That change takes place with the class that will enter college in 2010.)

But many Colorado school districts require only three years of math. At Lincoln, for example, students are not required to take any math higher than algebra and geometry.

During a presentation to the alignment council in January, Christine A. Tell, director of the American Diploma Project, suggested that Colorado school districts generally have no meaningful and specific reading, writing, or math standards for the last two years of high school. The project

is an effort by 22 states to align high-school graduation requirements more closely with the demands of postsecondary education and challenging jobs.

"To me this is kind of shocking," said Rick

O'Donnell, executive director of Colorado's higher-education commission, after Ms. Tell concluded her presentation. "We've often heard about the wasted senior year, but this suggests we have a wasted junior year."

Mr. Esquibel has mixed feelings about requiring a fourth year of math. Adding another requirement would force some students to give up elective courses like art, ceramics, or band. "A lot of times our students come to school for those electives," he says.

Parents and teachers have made similar arguments in criticizing Mr. Bennet's plans to require students who aren't proficient to double up on math and literacy courses.

For Mr. Moloney, the state's education commissioner, such arguments make no sense. "There's something patently illogical about that," he says. "They can't read, they're way behind, but they like electives, so they'll come to their elective — and then ditch their reading class. And this is better? Hello?"

But in some ways, Lincoln High School offers proof that standards and extra work on fundamentals alone aren't enough. Students need to be able to envision themselves in college to do the hard work required to get there.

Brenda Ramirez, a senior whose mother works the night shift at Target, and whose father is a packer at Safeway, says College Now has altered her plans for next year — and maybe for years to come. "Before, I never even thought about going to college," she says. "Now it's in the top of my head."