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An organization that promotes higher education opportunities for first-generation and other under-served college-bound students. A variety of initiatives and resources have been developed to achieve this goal, including the College-Bound Coalition, The College Access & Opportunity Guide; CSO College Center online clearinghouse of college programs and admissions information and the College Counseling Outreach Initiative

Study of select Woodrow Wilson Foundation and Middle College National Consortium Early Colleges and how high school and college partners strive to align secondary and post-secondary standards with college readiness.

Isn't this what MCHS and ECHS do with their students to ensure college readiness and success? Excerpt: "Some institutions do require students to participate in specific programs-and they've seen positive results. For instance, Brazosport College, in Lake Jackson, Tex., began to require first-time students to take a student-success course in 2007. It teaches time-management skills and proper study habits. As a result, the fall-to-spring retention rate for students who completed the course jumped to 89 percent, compared with the baseline rate of 66 percent. Those students passed remedial courses at a higher rate than before, and as a result were more likely to stay enrolled in college, the report says."

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, Carey (policy director of think tank Education Sector) argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education.

Miami Dade, which has more than 90,000 students, for example, decided to require those who place into developmental courses to take a "success" course that teaches basic study and time-management skills. That requirement helped to double graduation rates for the college's minority students. Valencia, seeing data that students who added classes late had poor completion rates, instituted a policy barring students from registering for classes that have already met. To maintain some flexi­bility, the college introduced "flex start" sections, which begin a month into the semester. Another excerpt: Faculty-Led Efforts Faculty buy-in is another crucial component to colleges' meeting their completion goals. Finalists for the Aspen Prize all had faculty members strongly dedicated to teaching-and conducting research on teaching methods. "What we heard a lot from faculty was, 'How can I find better ways to deliver instruction to my students?'" Mr. Wyner says. As part of the tenure process at Valencia, full-time faculty develop three-year "action research projects" on teaching techniques that involve training courses, advisers, and peer-review panels. The faculty members test teaching strategies, assessing students' performance against that of control groups. Ideas that work find a place in the classroom. In one project, a professor tried giving individual lab assignments to developmental-reading students, rather than a blanket assignment for all students. The new method worked better, the professor determined, and all sections of that course on Valencia's East Campus now use that model of instruction. Valencia is not the only college where faculty drive the innovation. At Miami Dade, faculty members banded together to improve students' pass rates in math, choosing and testing several new teaching methods. Some showed promise, such as testing algebra students more often on smaller amounts of material, a practice that continued.

by Ron Tanner, November 6, 2011 This article echoes some of what Geoff ? said several years ago. When I began teaching a course called "Writing for the Web," three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most of the 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the Internet, and even less about how to communicate effectively online. The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster, Twitter, Facebook. Given that the average 18-year-old spends hours each day immersed in electronic media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren't kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games? But video games do not create savvy users of the Internet. Video games predate the Internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system, related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and Xbox. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself-who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The Internet's chief similarity to video games is that both siphon off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the Internet. As a delivery system for television, film, and games, the Internet has proved itself a premier source of entertainment. And that's all that most young people know about it. Why wouldn't we educate students in sophisticated uses of the Internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world's time and attention? I'm not talking about a course on "How to Understand the Internet" or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (although that is useful, obviously

The Community College Research Center (CCRC) is part of the Insitute on Education and the Economy, Teacher's College, Columbia University. From their site: "CCRC"s mission is to conduct research on major issues affecting community colleges in the United States and to contribute to the development of practice and policy that expands access to higher education and promotes success for all students."

The Gateway to College National Network offers two major programs: for the 1/3 of high school students who earn their diploma but are not academically prepared for college work (Project DEgree) and for the 1/3 who don't graduate (Gateway to College).

Announcements about students from Greer Middle College Charter High School.  Scholarship winners, pageant winners, blood drive, and participation in the MCNC Student Conference in California.

Resources on College and Career Readiness (CCR) Act Pilot, including Conley's Comprehensive Model. These resources are on the site for Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reports on the Illinois College and Career Readiness Act and other resources available on the site.

A San Francisco-based college access program that helps students finish high school and become the first in their families to graduate from college. The program takes a long term, individualized approach, making a 10 year commitment to each student, starting the summer after sixth grade through college graduation. The program serves more than 200 San Franciso-based students each year.

By David T. Conley, published by Jossey-Bass, 2005. From summary: Describes many of the problems facing ill prepared college-bound students and outlines potential actions that should enable more students to go on to postsecondary education and do well in entry-level college courses.

By Jane Stancill in the Education section of the North Carolina NewsObserver.com, December 31 2010. "North Carolina has become the nation's incubator of early college high schools, with one-third of the total in the United States," 71 schools with 15,000 students. In 2011, NC State University will launch a new early college high school. This article provides background on the ECHS.

Douglas A. Guiffrida writes about Theories of Human Development That Enhance an Understanding of the College Transition Process, 2009. Could have implications for SLI curriculum development. "To encourage the moratorium that Erikson believed is necessary for establishing secure identities, colleges need to provide academic curricula that encourage students to think about the issues most important to their identity development, which can include in-depth study of diverse religious beliefs, political ideologies, career opportunities, and gender role attitudes. College student affairs personnel should provide social opportunities that encourage students to connect with a diverse range of peers and activities to test and challenge both new and old ways of thinking about themselves and their place in the world."

Students at risk of dropping out have shown great capacity. See a news report about Challenge Early College High School and how it has helped to retain students at risk of dropping out.

Paper examines the mismatch between high school preparation and college expectations; how high schools should prepare students for college success.

Alexander Russo's This Week in Education, June 22, 2011 chart on College Haves and Have-Nots with great graphics showing the people-side of the data.

A Jam on Scaling Early College on November 2, 2011 from 11am to 7pm.

This online toolkit, published by Jobs for the Future, demonstrates how Hidalgo Texas built a successful early college program "where very student earns college credit before graduating from high school."

Research & Reports page. Available resources include: research reports, tools, newsletters and policy briefs related to education reform and workforce development at local, state and federal levels.

In pre-Jam materials, participants recommended these specific publications: Nodine, T. (2009). Innovations in college readiness: How early colleges are preparing students underrepresented in higher education for college success. Washington, D.C. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education & Jobs for the Future and Hoffman, N., & Vargas, J. (2010). A policymaker's guide to early college designs: Expanding a strategy for achieving college readiness for all.