EMERGE-ing from the shadows 

Houston tackles the challenge of getting more high-achieving, low-income students to attend Ivy League and Tier One universities. 

 

During my first high school commencement celebrations in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) in 2009, I shook hands with and congratulated our high school graduates as they crossed the stage to receive their hard-earned diplomas. “Where are you going to college?” I asked each one — and heard surprising answers. Very few indicated they were planning to attend Ivy League/Tier One universities, including our highly accomplished valedictorians and salutatorians.  

My senior staff had become aware of this situation, and, like me, they felt it was worth investigating. Given the academic performance of many of our top-level students and the fact that highly selective colleges and universities offer high-achieving, low-income students so much financial aid, it seemed puzzling that students would choose to attend far less-selective or nonselective institutions (Hoxby & Avery, 2012). 

Some of the phenomenon was understandable. Eighty-three percent of HISD students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and 92% are nonwhite. Many of our families live at a disadvantage and raise their children in communities with limited resources. Even some of our most talented graduates must enter the workforce, at least part-time, to help their families, and, for some, their culture is not familiar or comfortable with the idea of a young person going far from home for an education that’s available in their community. Any of these factors can make it harder for our young people to reach their potential. 

As we dug deeper into the why, we decided to look at where these high performers were attending colleges. We found that many of our academically talented students were attending local colleges, universities, and community colleges, or entering the workforce. In fact, large numbers of our high-achieving, low-income black and Hispanic students mirrored the national norm by being tracked into two-year colleges and open-access four-year colleges (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013).  

To learn more, we did focus groups with high school students who fit into this group and asked if they’d ever considered attending Ivy League or Tier One universities. Some said they were applying to selective colleges, but most said no for a variety of reasons: 

• “Schools ‘like that’ are too expensive and my family is poor.” 
• “My parents would never agree for me to go to college that far away from home.”
• “My friends are here in Houston.”
• “I need to work and go to college at the same time to help support my family.”

 What we heard was consistent with research that shows that for every high-achieving, low-income student who applies to selective colleges, about 15 high-achieving, high-income students apply (Hoxby & Avery, 2012). 

What was eye-opening though was that most of the students didn’t fully understand the value of attending a select, Ivy League/Tier One university. They also didn’t realize that more than 62,000 black and Hispanic high school students every year who graduate in the top half of their high school classes and come from the bottom half of the income distribution don’t get a two- or four-year degree within eight years of high school graduation (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013). If these students had attended the top 468 colleges and graduated at similar rates, 73% could have received diplomas. Where you go to college matters, and we needed to get that message across to our students. 

Ratcheting up rigor 

Students from across the district told us they didn’t feel prepared for highly selective universities because their high schools offered a limited number of Advanced Placement or other rigorous courses. 

They were right. Only three of our 45 high schools offered 15 or more Advanced Placement courses. Most offered one or two; a number of high schools offered no AP courses. Within a month, we began discussing with high school principals how to expand Advanced Placement courses to all high schools. We didn’t want students’ ZIP codes to determine their quality of education or to be a roadblock to their future. 

HISD expanded the number of AP courses, opened those courses to all students, regardless of GPA, and required all AP students to take an AP exam, with the district paying for each exam.  

Beginning with the 2009-10 school year, we emphasized rigor and college preparedness by phasing in an expanded offering of Advanced Placement courses. In that first year, all HISD high schools offered at least five AP courses; all offered at least 10 AP courses by the 2010-11 school year and at least 15 AP courses by the 2011-12 school year.  

HISD opened its AP courses to all students by eliminating the requirements of academic letters of recommendation and a minimum grade point average to enroll in an AP course. All HISD students who took an AP course were required to take an AP exam — with the district paying for the exam.  

Understanding that AP is for the prepared, not the elite, we implemented a more rigorous “springboard” curriculum in our middle schools and in grades 9 and 10. We established AP Saturdays once a semester where teachers could meet and share their successes, and we paid teachers stipends for attending.  

To encourage more students to take AP courses, we created a Cool to Be Smart celebration program (Grier & Peterson, 2005). The celebration is the first Sunday in August before students leave for college. Graduates who have completed five AP courses and exams during high school are invited. Door prizes include $2,500 college scholarships, laptops, and a new car donated by a local auto dealer supportive of our efforts. 

