Foundation seeks to help students prepare for college

For many of the students at Boston College, the question was not whether they would attend college, but where. The goal of high school graduation, however, remains beyond the reach of many of the nation's disadvantaged. Many private institutions have made advanced education for "low-income and minority youth" a top priority, but the question remains whether such efforts will be successful in the long term.

The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, recently stated that over 50 percent of all new jobs in the United States will require a high school diploma. The Bureau also reported that only about 20 percent of low-income black and Hispanic students earn a form of a degree after high school. And thus, the disconnection between advancement and education for inner-city students will only worsen in the near future.

Paul Schervish, director of BC's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, said that higher education needs diversity and would "love to have minorities enter and succeed," but that there are not enough students who have the resources to do so. Private efforts are dealing with this problem in different ways.

The Boston Globe reported on Nov. 18 that Northeastern University has attempted to battle this issue by instituting a one-year program for Boston public high school graduates. Such a program aims to ease the transition into college life for such students by means of extra tutoring, internships, and required time on campus. Schervish said that many universities, such as BC, have decided to not employ tactics similar to Northeastern's "remedial work." Instead, he said he envisions the public education system bettering itself for a greater population of students.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent $4 billion in the education system, divides its money between scholarships and funding for high schools. The foundation aims to add its considerable weight, in terms of money and ideas, to improve outcomes in grades K-12, thereby improving access to higher education and jobs. "Completing high school ready for college is a key transition point in the path out of poverty," Melinda Gates told The Chronicle for Philanthropy.

The foundation sees education as a socioeconomic "equalizer." Its goal, stated in its published mission statement, is for 80 percent of students, specifically focused on low-income and minority students, to graduate from high school prepared for college. As reported in The New York Times on Nov. 11, the Foundation announced its agenda for the upcoming year in a Seattle-based meeting that day. This year's agenda focuses on better teachers' salaries and training, as well as generating "a national set of learning standards for high schools."

Schervish said, though, the public education system is stuck in a cycle: The quality of education is so poor because the public schools have a monopoly over government money and the students' lives lack parental involvement. Public schools do not face competition, so they do not have to provide incentive to significantly improve their curriculums. In addition, the school system cannot rely on parental support if the system is to improve.

"I would challenge the Foundation to apply their moral, intellectual, and financial leadership to break into a new education model," Schervish said. He named his own education model The Grand Experiment. Analogous to the food stamp system with which consumers can shop at the grocery store of their choosing, students would use their voucher for a good education at their choice of school.

The existence of the student's choice is extremely important because competition is established. When schools realize they need to offer higher education at a lower cost, there is no choice but to improve the quality of instruction. The use of education vouchers would take the power from the authorities and reinstate it to the students, he said.

Chester E. Finn, Jr. told CNN that the new agenda has a praiseworthy goal and spirit but ignores the "political and policy environments" of the schools. Schervish said, "The resistors [to changing the current public education system] compromise their care for the kids to keep the reformers they do not like unsatisfied."

"The kids need to be made the focus" in order to solve the problems of education, he said.