Metro West Middle College pilot program: an embedded case study
Date
2008
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Abstract
In the early 1970's, a cooperative educational concept known as middle college was started to help underachieving and disenfranchised New York City public school students understand that college is an attainable goal. In 2004, the Career and Technical Education high school in Harris County Public School district, Harris Tech, and Metro West Community College (MWCC), all pseudonyms, joined to create their own middle college focusing on Career and Technical Education students. This pilot project, known as Metro West Middle College (MWMC), operated with the goals of helping students transition between secondary and postsecondary institutions, and increasing the level of collaboration between the two agencies. This research used an embedded case study qualitative methodology to investigate the levels of success of these goals. Three cases were embedded in the overall case study of MWMC. The first case consisted of state and district level administrators who were interviewed regarding statutes and policies that affected the operation of middle colleges. Administrators and faculty members from both Harris Tech and MWCC were surveyed in the second embedded case to provide the institutional context to the project. The third case was comprised of students who enrolled in MWMC during the first year of operation and parents of students who enrolled during the first two years. Data were compared to a set of six design principles developed by the Middle College National Consortium in 2005. The MWCC project planners addressed all of the design principles in general, but the data collected in this study showed that several key elements were missing. As a result, my research concluded that state-level middle college funding mechanisms were missing or contradictory, the program mission and goals were not clearly formulated and thus were not well communicated, collaborative program governance strategies were not used, the student selection process was not explicitly defined, and a formalized, ongoing student support structure was not provided. While these missing pieces had a deleterious effect on the overall success of the program, levels of student success were generally high, and most stakeholders reported a strong desire to continue developing this type of program.
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Subject
college transition
high school reform
Metro West Middle College
middle college
postsecondary education options
community college education
secondary education
vocational education
case studies
pilot projects