“College for free!”
A teacher at Queens’ Academy for Careers in Television and Film High School stood before her 9th grade advisory class with a question. What would it mean to you if you could graduate after 14th grade, instead of 12th grade? she asked.
“College for free!” three students chimed in from the back of the class. “Right,” said Leigh Pafford, standing in front of the whiteboard. It would mean each student would be eligible for both a high school diploma, and the option of also getting a two-year associate college degree.
The question was not rhetorical. Their 11-year-old career and technical education school in Long Island City is planning to convert into an early college high school by the time this freshman class is ready graduate. The school’s 9th graders would be the first class to participate.
Ninth grader Tyrese Taylor said he already had a plan. He would get an associate college degree from his high school first and then apply to Oregon State University for a bachelor’s degree in film, thus saving his family two-years worth of tuition, and ensuring he would be in a supportive environment for the beginning of college.
In the six-year degree model, students are able to take college-equivalent classes for general topics like statistics, mathematics, and English and earn dual credits, both high school credits and college credits, before 13th grade at the high school. In grades 13 and 14, students will go to the partnered college campus to take degree-related classes. The Academy for Careers in Television and Film is currently in discussions with LaGuardia Community College nearby to hammer out a partnership.
The model was first adopted at the high-profile Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-Tech) in Flatbush Brooklyn in 2011, a school partnering with the New York City Department of Education, the New York City College of Technology and IBM, the multinational information technology company based in New York. Barack Obama visited the school during his presidency and heralded it as a model for the future.
There are seven existing 9th through 14th grade high schools in the New York City, which are all Career and Technical Education (CTE) schools, offering vocational education in various disciplines, including science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Queens school offers film and television production training. Internationally, more than 100 schools in the U.S., Australia, Morocco, and Taiwan have introduced this model.
The idea is a relatively new one for NYC, so there is not much local data on how students have fared after graduation. Only two schools have had students graduating from the 14th grade so far. Even so, the principal The Academy for Careers in Television and Film felt strongly that this would be a positive move, for a variety of reasons.
“Students could potentially benefit from having a better supported transition between high school and college,” said Principal Edgar Rodriguez. “And establishing this program will generate sort of the infrastructure to provide that.”
Pafford believes the initiative will help students adjust to college better and finish their degrees. “As a teacher,” she said, “I only have them for 12th grade now, and then I say, ‘Good luck and goodbye.’” After high school, she said, many students drop out of college because they have trouble adapting without support to the new environment.
This move for a four-year high school to transition into a six-year school is unusual, said Claire Riccardi, the City University of New York’s director of the Early College Initiative. She helps develop and design curriculums for the six-year programs. More often, the six-year schools are started from scratch, not converted.
But, Riccardi said the city doesn’t want to build new 9 to 14 schools because there are enough seats for children and also not enough space for new schools.
ACTvF and another CTE school in the Bronx, Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, are expected to be the first two schools transitioning into early college schools.
Riccardi said ACTVF is “a natural fit” because the school is well established and quite successful, with a high graduation rate, and a rigorous film and television production specialty. Its graduation rate is over 95 percent, compared to the city’s average of 76 percent.
According to a case study done by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College at Columbia University, students at CTE high schools who take dual-credit classes are more successful in college. The report also indicates the more dual-credit classes the better for students. CTE students who completed two or more dual enrollment courses were more likely to enroll in college full time and had higher first-term GPAs than students who completed just one dual enrollment course.
“We are right now in conversation with LaGuardia,” said Rodriguez, referring to its discussions to partner with LaGuardia Community College, a CUNY college nearby in the same neighborhood, Long Island City.
According to Riccardi, location is the key factor when she considers the partnership between the high school and the college. She said, “students are often taking high school classes and college classes at the same time. So they need to commute between two campuses.”
“It makes the most sense,” said Ganine Butler, mother of ninth grader Tyrese Taylor, about the 9 to 14 model. “I know he wants to get a 4-year degree later. It would be beneficial for us to put the money to the latter part versus the prior part.”
According to Butler, her older son, who went to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice years ago, struggled with the tuition. He worked full time to help pay tuition, and didn’t finish school. “It was too much,” she said.
“I was very jealous,” Maria Palafox, a senior at ACTvF, when she heard the school may transition into an early college model. It’s too late for her, of course. She has applied to City Tech and wants to continue to study film in college. “I literally went to Edgar and asked him, ‘Why can’t we have this?’”
According to Heather Carr, the guidance counselor at ACTvF, it will be a big economic relief for families if their children pursue a free associate’s degree with the high school. For a New York City resident, LaGuardia Community College tuition would be $4,800 per year, an astronomical sum for many of their low-income families.
According to Rodriguez, the new program would also be a huge boon for undocumented students. “The program makes them eligible to transition seamlessly from the high school coursework into an associate’s degree without ever having to file federal financial aid or ever having to reveal their immigration status,” he said.
The next step for Rodriguez is to secure a CUNY college partnership that would be as attractive to as many of his students as possible.
