When a High School Goes to College

Abstract

his beautiful hybrid child was born in 2001. Its parents-Broward County (Florida) Public Schools, the nation's sixth largest district, and Broward Community College-collaborated to create The College Academy as one response to the national call to reinvent traditional public high school education. The urgency of reforming secondary was brought to the national forefront in 2001 when the National Commission on the High School Senior Year published its findings and confirmed what many college leaders were already suggesting-too often the senior year of high school is wasteland (Riley, par. 8). In introducing the report, former secretary of Richard W. Riley described the senior year as a lost opportunity: year where we have significant drift and disconnection (par. 8). Secretary of Education Rod Paige followed the report with an October, 2003, US Department of Education summit to initiate and promote national dialogue about transforming high schools and creating seamless transitions into and through postsecondary education (US Department). The Broward County Public School District, enrolling over 276,000 students and employing more than 15,000 teachers, agrees that one-size-fits-all approach is an ineffective model and has worked to expand student options by creating charter, magnet, technical, and virtual schools-and full-time dual-enrollment