EARLY COLLEGE, EARLY FAILURE?

McALLEN -- Hoping to close a higher education gap among poor and minority populations, efforts to help high school students earn college credit early have rapidly spread across the Rio Grande Valley.

But once the students graduate and officially enter college, some professors have found their performances disappointing, prompting the teachers to doubt the wisdom of public school programs that they feel hinder college readiness.

“They are intentionally setting these kids up for failure,” said Sam Freeman, a University of Texas-Pan American professor and academic advisor. “(Early college) students simply do not perform well.

“Those excuses for college classes they take in high school do not develop (the skills) needed to succeed,” he said. “They get to college and fall flat on their faces.”

Freeman admitted his research is “not a lot more than anecdotal.” But he wondered why educators would commit so much energy – and nearly $20 million in state funds – to an early college initiative that has yielded little data proving its effectiveness.

Nonetheless, school districts have enthusiastically thrown their support behind Early College High School, or ECHS, and dual enrollment programs that allow teenagers to earn college credit while completing their high school diplomas.

Since 2006, the first year the Texas Education Agency allowed it, Valley schools between Laredo and Brownsville have opened 12 ECHS campuses, with 4,696 students currently working toward two years’ worth of college before graduating. And in Hidalgo County alone, South Texas College may help open seven more ECHS campuses this fall, potentially sending nearly 1,000 more early college graduates to local universities each year.

“The whole goal of the early college model is to target underrepresented students in higher” education, said Sharon Roberts, coordinator for advanced academic services for Mission schools, which may host its first ECHS this year.

“The Hispanic population is becoming the largest minority population across the nation,” she said. “This will have a big multiplier effect in our economy because kids will be more educated going into the workforce.”

DIGGING INTO DATA

But the ends to that mean faces criticism among faculty members at UTPA, where officials may soon put the matter to rest.

Within the next couple of weeks, the university will release a comprehensive report detailing how well students perform – or fail miserably – if they already have several semesters’ worth of college credit under their belts.

Because of their infancy, the Valley’s ECHS campuses haven’t produced enough graduates in the past two years to allow for much research into their performances after high school.

And though 900 Class of 2010 students graduated from early colleges across the state – with 308 of them holding an associate’s degree and high school diploma at the same time – virtually no studies have explored what impact the ECHS model has beyond the public school classroom.

“Something we cannot ignore is students with prior college hours,” said Magdalena Hinojosa, senior vice president for enrollment services at UTPA. “It’s becoming more prevalent across the nation, and it’s critical we identify a student who can possibly be at risk in order to provide intervention as early as possible.”

For the past few weeks, Hinojosa has been collecting data on first-year, first-time students who enter UTPA’s doors with prior college hours.

And though she would not hint at her initial findings, she said that the final results will cut to the core of the university and school districts’ ultimate mission.

“We’ll have an opportunity to get outside of our comfort zone and begin to truly look at variables beyond test scores,” Hinojosa said. “So often we anecdotally say, ‘This is what we see. This is what we think.’ But truly, we have to look at the data (and) see if we retain and graduate these students.

“It all comes down, for me, to how can we do that job better?”

“NO REGARD FOR STUDENTS”

Even without postsecondary research behind them, Texas early colleges boast impressive results in the high school setting.

According to a state evaluation, ECHS students are 14.5 times more likely to be promoted from the ninth to 10th grade. And 10th-grade ECHS students were 2.3 times more likely to meet or exceed proficiency on state tests in all subject areas.

The key might be the small class sizes found on ECHS campuses, which by mandate typically limit each grade level to 100 to 150 students.

“They’re not lost in that big atmosphere,” said Mission’s Sharon Roberts, “and there’s more prevention than intervention. They’re trying to catch them before they lose the skills they need (for college).”

“The Early College High School is more academically focused, (and) kids don’t have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular” activities, Roberts said, allowing them to often focus on a full high school and college course load at the same time.

ECHS students also earned an average of 16 credit hours each during the 2008-09 school year, totaling $4.5 million in college tuition savings, the state evaluation reported.

Still, Freeman criticized state and local officials for targeting poor, minority students with free college credit when their “tremendous, developmental deficit leaves them paying for it with failure in the end.”

However, a small study out STC contradicts Freeman’s anecdotal impressions.

In 2010, the community college found high school students with zero to 29 college credit hours had a 2.68 grade-point average when they transferred to UTPA, outperforming the 2.31 GPA of traditional STC transfers.

And the study showed high school students with even more college credit significantly outpaced their peers: Teenagers with 67-plus hours earned a 3.72 GPA at UTPA in comparison to the traditional student’s 2.96 GPA.

For now, Freeman will have to wait to see if Hinojosa’s study confirms or denies his evaluation of early college programs.

But, noting many traditional freshmen fail to succeed in college, he said public schools either issue inflated grades for early college students or purposefully water down the college-level courses.

“They know exactly what they’re doing,” Freeman said, “and that tells me they have no regard for students they push through their doors and expect us to catch up.

“When the data comes out, it will confirm what I believe. If not, I will be the first to admit it.”

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at nmorton@themonitor.com or (956) 683-4472.