College Prep Programs For All: Through Dual Enrollment Programs Students Are More Successful in Matriculating to College

As the global economy unfolds, job criteria become more demanding, making college degrees pertinent in order to obtain advanced professions and reap success on the social mobility ladder. Meanwhile, job competition is growing substantially and employers are searching out the most dexterous candidates to hire. College-based institutions are vital for students because they prepare them for university level work and the competitive workforce that awaits them. Unfortunately, many inner city students lack the necessary skills and encouragement to pursue a high school degree, let alone a bachelor's. Community is a domineering factor that perpetuates this unfavorable result in urban areas such as South Central, Los Angeles (pictured to the left). In order to overcome the negative influences, students and their parents look to college preparatory programs in hope that they would provide adequate preparation, guidance, and support needed to matriculate to college. College-ready institutions are beginning to spread in inner cities; however many have highly selective processes in admitting students. Subsequently, rejects in the disadvantaged communities are left behind. With nation-wide Dual Enrollment Programs, however, every child can gain the necessary attributes in becoming more prepared for and optimistic about attending college.

In short, Dual Enrollment, sometimes referred to as College Credit Transition Programs, allow K-12 “students to take college-level classes and earn college credit” prior to obtaining a high school diploma. These initiatives are widespread throughout the nation and most popular in Middle College High Schools. They often work by three sometimes overlapping procedures: offer high school students the knowledge and skills necessary for success in college-level classes; developmental coursework explicitly designed to prepare students for the demands of college-level work; and college credit coursework. Dual Enrollment Programs are motivational incentives because they allow students to take college level classes while simultaneously fulfilling high school needs. For the 2002-03 school year, 71 percent of public high schools reported that students took courses for dual credit, meaning that they took a course for both high school and college credit. The graph to the right displays 84 percent of them reporting their enrollment in college on account of the Dual Enrollment. Furthermore, Florida researchers found that their 299,685 dual enrollment participants “had higher college grade point averages and more college credits three years after high school graduation than similar students who had not done dual enrollment.”

Although originally designed for high-achievers solely, policymakers and educators observe that broadening the range of applicants generates favorable effects regardless of students’ former achievement levels. These programs show significant improvement in inner cities where many children initially have no ambition of attending college and studies in New York and Florida deem greatest impact for males and low income students. By taking part in the Dual Enrollment Program students not only eventually matriculate to college, but they gain vital characteristics and values for learning. Many students begin to have specific career goals that may have once been blurred. The graph below compares the classes students took during the 2002-03 12 month period. More than 90 percent of students enrolled in career/technical and/or academic focused courses. In essence, students gain optimism about attending college, which encourages tenacity in graduating from high school.

I personally believe in these programs, serving as a living testament of how Dual Enrollment Programs help students in matriculating to college. In growing up, I dealt with crime, violence and overall negativity on a habitual day-to-day basis. Frequently on my way to the bus stop, I would see my peers hanging around cars or tagging on neighbors' walls when they should have been on a similar route as me--catching the bus to go to school. One of the factors propelling me to go to school rather than partaking in such misdemeanor was not solely because the bell ran at 8 o’clock, but more importantly since my homeroom teacher only allowed students who were on time to attend their college classes. This incentive is what made education more valuable to me. Taking the college classes allowed me to have more control on my education--deciding what classes I wanted to take, what my field of study would be. Ultimately, I was able to graduate from high school with my Associate of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts at the age of 14. Through these Dual Enrollment Programs, I was able to pursue two years of college while fulfilling my high school credits. This substantial reward is what served as my motivation for doing well in school.

While the average American is aware that a college degree is pertinent for success in the global economy, many youth in inner cities are pessimistic about matriculating to college. Moreover, students in urban public school systems have higher drop out rates and reduced rates of college degrees. A lack of optimism, awareness, guidance and support, are major factors that trigger urban students' downward trajectory in the social mobility ladder. Inevitably, there are many problems that need to be addressed concerning urban youth and their value for education. Alongside, there are myriad of ways to resolve this issue. One way to start is through use of the Dual Enrollment Programs: they offer all students motivation, optimism, preparation and guidance in valuing their education and matriculating to college.

Going Beyond the Bell: An Extension of School Hours Improves Urban Student’s Overall Performance

Inner-city public schools continue to face strenuous challenges--students fail to meet state standards and dropout rates inextricably skyrocket, as demonstrated in the correlating graph. An antecedent of this unfavorable result owes to insufficient hours of schooling. While the average student in America spends approximately six hours in class per day, students in European and Asian countries “spend closer to seven or eight hours a day, plus half-day on Saturday.” Producing promising results in Europe and Asia, administrators in America have begun to adopt similar strategies in an effort to enhance their students’ academic achievements. Public entities such as Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Green Dot have attested to substantial results from extending school hours. The extended day reform has the capacity to transform the way students delight in learning and view their post secondary school endeavors, and for that reason, educational policy makers and administrators should give generous support public schools in order that they extend school hours beyond the normal 2 o’clock bell.

