A look at the "College Now" program

  

NEW YORK (WABC) -- More than 20,000 New York City teens drop out of high school each year. But in an Eyewitness News Extra, we look at a program that takes would-be dropouts and other high school students and puts them on the fast-track to college graduation.

As Education Reporter Art McFarland tells us, the state regents want to expand it in a big way.

One class on medical terminology we visited is a college-level course for high school students.

"It's very different from a high school classes. It's more focused, more intense, more challenging...it will make us...open view to what different courses of college will be like," said student Grace Mercado.

Through a program called "College Now" students at the High School for Medical Science are able to take college-credit courses in the city university system.

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College Now program

"It is an affirmation that they can succeed, that they can do well, and it is finding the road for them," said Daisy Cocco DeFilipis.

"College Now" has become a model for a New York state initiative. The state wants to place some 12,000 high school students, at risk for dropping out of school, into a similar program -- at a total cost of $100 million dollars.

"It is really important and it is very exciting because it indicates a new level of support at the state level," said researcher Melinda Merchur-Karp.

Melinda Mechur-Karp is part of a research team at Columbia Teachers' College, which studied what are known as "dual enrollment" programs.

"Students who took dual enrollment courses had better outcomes in terms of entering college and succeeding once they're there, than similar students who did not take dual enrollment," Melinda said.

The idea is not only to give students real college credits, but to make them feel like college students.

College students Mohammatt Baba and Jennifer Villa both took "College Now" courses at Hostos Community College.

"It allowed me to develop sort of college management skills," Baba said.

"It helped me prove to myself and everybody else that I was able...that I was college material," Villa said.

Officials hope to begin the statewide "dual enrollment" program in the fall of 2009.

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