CITATIONS: • ACT. (2006). Ready for college and ready for work: Same or different? Iowa City, Iowa: Retrieved Dec. 9, 2014, from act.org/research/ policymakers/pdf/ReadinessBrief.pdf. • ACT. (2008). The Forgotten Middle: Ensuring that all students are on target for college and career readiness before high school. Iowa City, Iowa: Retrieved Dec. 9, 2014, from act.org/ research/policymakers/pdf/ForgottenMiddle.pdf. • Bottoms, G. & Timberlake, A. (2007). Giving Students a Chance to Achieve: Getting Off to a Fast & Successful Start in Grade Nine. Southern Regional Education Board. • Bowen, W.G., Chingos, M.M., and McPherson, M.S. (2009). Crossing the Finish
Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. • Carnevale, A. P., Smith, N., & Strohl, J. (2010). Help wanted: projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce. • Edmunds, J., Willse, J., Arshavsky, N., and Dallas, A. (2012). Mandated Engagement: The Impact of Early College High Schools. Greensboro, North Carolina: SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. • Rosenkranz, T., Torre, M., Stevens, W.D., and Allensworth, E. (2014). Research Brief: Free
to Fail or On-Track to College: Why Grades Drop When Students Enter High School and What Adults Can Do About It. Retrieved Dec. 11, 2014, from ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/ free-fail-or-track-college. • Smith, J.S. (2006). Research summary: Transition from Middle School to High School. Retrieved Dec. 10, 2014, from files.eric.ed.gov/ fulltext/ED538706.pdf. • Southern Regional Educational Board (2002). Opening Doors to the Future: Preparing Low‐achieving Middle Grades Students to Succeed in High School. Retrieved Dec. 10, 2014, from publications.sreb.org/2001/02v41_2002_ outstanding_pract.pdf.
Schools Team Up With Columbus Tech
Setting ninth-graders on firm post-secondary path
S
tarted in fall 2014, the Chattahoochee County High School Freshmen Transition Initiative is a college and career readiness collaboration with Columbus Technical College. The aim is to motivate high school freshman toward post-high school goals and ensure that they consider those goals as they plan and select courses. Goal-related conversations make a student’s high school education more relevant, notes Chattahoochee County High Principal Jim Sims. The program encompasses academic standards and assessment, career exploration, aligning academic skills with college expectations and financial literacy. Students develop a personal graduation plan grounded in their strengths and career goals. The plans must take the student beyond high school graduation through the completion of post-secondary training or college and articulate the transition into a dynamic adult role. If students don’t know why they are in college, they will struggle to stay there and have difficulty making the transition into the workforce and creating self-sufficient lifestyles (Levine, 2005). Students therefore investigate pathways of high-interest jobs consistent with Georgia’s High Demand Career Initiative (HDCI, 2014). Columbus Tech aligns secondary and post-secondary courses using the career pathway matrix. Students are enrolled in the Certified Life & Health Insurance Specialist certificate proOctober/November 2015
gram. As provisional CLHIS students, they take two college-level courses: Business Interaction Skills and Personal Effectiveness. They earn Carnegie units toward their high school requirements and college credits simultaneously. Participants are eligible for Georgia’s HOPE Grant funding as part of the College Credit Now initiative, which covers 80 percent of tuition. Columbus Tech exempts the remaining 20 percent. Courses taken in high school under HOPE do not count against HOPE cap hours. The college’s foundation and the College Access Challenge Grant provide books for students; therefore neither students, parents nor the school system experience out-of-pocket expenses. MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES
• Basic Skills: Each September, all incoming Chattahoochee County High School freshman take the ACT Asset assessment, which measures academic skills in writing, reading and mathematics. The assessment is given again in April to measure improvement. • Attendance: Yearly attendance of the freshman cohort is measured against previous cohorts. • Matriculation to 10th Grade: Matriculation to 10th grade is compared to previous cohorts. • High School Completion Rate: The freshman cohort will be followed to capture the graduation rate and compared to previous cohort completion rate.
• Post-secondary Enrollment: The freshman cohort will be tracked to capture post-secondary enrollment and compared to previous cohorts. Although the Chattahoochee County High School Freshmen Transition Initiative only began in September 2014, school administrators are encouraged by preliminary results. Comparing the freshman classes of 2013 to 2015, daily attendance rates rose slightly (about 1 percent) and the number of students who failed three or more classes dropped slightly (1 percent). Although the improvements have been modest, “We see these as early indicators that the program will have lasting effects on our students over their high school career,” said Sims. Nearby K-12 leaders are hoping for improvements as well. Administrators from Stewart and Quitman counties and Spencer and Jordan high schools in Muscogee County have used the model to launch similar initiatives with n Columbus Tech this fall. CITATIONS:
• High Demand Career Initiative (2014). Retrieved January 14, 2015, from georgia.org/competitiveadvantages/workforce-division/ programs-initiatives/high-demandcareer-initiative-hdci/. • Levine, M. (2005). Ready or not, Here life comes. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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