Founded in 1998, Houston-based YES Prep has set the pace for college completion among graduates of so-called “no excuses” charter schools. Among its 1,700 alumni, 72 percent are either still persisting in college or have graduated. YES Prep’s six-year college-graduation rate has reached 41 percent—five times the rate for low-income Houston students and more than four times the national average. The best may be yet to come: the class of 2010 has reached the end of its fourth year of college, with 73 percent of its members either earning a diploma or still working toward graduation. The network’s most extraordinary accomplishment may be its graduates’ the high level of academic preparation. While more than one in four of all college students nationally and half of college-bound Texans take remedial classes in college, fewer than 15 percent of YES Prep graduates need extra help (the report, it should be noted, does not include including student attrition rates. “No excuses” schools including YES Prep have been criticized, fairly and unfairly, for “counseling out” students). However YES Prep insists academic readiness alone is not the “x factor” underlying its impressive college-completion rate. “Non-academic skills were often the determining factor in our students’ success,” says the report, which also stresses the importance of college partnerships. “When our graduates matriculate to schools outside of Houston and receive university-based social and academic support, over 70 percent graduate within six years.” YES Prep admits its approach to supporting graduates through college was, at first, almost entirely experimental. Without an established research base or complimentary models to follow, the charter network assumed college access would be a stumbling block, but college affordability has been a significant issue. Such early misperceptions came with a price: the schools’ six-year graduation rate fell as low as 34 percent for the Class of 2007. “With this paper,” the report notes, “we aim to share provable methods for changing what have for too long been tragically static outcomes in hopes of increasing college access and graduation rates for all students across the U.S.” As college-prep charters send more “first generation” students to college, supporting alumni to and through college has become an increasingly common page in the “no excuses” playbook. And as YES Prep’s experience shows, high schools that want to help the low-income kids succeed in college need to keep at it long after their students leave the nest.
SOURCE: YES Prep Public Schools, College Initiatives Redefined: A Responsive Approach to College Counseling and Alumni Support (Houston, TX: YES Prep Public Schools, June 2014).
