College Summit on PBS - a Year Tracking Students
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2008-04-29 17:51
“I am the only child on my mother's side of the family, because my father did not want me as his son. I have no idea why, but at this point in my life I don't care. I don't want anything to do with him.”
What is your guess on the context of why these words were written? Would you have thought of a college admission essay? I wouldn’t have. But, these words are from Phillip Herring’s personal statement—one that he wrote as a student for the nationally recognized nonprofit College Summit.
College Summit, started by 1997 Echoing Green Fellow J.B. Schramm, helps support a culture of college-going in low-income college-ready students. J.B. states, “there is a terrible correlation between what zip-code you come from and whether you go to college or not. That is not going to work for America to be competitively globally.”
One study found that only seven percent of low-income young people earn a college degree. Students from low-income backgrounds who receive A’s go to college at the same rate as students from higher-income brackets who get D’s on the same test. As a leader of a teen center in Washington, D.C. in the early 1990’s, J.B. felt compelled to do something about this. He launched College Summit soon after.
College Summit has designed tools, programs, trainings, and support systems to reverse these statistics. For example, they work with school districts and individual schools to offer a comprehensive curriculum that supports students through the often-confusing and overwhelming college admissions process; they created a website system for students to track their applications; they offer support to educators who lead college entrance programs at their schools; and they organize immersion workshops for students who complete their entire application during the course of the program.
College Summit’s track-record is outstanding: Since 1993, they have trained more than 9,500 student influencers. The high school GPA for these students has been mid-tier: 2.9 (on a 4.0 scale). Yet they have enrolled in college at a rate of 79 percent, significantly above the national college enrollment rate among low-income students of 46 percent.
PBS’s NOW show has tracked a handful of College Summit students in Denver, Colorado over the past year and has shined a bright light on how challenging this work is. There are so many deeply entrenched obstacles in the way that prevent even the most ambitious, determined students from applying for or enrolling in college.
The program aired April 25th and is a fascinating journey on the hopes and challenges of college for low-income students.
Also, be sure to check out the interactive map of high-school graduation rates in our country, your town, or even your zip-code.
