MPS opens college-access centers in high schools
Advisers bring advice for success to students
“Persistence.” It was the final page of the PowerPoint presentation, and all eyes were on Kimberly Easley.
For the better part of an hour, student advisers Easley and Tre’Quan Martin had run a class of mostly ninth-graders through a primer highlighting much of what they’ll need to do over the next four years to graduate, get into college and succeed there.
Get good grades. Take part in extracurricular activities. Volunteer. Save money. Research colleges and career paths. Fill out the FAFSA. Pursue every scholarship possible.
You could see, for a teenager, how it could all be overwhelming. And then they landed on that final page: “Persistence.”
“That is probably the most important thing we want you to walk away with, because without that you really can’t achieve anything,” said Easley, a first-generation college graduate who weathered her own challenges — poverty, an absentee father, a drug-using mother — en route to a master’s degree from Alverno College.
“I could have used (that as) my crutch ... for not going to college and not being successful,” Easley said.
Instead, she said, “I got a $25,000 merit scholarship I won because I did what I was supposed to be doing — getting good grades, getting involved in things ... all the things we’re telling you all to do here today.”
The recent workshop took place at the new College & Career Center at Barack Obama School of Career and Technical Education, a K-12 school on N. Sherman Blvd. The former music room, now adorned with college and university pennants from across the country, is the first of six school-based centers Milwaukee Public Schools expects to launch in the coming months. The plan is to eventually operate such centers in all of the district’s 20 tradi-
tional high schools.
“It’s incredibly important that we create every opportunity possible for our young people to have access to the tools, the resources and the people who can get them to all these colleges and universities you see (represented) around me here,” MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver said this month at the official launch of the Obama school site.
“People have to understand that by 2018 ... 63% of all jobs are going to require some type of postsecondary education,” Driver said. “And the skills you’re going to need to get into college are the same skills you’re going to need to go to work.”
The new centers will feature banks of computers and Chromebooks, as well as space for workshops.
Staff will offer one-onone counseling and group programs for middle- and high-school students so they are exposed to college and career options early and know what they need to be doing — in terms of classes, assessment tests and financial aid applications — to get where they want to go.
At the centers, students can get help with filling out applications for college, financial aid, scholarships and jobs, and with writing their collegeapplication essays. Center staff will help students explore potential career paths and university programs best suited to those paths.
School-based centers
The new centers represent a change in strategy for MPS, which opened two community-based College Access Centers in 2011 in a partnership with student loan servicer
Great Lakes Higher Education Corp. MPS closed the north-side center last summer and will shutter the south-side site in July. The school-based centers will continue to serve the broader community, said Ericca Pollack, college access coordinator for the district. But the emphasis, she said, will be serving students where they attend school.
“We want to be meeting them on their own territory, so it’s a seamless transition from the school day to working toward college and careers,” she said. “And the partnership allows us to be in the same building, working handin-hand with the school counselors, principals, teachers and parents.”
Staff members at the new centers are intended to bolster any existing college counseling support at the high schools.
The shift will cost MPS about $1.2 million this year. Great Lakes provided $100,000 and General Electric $375,000, the district said.
The move comes as MPS continues to struggle to boost its students’ academic performance and also graduation and college-admission rates — all of which affect students’ long-term prospects for employment, wages, health and other life outcomes associated with higher levels of education.
MPS has many highachieving students, but the college and career focus will be a hard lift for some. Only about one in five high school students in MPS is proficient or above in English language arts, and even fewer hit that mark in math, according to the state’s latest assessment results. The district’s four-year graduation rate stood at about 58%, compared with the statewide average of 88%, for the 2014’15 school year, according to the latest data available from the state Department of Public Instruction.
Likewise, MPS lags the state in the percentage of graduates who enroll in a college or post-secondary program in the first two fall sessions after graduation, 42% compared with almost 61%, according to the state.
And many students, even if they get to college, struggle to stay. Of the more than 900 MPS students who enrolled as freshmen at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the fall sessions from 2008 to 2010, only about one out of four graduated, compared with 42% for the university overall, according to UWM data. It was not immediately clear how many of those who did not graduate enrolled elsewhere.
Martin shared his own experiences on that front with the students at the workshop at Obama school. A 2012 graduate of Washington High School, Martin earned a $25,000a-year scholarship to Morehouse College in Atlanta, only to lose it — by 0.03 points on his grade-point average — as he struggled to balance his academic obligations and Morehouse’s vibrant social and cultural offerings. He rebounded and graduated from UWM this month, and he’s enrolled in a master’s program there next fall.
“There are things that are going to happen, and there are roadblocks you’re going to see, but you have to power through,” Martin said.
An important first step, he told them, is to make use of the new center. He went to one of the off-site locations as a high school senior and credits it with helping him secure scholarships and other funding. He has worked for the community-based centers off and on since 2013 and will serve as an adviser at one of the inschool sites.
“You guys are building your futures right now,” he said. “And we want to be with you every step of the way to get you what you need.”