GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Most eighth-graders at the Bronx’s P.S./I.S. 218 tore their high school admissions envelopes open well before dismissal on Thursday. But a small group waited patiently until 2:30 p.m. to find out their fates.

The holdouts were about 20 participants in an after-school program that had coached them through the admissions process. They gathered in the library after school for a letter-opening ceremony with the staff of Project STEP (Students Toward Educational Promise). (more…)

Joining State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (center) are four students from Bard Early College High School (from left: Daphney Sanchez, Aishah Scott, Dwight Hodgson, and Lenina Mortimer). Behind them is Martha Olson, Dean of Administration.

Students taking part in new early college high school programs got a glimpse of their future yesterday at Long Island University’s Kumbel Theater and liked what they saw.

Staring back up at them were four success stories who graduated from one of the city’s first early college schools, Bard High School Early College in Manhattan: an admissions coordinator, a doctoral candidate in political science, a bioengineering student, and a multimedia producer.

“It’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense to you right now and that’s fine,” said Dwight Hodgson, who started at BHSEC when it opened in 2001. He is now back at his high school as an admission coordinator. “But there’s going to come a time very shortly where you’re going to sit back and say, ‘Wow, that was a life-changing experience.’”

Hodgson was speaking to new students in four early college programs crafted in BHSEC’s mold as part of the Smart Scholars Early College High School program, a state initiative to bolster partnerships between high schools and colleges.

Bard and City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology, which has a relationship with New York City College of Technology, became the city’s first Smart Scholars schools in 2010 and this year they were joined by three other schools: Boys and Girls High School (with L.I.U.), Medgar Evers College Preparatory School (with Medgar Evers College), and Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, (with NYC College of Technology).

Each school is getting more than $400,000 from the state and the Gates Foundation, which provided the original Smart Scholars grant in 2009. The Smart Scholars initiative aims to bring the early college model, in which students take college courses while they’re still enrolled in high school, to low-income and minority students. (more…)

In a recent speech to the NAACP, President Obama name-dropped a New York City public high school, saying that more schools should emulate Bard High School Early College and push students to earn college credits in addition to their high school diplomas. 

A recent BHSEC graduate who now attends Williams College, Kesi Augustine, explains in a Huffington Post column what makes the small, super-selective school on the Lower East Side so special. (A replica opened last year in Queens.) It’s not just that students can earn as much as two years of college credits before graduating, she writes:

The most rewarding part of my experience at BHSEC, however, WAS more than just the Associate’s degree. The school introduced me to critical thinking and writing about my place in the world. Our teachers did not give us the recipe for performing well on state-wide tests and SATs, although we performed well in that respect, too. Rather, our small classes thrived on student energy in open seminar discussions and debates about course material. …

If we are going to strive for the educational equality Obama calls for, every American student should have the education I did. I was more than prepared for success in “real” college, largely owed to what I learned at BHSEC. (more…)