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Delaware State University and Innovative Schools have formed a partnership to create an Early College High School that would allow students to simultaneously earn a diploma and college credits on DSU’s campus.
DSU and Innovative Schools plan to submit an application for the innovative charter school in December to the Delaware Department of Education, which oversees such applications.
“If approved, the proposed charter high school would implement the state’s first Early College High School, a nationally recognized school design,” Delaware State University spokesman Carlos Holmes said.
Since 2002, the Early College High School Initiative based in Boston, Mass. has started or redesigned more than 230 schools in 28 states and the District of Columbia, according to www.earlycolleges.org. The schools are geared toward students who traditionally lag behind in the so-called achievement gap – black and Hispanic students, poor students, first-generation college goers, English language learners and other young people underrepresented in higher education. In the model, students simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an associate’s degree or up to two years of credit toward a bachelor’s degree.
“Located on a college campus, the model directly challenges the belief system of under-prepared, poor and minority students about their ability to do college level work and get a postsecondary degree,” Holmes said Wednesday in a press release.
Students participating in the Early College High School model have an average graduation rate of more than 90 percent and outperform state averages in high stakes graduation tests for English and mathematics. At the completion of four years in high school, 60 percent of students earn an associate’s degree, or the equivalent of 45-60 college credits.
DSU’s partnership with Innovative Schools came after the nonprofit researched nontraditional, high performing, modern schools that can be replicated in the Diamond State, Innovative Schools Director Of Marketing And Development Katie Gallup said. That research included trips to such schools in Lorraine, Ohio and Akron, Ohio in conjunction with another group called EdWorks also based in the Buckeye State, she said.
“We are especially looking for schools with a history of being successful with all student groups and in urban, suburban and rural areas because we have that diverse landscape here in Delaware,” Gallup said.
“Developing a charter school application and coming up with a curriculum and an academic program from scratch can be challenging,” she added. “Some have done it successfully but there are certainly some that have struggled with it. We want to get schools up an running on the right foot.”
Delaware State University and Innovative Schools have formed a partnership to create an Early College High School that would allow students to simultaneously earn a diploma and college credits on DSU’s campus.
DSU and Innovative Schools plan to submit an application for the innovative charter school in December to the Delaware Department of Education, which oversees such applications.
“If approved, the proposed charter high school would implement the state’s first Early College High School, a nationally recognized school design,” Delaware State University spokesman Carlos Holmes said.
Since 2002, the Early College High School Initiative based in Boston, Mass. has started or redesigned more than 230 schools in 28 states and the District of Columbia, according to www.earlycolleges.org. The schools are geared toward students who traditionally lag behind in the so-called achievement gap – black and Hispanic students, poor students, first-generation college goers, English language learners and other young people underrepresented in higher education. In the model, students simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an associate’s degree or up to two years of credit toward a bachelor’s degree.
“Located on a college campus, the model directly challenges the belief system of under-prepared, poor and minority students about their ability to do college level work and get a postsecondary degree,” Holmes said Wednesday in a press release.
Students participating in the Early College High School model have an average graduation rate of more than 90 percent and outperform state averages in high stakes graduation tests for English and mathematics. At the completion of four years in high school, 60 percent of students earn an associate’s degree, or the equivalent of 45-60 college credits.
DSU’s partnership with Innovative Schools came after the nonprofit researched nontraditional, high performing, modern schools that can be replicated in the Diamond State, Innovative Schools Director Of Marketing And Development Katie Gallup said. That research included trips to such schools in Lorraine, Ohio and Akron, Ohio in conjunction with another group called EdWorks also based in the Buckeye State, she said.
“We are especially looking for schools with a history of being successful with all student groups and in urban, suburban and rural areas because we have that diverse landscape here in Delaware,” Gallup said.
“Developing a charter school application and coming up with a curriculum and an academic program from scratch can be challenging,” she added. “Some have done it successfully but there are certainly some that have struggled with it. We want to get schools up an running on the right foot.”
Innovative Schools was originally created in 2002 to help charter schools navigate the difficulty of obtaining capital for building renovations and acquisitions, Gallup said. Through the generosity of individual patrons, Innovative Schools has been able to guarantee bank loans for seven charter schools to date, including Delaware Military Academy. As a school pays down its debt, the loan guarantee goes back into a pool of about $5 million.
Charter schools are private schools that are publicly funded and open to all First State students. They started to come into existence after the charter school law was enacted in 1995 to give parents another option besides traditional public schools. The first was the Red Clay Consolidated School District’s Charter School of Wilmington, which replaced failing Wilmington High. As inaugural Charter School President Ron Russo put it, the sprit of the charter school law was to foster competition amongst public schools and force them to improve.
But Dr. Alton Thompson, DSU provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, does not see this as a competition per se with the local public schools, including the Capital School District. In essence, DSU would share best practices established by this new charter if it were to get up and running, he said.
“We’re going to work collaboratively with the public schools to close the achievement gap and to increase learning," Thompson said. "We’re in the higher education system and we can contribute knowledge and skills to this effort. And we made a concerted effort toward STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and this high school would follow that model.”
Delaware State University would strengthen its ability to serve first generation college-bound students and underrepresented minorities from the greater Dover area by adding a charter school on campus, Thompson said.
“The Early College High School at DSU will be an innovative learning environment designed to inspire students who have the potential and motivation to be the first in their families to graduate from college,” he said. “We are committed to making this school a good fit for our community.”
The addition of a charter high school to campus also coincides some of changes that DSU President Dr. Harry L. Williams has been implementing since he took over the historically black college in 2010, Holmes said. Among them is the development of a new facilities master plan for campus.
“We’ve basically accomplished everything in the last, 10-year master plan,” he said. ”Now, it’s time to look to the future on what infrastructure improvements we want to make. And, certainly, the new charter school would be in that master plan.”
