A valuable experiment

In six weeks, as many as 100 Youngstown city school students will take on the roles of pioneers. They will be the first class enrolled in the Early College High School, an innovative response to the dual problem of high dropout rates and low college attendance rates in the city.
Early College High School is a cooperative effort between the Youngstown City School District and Youngstown State University.
It was Les Cochran, a former president of YSU, who was fond of saying that if the Mahoning Valley were a state it would rank 49th out of 50 in its percentage of college-educated residents. While we disagreed with Cochran on a number of things, we had to agree that the education gap between the Mahoning Valley and most of the rest of the county hurts this area's redevelopment efforts.
Using a community asset
We've also long advocated closer ties between Youngstown State and the city school district, which was one of the reasons we supported construction of a new citywide high school in close proximity to YSU. That, however, was not to be, and so the city schools and the university must do the best they can with what they have.
The Early College is a good first step. It will accept 75 to 100 freshmen for enrollment in a program that will grow by about 100 new class members each year until it has about 400.
These will be students who have obvious academic potential, but, for a variety of reasons, are not likely to go on to college or are even at risk of not completing high school. Statistically, about half of these students would not get high school diplomas, and as such their life's options would be narrow.
Early college will work not only to assure the high school graduation of these students, but will provide them with the equivalent of an associate degree in college at the end of four years.
The only similar program operating in Ohio is in Dayton; another will open in Elyria next year.
Youngstown schools, YSU and the students fortunate enough to be selected to the Early College have an opportunity to redefine educational opportunity in an urban school district and to affirm the principle that education has value.