• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Students Get a $420,000 Incentive for College

Posted on: Sunday, 29 January 2006, 15:00 CST

By Steven Carter, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Jan. 28--Madison High School in Portland and six other secondary schools in Oregon have won grants to give 70 underachieving students the opportunity to go to college.

Most of the schools have high numbers of low-income students and significant dropout rates.

The idea behind the scholarships, funded by the ECMC Foundation, is to target promising but underperforming students in those schools and guide them toward the possibility of a successful experience in higher education.

"Many of the kids here have never considered the idea of going to college," said Angela Nusom, a teacher at the Centennial Learning Center, an alternative school in Portland and another grant recipient.

"We say, 'Yes, you can. Here's how.' "

The ECMC Foundation, a private group based in Santa Fe, N.M., has pledged $420,000 for the first year of the scholarship program, enough to pay for 70 $6,000 college scholarships. The plan is to identify 10 ECMC scholars at each school. The scholars program is envisioned as a five-year effort with a total cost of $2.1 million in scholarships.

In addition to Madison and Centennial Learning Center, high schools receiving grants are Milwaukie, Woodburn, Willamette in Eugene, Pendleton and Illinois Valley in Cave Junction.

The ECMC Foundation is part of the Educational Credit Management Corp., which guarantees loans that parents take out to finance their children's college educations. The foundation's grants, announced this week, are being administered through the Oregon Department of Education.

Scholarship recipients will be picked from this year's sophomore class by committees of teachers, administrators and counselors at each school, and announced in March or April. The committees will look for students whose grades and test scores don't reflect their capabilities, but who they believe have the potential to be successful in college.

If a student enrolls in college, $4,000 in scholarship money will help pay the cost of the first year. If he or she sticks with college, $2,000 more will become available the second year.

Madison Principal Pat Thompson said the grant comes at a time when Madison is trying to instill the idea in all students that they must be college-ready when they graduate. Madison's plan for the ECMC scholars includes monthly meetings with an adviser, mentoring with a volunteer from the campus college and career center and regular parent information nights about colleges.

As seniors, the scholars will be counseled in college admission test-taking, prepped on financial aid and taken to college fairs.

"We will take as much a personal approach with each student as we can," Thompson said.

Nusom said the new grant should help the Centennial Learning Center boost its rate of college-bound students, which -- with intensified efforts -- jumped from 13 percent in 2004 to 29 percent last fall.

-----

To see more of The Oregonian, or to subscribe the newspaper, go to http://www.oregonian.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Oregonian

More News in this Category