Blueprints for college success

AS THE Boston Public Schools face the fact that two-thirds of their high school graduates who attend college don't finish, a blueprint for progress is being minted by the engineering school at the Hyde Park Education Complex. In 2005, it began a dual-enrollment partnership with the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, a private two-year college in Boston. Juniors and seniors can take calculus and other college-level math, science, and language courses at Ben Franklin, get help with the maze of financial aid, and become confident in this critical hallway toward adulthood.

Marc Abelard, the engineering school's director of partnerships, said 78 students have taken part, most of them first-generation college-bound kids who contend with single-parent homes and discouraged peers. Some leave high school with about a dozen college credits. "A lot of studies say this is the only way the US is going to stay competitive, by infusing a great deal of the college experience into the high school experience," Abelard said. "Dual enrollment makes sure they don't have to take remedial math or English in college, which demoralizes them."

Students in the program immediately understand commitment, with 12 hours a week more study and travel time than average students. That is 12 hours they choose not to be distracted by friends or dulled by television. The interim president of Ben Franklin, Stephen Lozen, said that with the help of the Boston Foundation, the school focuses on students who are "middle of the road, not on the fast track," because that is where most urban students are.

Lozen said participants receive both "severe mentoring" and the "soft skills" of time management and how to become self-starters. He wants Ben Franklin to help make college graduation an assumption for Boston Public Schools students - not the stretch it clearly is, based on the landmark study done for the school system and the Boston Private Industry Council by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. The failure to graduate was particularly disastrous at the two-year college level, where only 12 percent of the Boston system's graduates earn a degree.

Ben Franklin has expanded the dual-enrollment program to include 120 students from the Boston schools. The Engineering School this year expanded its partnerships to include a week of study for 10 students at Middlebury College. It is working on another college-readiness program at Harvard.

If dual-enrollment students from the Engineering School begin to earn college diplomas in large numbers, this could be a case where one school plus one school adds up to a multitude of graduation ceremonies.