A National Imperative

Travis Hill was born in Washington D.C. and dreamed of going to college for as long as he can remember.

The son of a hard-working single mother (his father was murdered when Travis was a boy), Travis passed all of his classes, attended school regularly, and obtained his diploma in the spring of 2009 with college acceptance letters in hand—quite an accomplishment in a city where less than 40% of African American males finish high school. On graduation day, he climbed the stage and spoke confidently about his academic future.

During his freshman year of college this past fall, Travis encountered obstacles. He was assigned remedial courses—semester-long seminars in reading comp, writing, and basic math that didn’t count towards his degree. His counselors assured him that academic weaknesses were common in college, but by the middle of the semester, Travis was having trouble seeing the point. Transplanting himself to the middle of Pennsylvania with ten thousand dollars in debt for the opportunity to earn a handful of credits was not what Travis had in mind. In December, Travis quietly dropped out of school and returned home to Washington D.C. where he is currently looking for work.

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Students like Travis Hill are the product of failed systems. In some school districts the connection between high school and college is seamless. In others, from the streets of DC and Chicago to rural communities in states like Texas and South Dakota, the skills gap between high school graduation and college readiness is staggering. Closing this gap—the gap between what it means to be college eligible and college ready—has become a national imperative. In recent decades, considerable progress had been made in the area of college access, especially among low-income, minority, and first-generation college students. Next up: increasing college completion rates across the board

• Of every 100 students entering college from low-income backgrounds each year, only 15% complete bachelor’s degrees within five years

• College completion leads to an estimated $1-3M wage premium over the life course, creating a two-tiered system of educational inequality that transmits advantages and disadvantages across generations

As a matter of national competitiveness, an engine for economic growth, and a strategy to keep pathways to prosperity open and accessible to all Americans, increasing the share of Americans who convert high aspirations into postsecondary degree attainment ranks among our nation’s most pressing challenges in the 21^st century.  .

The roots of the problem

Over the past decade, researchers have reached a broad consensus that the strongest predictor of college completion is sustained academic rigor in high school coursework, outweighing a host of family, peer, environmental, and financial factors.[1]In high schools serving low-income populations, scarce resources are often directed towards foundational skill building, credit accumulation, and high school graduation, measures that are poorly aligned with college readiness.  On average, students who enter college without having mastered the core academic skills they need to avoid remediation and begin accumulating course credits are unlikely to persist beyond their first year.

Blue Engine joins a national reform effort dedicated to breaking this cycle by recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting a nationwide professional tutoring corps dedicated to academic acceleration in high-need public high schools.  By providing students with high doses of targeted academic instruction (200+ hours per student per year), curricular planning, college exposure, and family outreach, we aim to increase the pipeline of students who master core concepts as underclassmen, enroll and succeed in advanced coursework as upperclassmen, and graduate with the skills necessary to succeed in the world of higher education.

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