While additional hours can provide more thorough apprehension of subjects and elective classes that are customarily abandoned in compressed lessons, predicaments arise when teachers are not given higher salaries alongside their supplementary lessons, as former LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer noted: "The cost of extending learning time--including teacher salaries and facility costs--can be considerable." Morever, students express apathy towards this reform because extending school time conflicts with their involvement in sports and youth clubs. In short, if students are repelled during the after school lessons, then the initiative defeats its sole purpose. Subsequently, educational donors began researching new strategies to motivate both teachers and students in valuing the school day reform.

Independent organizations such as The National Center on Time & Learning (at the left) and The Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation have expressed concerns about reforming public school hours nationally and have worked to ameliorate the controversies that stem from teachers and their students. The National Center on Time & Learning’s mission extends beyond bringing young people up to par; more importantly, the goal is to prepare 21st century youth for today’s demanding workforce. The organization believes that in order to ensure students in disadvantaged areas a well rounded education, they must have more time at school in a day. With supplementary hours students have opportunities to master subject matters or attain new insights from nontraditional skills. The Broad Foundation mission reads: “To train a broad, deep bench of current and aspiring leaders in education, equip school systems and their leaders with modern tools for effective management, and provide tangible incentives for educators to advance academic performance.” Their endeavors have been deemed successful in investments nationally. For example, at KIPP Charter, where more than 80 percent of students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino, nearly 80 percent of alumni have matriculated to college. Unlike most non-charter public institutions, KIPP School extends its school hours by three hours on weekdays. Just last summer The Broad Foundation donated “$2.45 Million to Fund New KIPP Public Charter Schools in New Orleans,” in order to facilitate expenses that teachers and/or students require in the extended school hours.

Furthermore, Green Dot Charter, which demonstrated high academic achievements for its students, received $ 10.4 million dollars from Broad. Green Dot also believes in the extended day reform and has made substantial progress from the new program. In 2006, the charter graduated 78 percent of its students, while the Los Angeles Unified School District graduated only 46 percent. Green Dot sets high expectations, including a college preparatory curriculum for all, by implementing additional hours for instruction. They also “allocate more funding to classrooms and significantly raise teacher pay,” in an effort to keep students learning with relatively new materials and reward teachers for their ample support.

With the extension of school hours, inner city students also remain protected from violence or crime that tends to be penetrated in the community. Two recent cases in urban Los Angeles suggest that additional school hours would produce better outcomes for inner city students. In 2005, a 15-year-old girl was killed by gunfire while walking home from Locke High School. Having ample leisure after school, a student decided to use his discretion in demoralizing a bus with gang inscriptions in early February, as displayed on the right. Without the extension of school hours, students have a greater chance of being crime suspects or victims, whereas additional school hours provide students with safe environments and keep them from getting involved in crime.

Inevitably, the extended school day reform does not operate idealistically; many of the concerns arise from both students and teachers and should not be overlooked. Foremost, policymakers must increase teachers' salaries in order that supplementary lessons are accounted for. Additionally, after school lessons, in particular, should be hands-on and interactive in order that students can apprehend subject matter in an enjoyable manner. At Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists-(an elementary charter school), students practice spelling words through HORSE basketball games and incorporate arts and crafts for social studies assignments. The results from implementing the after school program are substantial because they not only enhance students' overall learning capabilities and comprehensions, but in inner cities, they protect young people from getting involved in violence and crime. By extending the school day, students will be in a safe learning environment that will enable them to strengthen their overall performance in school learning.

Abstinence or Safe Sex: How to Appropriately Teach Sex Education in Public Schools

While sex education is growing to be a more controversial issue in today’s society, more and more children are engaging in sexual activity early on, leading to high rates of teen pregnancies and the rise of STDs in the youth population. Kaiser’s recent report shows that “about a third (34%) of young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20 – about 820,000 a year, and approximately four million teens contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD) each year.” Moreover, African American and Latina American teens are reproducing a substantial amount of babies in comparison to other racial groups. Because of these unfavorable trends, educators are seeking new strategies to deal with the sex education dilemma, especially in urban districts. The controversy stems from the extreme ends of the sex education debate, characterized in the comic strip to the left: while some are firmly for safe sex lectures others are blinded from the reality of today’s disingenuous youth and persistently declare to students that sex is an abomination. Inevitably, procreation is a good thing and children should be told that; however at such amateur stage of life, abstinence reaps more advantages. Students should be taught the pros and cons of sexual activity, and actually discuss them amongst each other in order to embrace a more cogent view about sexual activity. Owing to religion, culture etc., everybody has his/her own views on sex education and are entitled to them. However, the way teachers’ educate students should be more precisely and accurately evaluated. Many studies have proven that neither by “throwing condoms in kids’ faces,” nor dictating that “sex will kill you so remain abstinent” produces favorable results among students today. Rather, they compel students to become defiant and more sexually active. Consequently, teachers should learn to hold their personal beliefs aside and use skepticism when educating the future generation of society. Educators should be mindful of the “sexual freedom” promoted so heavily in the culture of today’s society and use recent scientific research to better provide cogent evidence as to why abstinence is the best and safest route to prevent students from harmful psychological or biological effects of sexual activity.

