By Kristen Uppercue
From teachers’ strikes to new legislation, education has been a hot topic in West Virginia for the last few years. With a high school graduation rate of 90.2 percent for 2017-2018, West Virginia currently ranks above the national average, according to the West Virginia Department of Education. However, in rural communities where funding is sparse, the school systems tend to suffer, which trickles down and affects the students’ retention and education experiences.
These challenges are not solely found in West Virginia—they are common problems in all of rural America. Roscoe, TX; Vicksburg, MS; and Nashville, TN, have implemented college- and career-focused programs to help their rural communities address these issues that are applicable in the Mountain State. In fact, the P20 program out of Roscoe has been modified to West Virginia’s needs and implemented in Boone County, where it is already making a difference. If tailored to West Virginia’s specific needs, the efforts in Vicksburg and Nashville could provide blueprints for additional programs that would help push the Mountain State’s school systems toward success.
The P20 Program
Emily Perdue, a West Virginia University (WVU) Extension specialist in 4-H youth agriculture, was shocked when more than 1,000 community members from Boone County, WV, crowded into Van High School’s gymnasium to learn about a new program she and her colleagues were hoping to launch there. It was a Wednesday night, and traditionally the community would have been in church. However, local pastors held services the night before, encouraging the community to attend this meeting.
That night, she presented to the community the opportunity to kick-start an experiential program modeled after the successful P20 program she observed in the Roscoe Independent Collegiate School District while she was pursuing her doctorate at Texas A&M University. The P20 program is an early college program, meaning that when high school seniors walk across the stage to receive their diploma, they’ll also be receiving an associate degree from a local college or university for free.
With overwhelming support from the Van community, the West Virginia P20 program launched in the fall of 2018 and is currently supported by a partnership made up of Pierpont Community & Technical College, Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, West Virginia State University and WVU. The program recently received a USDA grant to help fund the research projects and offer a stipend to faculty to support traveling to Van and working with the students.
“For me, P20 is not just an educational program—it really is a community development program,” says Perdue. “Parents, guardians, community members—all those stakeholders are really involved with the school. It is sort of the center of the community, and what P20 does is make the school the center for diffusion of innovation.”
Although the program is still in its early stages, Perdue has already seen a positive impact in the community. While this fall’s freshman class is the first group that will graduate with an associate degree, students in last year’s graduating class were still able to receive a significant amount of college credits. One former Van student who is now attending Fairmont State University told Perdue he was able to receive 27 credits before graduating, allowing him to start college as a sophomore.
“Not all of the students will go and complete a four-year degree, but when they get that associate degree, that can really give them a leg up on finding a job,” says Perdue. “And then if they do want to get a four-year degree, they have the path to do so.”
Metro Nashville’s Career-Based Academies
In 2005, Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) had a problem: their students weren’t engaged in the curriculum. They were bored, which led them to skip classes and get in trouble. The district’s graduation rate was 58 percent, which Donna Gilley, MNPS’ career and technical education coordinator, considered a failure.
“We were failing our kids, and, quite honestly, we were preparing for a state takeover,” she says. “We knew we had to do something big and bold.”
The solution was to implement their own version of career-based academies with an initial goal of engaging the students by tailoring their courses to the students’ interests. Immediately the attendance rates increased and behavior issues decreased. Over time, the district’s academic performance has also increased.
In these career-based academies, students have the opportunity to choose one of 36 different academies, each serving as an umbrella to a variety of pathways stretched across 12 schools. Metro Nashville’s public schools are open enrollment, which means that if a student is interested in an academy offered in a school different than the one to which they were assigned, they can transfer.
When a student reaches the ninth grade, he or she participates in a college visit and a career exploration fair where they are able to sample different academy opportunities. Several times throughout the year, ninth grade students have the opportunity to learn about each pathway offered in the high schools before choosing one that will structure the rest of their high school career. In 10th grade, students take a field trip to a business in their selected industry. In 11th grade, students go on a one-day job shadow with a professional in their prospective field. As seniors, the students take on a capstone project in which they complete a portfolio and a presentation. Seniors also do an extended job shadow, logging at least 40 hours in service learning throughout the year.
MNPS also aligns the academies to fill the needs of the local community. The current academies offered are based on high-skilled, high-wage, high-demand jobs that are available in the region, ensuring the academies line up with the community’s needs. Metro Nashville’s model is organized through three strands: striving to create innovative classroom practices,
making each school feel like a small learning community and focusing on business and civic engagement.
According to Gilley, the most important aspect of this program is to make each academy feel like a family for the students. Rather than feeling lost in the shuffle of a large high school, the academy model allows students to see the same people on a consistent basis.
“They are with that group for three years, and they begin to rely on them,” she says. “Those teachers are there to check on them and be a caring adult who offers support to them, and that’s a very important part of the academy.”
Vicksburg’s College and Career Academies
Facing similar issues, the Vicksburg Warren School District (VWSD) created the Vicksburg Warren College and Career Academies to bridge the gaps between elementary, secondary and postsecondary education. Superintendent Chad Shealy believes that what sets this apart from other efforts is the fact that they are bringing employers into the mix.
“Nobody’s talking to the employers who are actually the purchasers of all the education,” says Shealy. “We took the mindset that all education leads to employment, and we started with our employers in our town.”
Students in this district are more economically disadvantaged than other districts in the state of Mississippi, and the surrounding community is historically industrial based. When Shealy took on the role of superintendent in the 2013-2014 school year, the district’s graduation rate was just under 60 percent, and only 11 of 8,000 students were enrolled in dual credit college courses.
“When we began to talk about access and equity issues, there were a lot of things that were not in the school district to help close those gaps and get the students to where they needed to be for college, career and life,” says Shealy.
To address this issue, he turned toward the community. Together they created a strategic plan that addressed what the community was seeking from its education program, and Shealy quickly realized that some of the things the community considered important for the students were not being provided by the state’s department of education.
They sought to fix that by implementing a junior high Academy of Innovation program. This program, which currently has about 400 participants, allows students to interact with STEM fields at a young age, such as learning to code in multiple languages and building robots. The district didn’t want to lose the momentum built with this training, so it expanded the program into elementary schools and implemented advanced learning programs in the high schools.
Believing all education leads to employment, the district focuses on making sure students are successful in the areas known as the four exit strategies: employment, enlisting in the military or another service organization, enrolling in postsecondary education and entrepreneurship. The district begins building these skills as early as pre-kindergarten.
VWSD also partnered with Ford Next Generation Learning to build the Vicksburg Warren College and Career Academies, centered around the 16 job clusters and split into three sections: architecture, mechatronics and engineering; health and human services; and communications, arts and business. With a 79 percent graduation rate for last year’s seniors, the academy model has drastically changed student experience in the district.
