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Blooming Achievers

December 10, 2007

By Ann Geracimos - It may take a village to raise child, but it can take a small fortune to educate one — and that isn't only because of rising college tuition fees.

The effort is especially difficult when it concerns young people who need nurturing to stay focused on academic achievement — students from low-income homes in underserved neighborhoods where role models often are absent and college degrees — and even high school diplomas — can be rarities.

In District Wards 7 and 8, only one in three students finishes high school within five years. Of those who do, only one in 20 earns a college degree within five years, according to several nonprofit organizations aiming to rewrite those statistics.

An investment of $122 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to aid the efforts of the D.C. College Success Foundation and the D.C. College Access Program has given a dramatic boost to their goal. The money, directed through the College Success Foundation, establishes a D.C. Achievers scholarship program in six public high schools that is unusual in scope. In addition to contributing money for five years of higher education for qualified students, the program subsidizes guidance personnel as well.

The model for the D.C. partnership operation comes from the Washington State Achievers Program, in the home state of philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose wife, Melinda, is a co-chairman of the foundation along with Mr. Gates and his father, William H. Gates II.

"We pay the [college] directly and put the last dollar in after the student gets other monies available, including whatever the [college] would normally do," says Herb Tillery, executive director of the one-year-old College Success Foundation. Additionally, a university has to agree to provide a mentor for the students in freshman and sophomore year, ideally a senior upperclassman, faculty member or member of the administration.

"We want to be sure the kids are taking the right courses and being properly socialized as they enter into the college experience, which is where most kids fail," Mr. Tillery says.

Realistically, he adds, the foundation would be pleased if 75 percent graduated in five years, "knowing there are life situations that could derail them."

With just three weeks' notice in the spring, 284 juniors applied for the program, which ended up taking 201 students — two-thirds of them young women — from Anacostia, Ballou and H.D. Woodson senior high schools as well as Friendship Collegiate Academy, Maya Angelou-Evans Campus and Thurgood Marshall Academy public charter schools. A second group of Achievers will be named in March from among those who applied by the late October deadline.

Academic performance and SAT scores aren't as important as what Tami Breckenridge, a D.C. Achievers program officer who works with the schools, calls the "potential" of a student based on "evidence of persistence, a realistic self-concept and ability to set long-term goals."

The model for grading these qualities was developed by University of Maryland psychologist William Sedlacek. Required essay questions are meant to get a student to think seriously about himself and his long-term goals.

"We spend a lot of time coaching them on leadership definitions," Ms. Breckenridge says, explaining how leadership can be shown in caring for siblings or working with community groups.

This fall, the first class of Achievers, who now are seniors, worked with their advisers to turn their essays into the personal statement required by most institutions of higher learning as part of the application package now being sent to five to seven colleges chosen by the students. The deadline for most submissions is this week.

Achievers are catapulted into a busy round of events and attention geared, with good intent, to making them college material. Opportunities vary with the resources at each of the six schools, but because few, if any, students have spent much time away from home, it was mandatory this summer that all attend a four-day, three-night session sponsored by the College Success organization at American University. There also was an opportunity to spend three weeks in residence on the University of Maryland campus — with time at home on weekends — and taking college classes was voluntary. Transportation and expenses were provided for both.

Twenty-eight of the 46 Achiever students at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Ward 8 signed up for the campus experience. That was not too surprising, given that every member in each of the school's three senior classes to date had been accepted to a college. Marshall also has been ahead of other open-enrollment District high schools in reading and math scores.

Even so, counselor Schelly Mitchell used care in her approach. "I'm not a dreambuster," she says. Hired to guide Thurgood Marshall Achievers through the application process in line with the school's own college counselor, she cautioned her charges "to be realistic about their choices and not go overboard." Coaching includes advising students on how best to ask for letters of recommendation.

Attending college fairs locally is routine, and visits to faraway campuses are sometimes supported by school funds. Seeing that downtown Burlington, Vt., home of the University of Vermont, was a regular place with name-brand stores surprised and thrilled Darrion Willis, 18, who calls the relatively rural setting "gorgeous" and "different in a good way." With plans to earn both an undergraduate degree in business and a law degree later, he also has West Virginia and George Mason universities on his list.

Rayvone Brown, 17, who plans a major in computer science, has an equally positive attitude toward the future following participation in the summer residence option, which he calls "awesome. ... I think I'm going to like college a lot."

Christol Flowers, 17, whose sister attends Trinity University, has applied only to area colleges to stay near home. She hopes to become a social worker.

"I love to give advice, and I love to hear it," she says with enthusiasm, the excitement of Achiever status written all over her face.