In a recent article by Mary Mills, board secretary for the Niles Pregnancy Care Center, she argues that students are actually more receptive to abstinence-only programs in Berrien Springs, Michigan. The distinction between her coalition’s abstinence-only programs and other comprehensive programs is that they provide more cogent reasons for why abstinence is the safest route for teenagers. They assist the students in listing the pros and cons of sexual activity and abstinence, and the students agree that the latter is the best choice for them to make. The students embrace abstinence because none of them want the slightest chance of contracting any of the life-scarring diseases. Moreover, they argue that “a condom would not protect against a broken-heart” instead abstinence would make the heart grow fonder, demonstrated to the right on an abstinence tee advertised by littleway.com. Rather than confusing students with misinformation or dictating personal beliefs solely, which Mills argues most comprehensive programs do, her programs way more on abstinence but still devote time to contraceptives. The structure of their programs is forum-based and teachers use scientific evidence from recent studies as a means of supporting their arguments. Their goal is not only to promote abstinence but to make teens feel more assertive about abstaining from sexual activity themselves. NPCC is embracing the “$250 million in block grants” that the government offers for such abstinent-advocating programs.

Contrarily, quite a few urban states, such as New York, are rejecting government funding that has been granted since 1998 for abstinence education. One of the primary factors owes to their argument that Bush’s abstinence only plans are “based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence that must be the cornerstone of good public healthcare policy.” Furthermore, opponents contend that Bush’s sex education programs often mislead students. Adam Litchenheld, a senior majoring in political science and African studies states that abstinence programs are too biased and leave out oral sex education which is becoming more popular among teens. “An investigation in Cedarburg revealed that seventh-graders were passing along sexually explicit chats via instant messages, unbeknownst to their parents. School administrators in various districts became alarmed when reports showed that their students did not believe oral sex even counted as “sex,” says Litchenheld reiterating that state sex education is misinforming kids. Mary Mills’ programs, on the contrary, offer a more holistic approach to sex education, teaching teens how to build healthy relationships, increase self-worth and set appropriate boundaries in order to achieve future goals. Abstinence education shares the realities of sexually transmitted diseases and the best way to prevent them. Accurate information about contraception is provided, but always within the context of abstinence as the healthiest choice. The realistic limitations of condoms are shared but without the explicit demonstration and advocacy that characterizes "comprehensive" or the government abstinence-only programs. Union County, in addition, is in the process of updating their sources for sex education classes, in other words getting rid of the 1990s copyright videos with were modernized data.

The Niles Pregnancy Care Center is presently located in Michigan only but offers free and confidential services to the public. Subsequently, teachers can call or do research on their website to learn how to implement similar mechanisms to teaching sex education; moreover, teachers can even refer their students to the website which offers a lot of support and contact references.

Students need to be provided with accurate and up-to-date evidence as to why abstinence is the healthiest choice and educators should hold the discourse between students open-minded while professional all the while. If educators learn how to teach on an adolescent’s level, which includes discussing the media portrayals of sex in addition to health experts’ research on the subject, then they will provide more cogent evidence as to why abstinence is the not only safest, but healthiest route of taking. With re-adaption of our sex education programs, by modeling the Niles Pregnancy Care Center programs, educators can more efficiently dissuade students from making immature and unassertive decisions about sexual activity.

Mix it Up: Employing New Strategies to Teach Multiculturalism in Schools

Often referred to as “the melting pot,” America is considered one of the most diverse nations in the world, providing home and new opportunity to individuals from the all over the surrounding universe. Immigrants’ children are reshaping the demographics of schools by making institutes more multicultural than decades ago. Teachers are creating young people who can benefit from the richness of the many cultures that fill our country. Multiculturalism opens doors; it does not close them. It helps us understand who we are as a nation and how we can learn to work together as a world. Subsequently, teaching students to recognize the fundamental dignity of all people and to respect their unique backgrounds and traditions is beneficial for educational systems throughout the country. Suburban schools like Student Travel And Research School (STARS), provide students with lavish opportunities to travel abroad and learn about different cultures, such as visiting South Africa or exploring Great Britain. This initiative is outstanding in that it diversifies students and fosters greater appreciation for new cultures; however such luxurious opportunity is not available for all students, specifically those residing in urban areas. Therefore, teachers must actively seek new strategies that will promote and better educate multiculturalism for their inner-city students. Recent studies by university professors across the globe and here in America found new techniques to employing diversity in schools. Effective teaching of multiculturalism requires practicing; thus we not only need to lecture students about different cultures but provide hands-on opportunity for them to be efficiently educated.

