Middle College High School (MCHS), a public secondary school committed to meeting the academic needs of marginalized populations of youth opened its doors on the LaGuardia Community College campus in New York City in 1974. As a form of accelerated learning, MCHS was created to provide a seamless transition between secondary and post-secondary education by providing a continuum that uses innovative curriculum and teaching methods. These principles paired with high school and college partnership, have the potential to produce an enriching educational opportunities for students who had been consistently pushed in the margins previously.
Within the decade of successfully operating the first school, the Ford Foundation provided seed money in order to replicate the academic success and cost savings experienced at the LaGuardia campus. Using the first as a model, more than twenty Middle College High Schools were created college campuses throughout the country that would afford additional students the opportunity to earn as much of the first two years of college credit while enrolled in high school.
With the financial support of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund in 1993 an informal group of Middle Colleges across the country came together to form the Middle College National Consortium (MCNC). MCNC was immediately defined as a professional development organization for secondary and post-secondary public-sector educators. MCNC has grown over the years to provide technical assistance and support to new and established schools in order to provide educational reform method that is reciprocally cost effective for students, families and colleges, as well as, state and federal government.
In 2002, MCNC launched its Early College Initiative again with the support of the Ford Foundation, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Early College Initiative works to redesign existing Middle Colleges, as well as, supports the opening of new schools that offer high school students the opportunity to have an accelerated course of study; thereby, affording them access to earning an Associates degree or two years of college credits at no cost to students.
A recent study found that Middle College High Schools help to contain college costs by having schools that adhere to their design principles have consistently shown a 90% success rate with high school students taking college courses and with its graduates earning an average of twenty-seven college credits. Such an effort helps to aid in slashing instructional costs and costs to students.
References
New Study Finds Middle College National Consortium Principles Effective in
Improving Success in College.
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