Transition to Higher Education Colleagues,
This is a new thread, one that I hope might continue for the life of this community of practice. The main theme of the thread is this question: What models show evidence of helping underprepared adults and high-school aged students enter and succeed in postsecondary education? I have included models for high- school aged students because I believe that they offer adult educators some useful elements to think about, that some of the college preparation issues are the same, that many underprepared adults can trace their challenges in college to what did or didn't happen in high school, or earlier.
I'll get the ball rolling by describing a model featured in Paul Tough's recent book, How Children Succeed. My hope, however, is that this is the beginning, not the end of this thread, that you and others will describe other models here: ABE, ASE and transition models for adults, for example. Although I hope many of these are "evidence-based" models, that is, where there is evidence of success in enrollment, persistence in, and completion of college programs, a wide range of evidence would be acceptable, to me at least.
Some of the key questions that might be addressed in descriptions of these models are:
- For what population(s) was the model designed?
- What are some of the challenges that the learners face in enrolling, persisting, and completing post-secondary programs and college transition or college preparation programs?
- What are the assumptions or beliefs that underpin the model?
- How does the model address those issues?
- What is the evidence that the model works?
- Where can we learn more about the model? What do you suggest we read?
Here’s the first model.
The OneGoal Program in Chicago Illinois
This is a summary of what I have learned about the program from How Children SUCCEED: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough. This description is based entirely on or quoted from that book, so there may be other perspectives on the model that should be considered.
Design
OneGoal was designed and is led by Jeff Nelson, a young man whose prior experience in Chicago education was teaching sixth grade in a “struggling” high-poverty, African American South Side public school with Teach for America. His overriding concern then and now is how to help low-income, underprepared kids get into and succeed in college, how to close the gap for them between high school and college. It’s important to know that according to the Consortium on Chicago Schools Research, that only 8% who start high school in the Chicago public schools go on to earn four-year college degrees. This research had a big impact on Nelson’s thinking as he designed the OneGoal Program model.
“Nelson’s belief is that underperforming high-school students can relatively quickly transform themselves into highly successful college students – but that it is almost impossible for them to make that transition without the help of a highly effective teacher.”
(Tough, page 159)
The OneGoal program has a partnership with the Chicago Public Schools. It lets OneGoal work with individual teachers who they choose to run OneGoal programs as regular full-time school employees. The teachers get stipends for the extra work they do. The teacher recruits and selects a class of 25 underperforming students (average GPA of 2.8) in their sophomore year, who “show at least some spark of ambition.” The teacher has that class for three years. The class meets once a day until graduation. After graduation, the teacher stays in touch by phone, email and Facebook to provide support and advice, and answer questions.
The OneGoal curriculum has three parts: 1) an intensive unit of ACT prep in the junior year; 2) a structured path from the middle of high school to enrollment in college, what Jeff Nelson calls a ‘roadmap to college’, based on his own experience as a high school student in a high-performing suburban Chicago high school. This includes help with college applications -- including how to write a compelling essay and how to develop a strategy for getting admitted -- and finding scholarships; and 3) a set of noncognitive skills, as developed by Consortium on Chicago Schools Research analyst, Melissa Roderick: study skills, work habits, time management, help-seeking behavior and social/academic problem-solving skills. It is this element that Nelson believes is at the heart of OneGoal’s apparent success. To teach these, Nelson developed five skills that he calls leadership principles: resourcefulness, resilience, ambition, professionalism and integrity. These are the lynchpin skills of this third element.
Results:
OneGoal is relatively new, so no one will know for a year or two whether these leadership skills will get OneGoal students completely through four years of college. However, “so gar OneGoal’s overall persistence numbers are quite good. Of the 129 students….who started OneGoal as juniors at ten Chicago high schools in the fall of 2009, ninety-four were enrolled in four-year colleges as of May 2012. Another fourteen were enrolled in two-year colleges, for an overall college-persistence total of 84%.” (Tough, page 175)
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I do hope that others will accept this invitation to write about or to share existing descriptions of models for college transition or preparation that they believe show evidence of being successful, especially with underprepared adults, but also with high school aged learners. I would like to see this thread become a useful resource to us all.
David J. Rosen
Djrosen123@gmail.com