Overview
The mission of GateWay Early College is to provide intellectual challenge and support for urban high school students. The first of its kind in Phoenix, GateWay Early College is a unique learning institution that provides the rigor of college-level work in high school AND critical affective and academic support from a dedicated staff. Read our Stories of Student Success - you are sure to be inspired!
Student Support
A major component of the Early College is the school-wide Advisory program. In addition to academic and career advising as well as individual counseling and guidance provided by the Early College counselor, we also offer ‘Check and Connect,’ a weekly advisory class, literally a place where students ‘check in’ and ‘connect’ with a significant, caring adult and a small group of their peers who will support them as they transition from one grade to the next and on to college. Each group consists of approximately 15 students to allow for more personal contact and academic success. With increasing enrollment and expanding curriculum, this kind of personal attention will be extremely important. To help promote a true sense of community in our school, to encourage student advocacy, and to inspire in students the confidence to go to an adult for support, all professional staff will be trained to facilitate an advisory class.
Early College students also benefit from additional academic support. Extra help is provided for students to master the high school curriculum, prepare for post-secondary experiences, and enroll in college classses at no expense. We provide a College Seminar class for students enrolled in college classes, individual and group tutoring. Most significant, however, is that college tuition is provided by the high school. College textbooks are on loan from the high school.
Success Indicators
Blending high school and college into a rigorous and coherent educational program at GateWay, we are realizing our potential to improve high school graduation rates and better prepare students for family-supporting careers by: changing the structure of the high school years; compressing the number of years to a college degree, and removing financial and other barriers to college.
In this, only our third year of the redesign to an early college model, we have already reached significant milestones:
- attendance rate has soared from 64% ot 94.5%
- drop-out rate has decreased from 30% to 12%
- school label has progressed from 'Performing' to 'Performing Plus'
- recognized for the second consecutive year by the Arizona Department of Education Director's Institute, in 2005 for Leadership and in 2006 for Impact to Classrooms and Learning for our Advisory program which contributed to our improved attendance rate.
- Amanda Patrie, our Service Learning coordinator was one of ten finalists for the prestigious Arizona Teacher of the Year award – the first charter school teacher in our state to receive this recognition.
- Our proudest milestone to date, however, occurred with our 2006 graduating class of just 21 seniors, who collectively earned over 450 college credits along with their high school diplomas. Six of our students also participated in college graduation.
Most integral to these accomplishments, we are convinced, is our location on the campus of GateWay Community College. GateWay is a visible symbol to our local community of dual accountability for student outcomes and academic success; the college and the high school are committed to sharing resources and facilities and coordinating schedules and calendars; integrating the high school in the college’s governance structure; and, co-designing an academic pathway for our students to smoothly transition into college.