A change in state law meant to rein in the cost of Colorado high schools that allow students to stay longer to earn college credit has forced the Denver district to slow down its expansion of the model.
District officials were proposing adding another “early college,” as the schools are known, to the seven that already exist in Denver Public Schools. But on Thursday, Antonio Esquibel, the district’s executive director of early college who submitted the application to open the school, confirmed he was withdrawing it.
“With the change in statute, it will force us to have to rethink what early college is and what it should look like in Denver Public Schools,” Esquibel said.
Denver’s seven early colleges are:
- Southwest Early College (charter)
- CEC Early College
- West Early College
- Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Early College
- High Tech Early College
- Manual High School
The school board was scheduled to vote on whether to approve the school, temporarily called Denver Early College High School, at a meeting Thursday night. It could have opened as soon as 2019, either as a brand new school or a replacement for a low-performing school. The application said it would “provide all students the option to enroll for an additional one to two years to obtain credits leading toward or culminating in an associate’s degree.”
But the change in state law essentially prohibits early college students from staying in high school for a fifth or sixth year for the sole purpose of taking free college courses.
A bill lawmakers approved earlier this month defines early colleges as schools where students earn an associate’s degree or at least 60 college credits alongside their high school diploma. The bill specifies that the curriculum “must be designed to be completed in four years.”
Lawmakers in the Colorado House and Senate passed the bill, but it has not yet been signed into law by the governor. Denver district officials did not testify against it publicly.
Lawmakers wanted to change the law because they feared the early college model would become too expensive. Currently, the state pays for early college students who stay in high school for a fifth or sixth year at the regular per-pupil rate, which varies by district. In the case of Denver Public Schools, it’s $7,939 per student this year, according to state budget analysts.
There are currently 20 early colleges in Colorado, up from five in 2009. While only 315 students this year were in their fifth or sixth year, trends indicated that number would grow. Last year, there were 224 students in a fifth or sixth year. In 2013, there were only 84.
Denver’s proposed early college was based on a six-year model. At a presentation to the school board last week, Esquibel said most Denver students would likely earn just 12 college credits during their first four years of high school, and then stay for a fifth and sixth year earning 24 credits each year to get them to a total of 60, which is typically how many credits a student needs to earn an associate’s degree.
Most students in Denver’s early colleges are students of color from low-income families who are on track to be the first in their families to go to college, Esquibel said.
“Unfortunately, our students of color don’t have as much access or opportunity to take college courses or, for that matter, enroll in a college,” he told the board. “So the concept of an early college was created specifically for that reason: to buck the trend.”
School board members praised the idea.
“We have these age-old timelines that, for some reason, this is how we believe young people should go through school,” said board president Anne Rowe. “What you’ve been able to do is really push the model. … That out-of-the-box thinking is so important.”
Given the impending change in state law, Esquibel said he and other district officials will spend the next several months figuring out how to make the early college model work in four years instead of six. The leaders of other Colorado early colleges have said most of their students complete the requirements in that time, and Esquibel said Denver officials have been studying early colleges in Texas whose students do it in four years.
“It’s a little daunting, but we’ve seen schools across country doing it,” he said.
Esquibel said he hopes to re-submit the application for a new early college in the fall.
The district will have to reconfigure its six existing early colleges, as well, he said. (The seventh early college is a charter school.) However, high school juniors and seniors currently enrolled and planning to stay for a fifth or sixth year won’t be affected by the bill. It allows districts to receive full state per-pupil funding for those students in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.
This story was originally posted on Chalkbeat by Melanie Asmar on May 17, 2018. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