Identifying potential and planting seeds 

In order to help us measure college readiness, we required all 9th-, 10th-, and 11th-grade students to take the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) — and the district picked up the tab. We used the results to help determine each student’s academic strengths and weaknesses and applied it to the College Board’s AP predictor formula to help identify students who should be taking AP courses. In 2011, we also began requiring all 11th graders to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, at district expense, on their own campuses during the school day.  

We also discovered that most of our high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds were poorly informed about selective colleges and universities. Many Houston high schools participate in college fairs, but few Ivy League or Tier One colleges had been invited to attend. In 2010, we began the annual practice of inviting admission officers from some of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities to come to Houston for a daylong and evening meeting with school board members, central office staff, principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and students and their parents. The original meeting was a huge success and is now one of our most eagerly awaited annual events. The meetings have had a tremendous effect on the quality of information that reaches students and their families. They help principals and school staff understand the importance of rigor and how top universities gauge college readiness.  

The beginning of EMERGE 

In 2010, I was approached during a Teach For America banquet by one of our 5th-grade TFA teachers, Rick Cruz. Cruz typifies the reason HISD is one of TFA’s biggest customers. 

An immigrant from Mexico, Cruz now holds a degree from Yale University and has chosen to give back by teaching and inspiring our young people. “I really enjoy teaching, but I want to make an even bigger difference in the lives of my students,” Cruz told me. “I have many 5th graders who are smarter than I was in 5th grade. I first want them to realize what is possible, and then we can work to help them turn their dreams into reality.” 

I challenged him to draw on his own experiences and success to help us find creative ways of helping young people reach their potential. I suggested he focus his efforts on helping me close the gap between affluent and poor students attending Ivy League/Tier I Universities.   He smiled and said, “Great idea.” 

Later during that school year, Cruz and one of his TFA colleagues launched EMERGE, a coordinated effort to identify and help low-income, high-achieving students apply, gain acceptance to, and graduate from Ivy League/Tier One universities. They started their own 501(c)(3) foundation and recruited an oversight board made up of Houston graduates from select universities.  

They began working in two of our 45 high schools, identifying students through test scores, teacher and counselor input who fit their profile but whose performance was not quite at the level necessary to be accepted into and to graduate from select colleges and universities. 

Cruz and a team of volunteers met with their initial group of students on weekends and over holidays. They tutored students on what rigorous high school courses to take, how to fill out applications, how to write meaningful admission letters, how to interview, and how to improve SAT scores. During the summer, EMERGE ran a monthlong SAT boot camp to introduce students to the expectations of the test. Students who attended that boot camp last summer saw their SAT scores rise by more than 200 points. “When I took the test the first time, I didn’t really study because I didn’t know how or what to study,” said José Chavéz-Carballo, an EMERGE senior. “After boot camp, I felt super confident. I even knew the score I needed for my school of choice.” 

At the end of its first year, EMERGE helped an Asian student get into Tufts and four Hispanic students enroll in selected universities — Harvard, Dartmouth, Oberlin, and Tufts. 

That first group of EMERGE students attending college is not only on track to graduate within four years but is thriving. Two of the first graduating EMERGE seniors were part of a handful of students selected to speak and serve as examples at a Harvard University conference on first-generation college persistence. They also have assumed leadership positions on their campuses, such as serving on the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson and acting as student ambassadors. 

“As a small kid, I dreamed about going to college,” said Jesus Moreno, a graduate of HISD’s Chavez High School who is finishing his second year on a full scholarship at Dartmouth. “As I got older, the possibilities seemed slimmer and slimmer because of my family’s economic situation. I was even thinking about dropping out of school in order to get a job and help my family make ends meet. EMERGE rekindled my hope and guided me down the path to college.” 

EMERGE graduate Phuong Ta is in her second year at Tufts under a full scholarship. “The EMERGE program was extremely crucial in making me who I am,” Ta said. “I didn’t really know anything about college or why I should take the SAT or ACT. I didn’t even know what the SAT or ACT were. I would definitely never have had a chance without EMERGE.”

Janet Nieto, a senior who has been part of EMERGE since her sophomore year, has been accepted to Tufts. “EMERGE showed me that there is more beyond my home state,” she said. “EMERGE insisted that I abandon my comfort zone, introduced me to the unbelievable, and has encouraged me to pursue all of my goals.” 