In an Australian recent study by Deakin University’s associate dean, Fethi Mansouri, he found that since 2001, racist behavior has increased dramatically towards Arab and Muslim background students. Having dealt with great animosity from peers, including “verbal taunting, humiliation, exclusion, and physical aggression,” Arab and Muslim students often feel ostracized at school and their parents ultimately feel excluded. The results demonstrated that these alienated students experienced “higher absenteeism and lower academic achievement.” Along with this study, teachers reported that they had no experience in teaching cultural awareness moreover “did not understand the concept of culture, full stop.” Similar scenarios of racist hostility were promulgated in inner-city Los Angeles Unified schools such as Locke High, Manual Arts, and Washington High school, just this past spring. The controversies grew so large that racial riots broke out often on the school premises causing several police and helicopters to swarm the school. Below, "Two Black students in the forefront run for their lives at Fontana High." Nonetheless, Fethi Mansouri and his research team intervened before similar catastrophes could have occurred in their institutes. The Australian Research Council and the Scanlon Foundation gave funds to develop a program to help teachers better educate and promote diversity issues to students, as well as their parents. Teachers learned to deal with multi-cultural issues through diverse linguistic and cultural trainings and programs and better managed their multicultural classroom. Results of the new initiative were striking: 2 years after Professor Mansouri’s first encounter, the percent of students who “described ethnic relations in their school as good or excellent” nearly doubled to 80 percent. Likewise were the results of the parents who participated in the study. His study favored great results for the students; taking on new initiatives like Mansouri’s team, through multicultural trainings for teachers, could reduce, if not diminish, the racial tensions students display at school.

A relating research-finding was recently conducted in the US. Cynthia Garcia Coll, professor of education and Amy Marks, affiliated with Brown’s University Center for the Study of Human Development operated a study of more than 400 children of first generation immigrants to find that as children grow, their playmate preferences tend to expand across ethnic groups. At end early age, children prefer to play with peers from their own ethnic backgrounds, but are open to playing with other kids,” the study found. “Importantly, the better children feel about their own ethnic identities, the more they want to play with others, regardless of ethnicity.” Subsequently, this has implications to how teachers deal with and promote multiculturalism in the classroom, even at the primary level. If teachers employ diverse and interacting strategies in teaching students about diversity in society, they will have a better understanding about culture and feel more acceptant to students from all kinds of backgrounds, the study suggests. By middle school, children like to play with classmates from any ethnic background because their own ethnic identity has been better formed. Furthermore, by that age, children usually have had more experience in positive co-ethnic settings. A way of supporting this result is through engaging students in multi-cultural activities and promoting interaction with all students, even with different ethnic backgrounds. As a way of resolving segregation amongst students in southern public schools, Central High in Little Rock incorporated diversity-related activities for their primary and secondary institutes. “The younger kids make and exchange differently colored butterflies and then discuss their feelings on interacting with the various colors,” says Brian Freedman, author of Lesson in Color. “Older students draw a map of the school lunchroom, identify where different races usually sit, then venture out of their ‘comfort zones’ and note their movements on the map.” This initiative was very successful and has even spread nationwide. The national, “Mix it Up at Lunch Day” will be held on November 13, 2007. The mission of this program is to get students to interact with students of different ethnicities, of which they would have otherwise not met. The following picture displays some of the positive interaction between students on the international occasion.

Indubitably, the world is not utopian in which all cultures value the same traditions; moreover people from dispersed ethnic backgrounds inevitably do not co-exist in homogeneity. The sole purpose of educating students about multiculturalism and practicing it in the classroom setting is to promote cultural awareness and to enable students to be aware culture differences but at the same time generating respect for people, regardless of their ethnic background. This mechanism essentially discourages negative stereotypes that people have about opposite culture groups and teaches students to judge people based on their individual actions, rather than the group they resemble by physical characteristics alone.

These multicultural efforts can assuage the transitioning into the diverse world that awaits these children. Moreover, through promoting diversity awareness at the primary level segueing into the high school settings, children will develop better social skills with students coming from different ethnic backgrounds and will learn to appreciate the different cultures.