2 YEC students featured in Ohio education project

Staff report

youngstown

TaQuaesa Toney was shy as a student at Youngtown Early College High School.

David Bresko was a quiet child, always in the corner with a book, his mother said.

Today, Toney is the first person in her family to go to college, studying pre-med at Youngstown State University, and was one of three students to receive a YSU Diversity Award for Undergraduate Achievement for efforts that include organizing a fundraiser for victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Bresko, also a YEC graduate, is studying environmental science at YSU and is fluent in Japanese, Russian and Italian and can read Spanish and Irish/Gaelic.

Toney and Bresko are among 10 Ohio students to be featured in a publication and video project released Monday by the education think tank Ohio Education Matters (www.OhioEducationMatters.org).

“Fast Track: Graduates of Ohio’s Early College High Schools Set a Pace for Early Success” tells the stories of some of the first ECHS graduates, the high school model introduced in Ohio six years ago that allows students who might not otherwise consider college to earn up to 60 hours of college credit by graduation.

Youngstown Early College earned an excellent rating on the latest Ohio Department of Education report card, the only city school district school to mark that distinction.

As educators and policymakers seek out innovations that will better prepare tomorrow’s work force to meet the demands of a global economy, evidence is mounting to support one new model of high school already on the ground in Ohio and slated to expand.

“Fast Track” aimed to discover if students from these schools — most of them minority students, students from underprivileged backgrounds, first-generation college-goers or students for whom English is not their first language — were able to translate their high school experiences into success after graduation.

The project follows 10 Ohio ECHS students into college, where it found they are maintaining the head start their high schools provided.

“When early-college high schools came to Ohio, some people questioned the focus on students who weren’t well-positioned to enter college,” said Andrew Benson, executive director of Ohio Education Matters. “What these stories tell us is that we were right to invest in these young people. These unlikely students not only do well in the supportive atmosphere of early college schools but are leveraging those experiences after graduation to create brighter futures for themselves.”

Ohio has plans to expand the early-college high school model, using a portion of the $400 million received as part of the U.S. Department of Education Race to the Top program. The state plans to set aside $3.5 million of the award over four years to support Ohio’s early-college high schools and to open six new ones.

“The ‘Fast Track’ project provides more affirmation that the ECHS model is a long-term success,” said Thomas J. Lasley II, executive director of EDvention and chair of the Ohio Early College Association.

Ohio Education Matters is a subsidiary of Cincinnati- based KnowledgeWorks. KnowledgeWorks has developed and launched nine early-college schools in Ohio since 2003, partnering with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the state and others to invest $40 million to introduce the model.

EdWorks, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks, manages the ECHS network in Ohio.