A large part of such successes can be attributed to dedicated resources and support available at top-tier colleges — programs such as summer bridge, reduced class size, tutors and faculty mentors for first-generation students. Another key factor is the focused assistance students receive in high school, which is designed to prepare them for college life. Lessons on how to actively seek and take advantage of resources and support available on campus, how to cope with culture shock, and how to deal with issues of identity in environments with students with diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds are built into the EMERGE programming. This equips students to excel. Many of the nation’s top colleges have taken notice and are now not only actively recruiting EMERGE students but seeking additional partnership opportunities.  

“EMERGE insisted that I abandon my comfort zone, introduced me to the unbelievable, and has encouraged me to pursue all of my goals.” 

— Janet Nieto 

Beginning in 2011, EMERGE expanded into two additional HISD high schools. Their work continued, and at the end of the 2011-12 school year, seven low-income, high-achieving students received full scholarships to select universities.  

That was all we needed to see. In January 2012, I moved Cruz from being a 5th-grade classroom teacher to the newly created position of assistant superintendent of college completion with a $1 million budget and staff of five. The staff is largely minority, and while most are the first in their families to go to college, they succeeded in earning degrees at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Northeastern. They are perfect role models for the young people they serve. 

Great start: Higher expectations 

Cruz and his team now have expanded into 14 of our HISD high schools. Our goal is to add eight schools per year until all 45 high schools are part of the EMERGE family. We have a stretch goal of at least one classroom of low-income, high-performing HISD students from each of our high schools selected into and graduating from select universities, tuition-free, each year.  

That’s not as tough as it sounds: 61 colleges and universities in the United States say they will meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated financial need (Sheehy, 2013). Cruz and his team have decided to focus on these schools as potential destinations for EMERGE students. 

During the college and university early acceptance period in fall 2013, 35 EMERGE students were accepted to elite colleges and universities, including three to Yale, two each to Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, Tufts, Clark, and the University of Texas at Austin. Individual acceptances came from Stanford, Amherst, Pitzer, Texas A&M, Trinity (Connecticut), Baylor, Rice, Lewis & Clark, and Bryn Mawr. All students received maximum financial aid — most of them free rides worth a quarter-million dollars each or more. 

Customized college information can change the enrollment patterns of high-achieving, low-income students — students who would be admissible at the most selective colleges but who tend not to apply to them (Hoxby & Turner, 2013). However, simply arranging for college admissions staff from Tier One universities to visit students in Houston wasn’t enough to sell these students and their parents on attending selective universities. Cruz and his team understand that nothing beats firsthand experience. 

In summer 2013, Cruz and a group of chaperones and 70 high-performing, low-income high school students flew from Houston to Boston for a week-long tour of selective universities in the northeast. Most of these students had never flown or traveled outside Texas. The trip was life-changing for them. Now they’re able to give their families and friends more details about life on a select university campus. Seeing and experiencing these campuses gave students the confidence that they could successfully navigate a college experience at some of America’s best universities. 

HISD is committed to helping our low-income, high-performing students EMERGE from the shadows that often darken their opportunities. We’re providing the same information, encouragement, and support that are readily available to their counterparts who come from homes with economic and cultural advantages. 

HISD students with low incomes but high performance — and even higher hopes — are beginning to understand that attending and graduating from a select college or university is not a quixotic quest but a very possible dream. EMERGE has focused and expanded our strategies. We are doing more than just changing the lives of high-achieving, low-income students and their families: Year after year, a successful EMERGE will brighten Houston’s future by seeing that our most promising students can live up to their potential. 

References 

Carnevale, A.P. & Strohl, J. (2013). Separate and unequal. Washington, DC: Georgetown University, Georgetown Public Policy Institute.  

Grier, T. & Peterson, K. (2005, April). It’s cool to succeed. Educational Leadership, 62 (7), 65-68. 

Hoxby, C.M. & Avery, C. (2012). The missing “one-offs”: The hidden supply of high-achieving, low-income students. Working paper #18586. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w18586 

Hoxby, C.M. & Turner, S. (2013). Expanding college opportunities for high-achieving, low-income students. SIEPR Discussion Paper No. 12-014. Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.  

Sheehy, K. (2013, September 18). Colleges that claim to meet full financial need. U.S. News &  World Report. http://bit.ly/1nfeNT1 

 

Citation: Grier, T.B. (2014). EMERGE-ing from the shadows. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (8), 52-56.