A University Helps Prepare Low Income Youths for College.

Tracking School Success

Introduction

Over the last decade various programs that have helped boost enrollment in higher education have come under attack or have been eliminated. One response to the problem of maintaining access to postsecondary education in an era when policies and programs such as affirmative action and remedial education are terminated is to turn renewed attention to the public schools. A public clamor continues to be heard that the schools need to turn out students who are better prepared for college-level work. The assumption is that if the schools improve, then those who graduate from them will not need affirmative action or remedial education. Although such an assumption is debatable and broad agreement exists that the public schools can improve, such a generic long-term solution falls short with regard to what should be done immediately to help those students who desire access to postsecondary education. The transformation of the American public school system is a massive undertaking that has no clear singular solution in sight and is surely not an immediate cure-all.

What might be done on a more concrete and immediate level to ensure that more students gain access to postsecondary education? In this article we discuss college preparation programs for low-income urban minority youths. Such programs assume that postsecondary institutions have a responsibility to the larger society and that this responsibility gets played out via the relationships that colleges and universities develop with public schools.

We begin by offering an overview of models of college preparation that are in use by describing the kind of student who might participate in such a program. We then turn to an analysis of one program--the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI)--and discuss the theoretical framework on which this program is based. NAI developed in large part due to a university's assumption that an institution has a social responsibility to the students and families in whose neighborhood the institution resides. The data derive from a three-year study that included interviews, focus groups, observations, life histories, and an analysis of the students' college-going patterns. As we will discuss, close to 60% of those students who began the NAI program are currently in a four-year university. Accordingly, we suggest that a program based on what we will call "cultural integrity" has significant implications for increasing access to postsecondary education for those students who are most "at risk" of otherwise not being able to gain access to a college education.

Models of College Preparation Programs

We define college preparation programs as enhancement programs aimed at increasing access to college for low-income youths who attend public schools. The programs take place during an individual's middle school and/or high-school years and are classes or activities that occur in addition to the regular school day. Frequently, the programs involve relationships between schools and postsecondary institutions. Over the last three years we have developed a preliminary way of categorizing programs with regard to program characteristics and instructional processes (see Appendix A). Our purpose has been to try to make objective sense of the myriad of programs that currently exist. First we offer three of the most common approaches that are targeted to specific clienteles and then turn to an elaborated discussion about the fourth program.

Test preparation. The goal here is relatively straightforward and has been most widely employed in California. The approach reflects the concern of a public system of higher education for maintaining access in a post-affirmative action era. When the University of California (UC) Regents banned affirmative action, there was a dramatic drop in the enrollment of African American and Hispanic students. Many assert that the central cause for the drop off was that African American and Hispanic youths did not test as well as their Caucasian and Asian American counterparts on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). Even though many African American and Hispanic students had scored well enough to gain entrance to a UC campus, on average they scored lower than Caucasian and Asian American students. Due to the lack of spaces in the UC system, there was a concomitant drop in African American and Hispanic enrollment.

One response to this drop has been to focus on those students who will not gain entrance to higher education solely because of their test-taking capability. Some institutions have formed relationships with test-taking companies (e.g., Stanley Kaplan). A particular university, for example, might target a handful of high schools where students of color are likely to attend. A simple comparison between pre- and post-affirmative action will identify the number of students who might have gone to a UC campus if they had scored higher on the SAT. The university then creates a modified course akin to what countless other students in the United States take that will focus exclusively on their preparation for an exam. This kind of program is geared toward students who are likely to attend college but need to improve their SAT scores. The outcome is that those students who take this program will be more likely to go to a more prestigious institution than if they had not taken the program. Because the approach is relati vely new, there is little data on whether these students are more likely to graduate from college, but it can show demonstrable gains in attendance at more selective institutions.

Science and math preparation. Perhaps the most pervasive of college preparation programs pertain not so much to getting students ready for college but, instead, preparing them for majors in math and science. Programs such as MESA or AISES are exemplars of these kinds of approaches. Such programs, which are often found on college campuses, reflect a second kind of involvement of postsecondary institutions with the issue of access. People of color are historically underrepresented in math and science fields at all levels--as undergraduate majors, as graduate students, and as faculty. In response, federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA, private foundations such as the Ford Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, as well as state governments, have responded by creating specific programs that try to generate interest and confidence in the sciences and mathematics on the part of minority students.

As with the test preparation approach, the programs in this category are generally for students who are likely to attend college. These programs do not so much aim at attendance at a more selective or prestigious institution, but instead move students from one kind of major to another. Thus, indicators of success for these programs are particularly problematic. The students who take such classes would likely have attended college even without the program, and because the programs focus on an area of inquiry rather than completion, one cannot safely assume that the program itself is the primary ingredient in college completion. Nevertheless, the results of these programs often show evidence that its participants do major in the sciences.

Counseling and academic foci. A third approach for a college preparation program might best be described as one that focuses intensively on counseling and academic skills. Students receive guidance in various ways. Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) is one example of such a program that has shown success. Although such programs frequently involve colleges and universities in their activities, the bulk of responsibility for running the program is with a local high school.

AVID students are chosen for the program by their high-school teachers or counselors. They take one extra class a day in their school, taught by one of the teachers of the school they attend. The class has at least two explicit functions: one objective is teaching students basic skills, such as how to take notes, how to study, and how to complete various homework assignments; a second objective is assisting students in navigating …