NCLR: Staying In School & Getting The Most Out If It.

Dropping out of high school greatly limits future opportunities available to students, an especially important point in Latino communities given recent studies showing that the Latino high school drop out rate is twice the national average. That’s why Ford Motor Company Fund and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) have partnered to develop a program that promises a bright future for all students, in the hopes of keeping them in school.

The new program, known as the NCLR Escalera Advanced Educational Design (NEaED), uses the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS) curriculum to promote purposeful high school study that will produce college graduates who are prepared for good jobs.

“The college credit courses, internships, mentor programs, rigorous coursework and student projects that are the cornerstone of the Ford PAS program will help students in the NEaED program stay on course for promising careers and successful lives,” stated Sandra Ulsh, president of Ford Motor Company Fund.

NEaED is a blend of the Ford PAS program and two NCLR programs—the NCLR Escalera Project: Taking Steps to Success and the Early College High School Project (a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant program).

“The addition of the Ford PAS curriculum to these NCLR education programs gives students a compelling reason to stay in school by offering them a value-added high school diploma – one that is more like a map to the future than just a piece of paper,” stated Raul Yzaguirre, president of NCLR. “We felt it essential to collaborate with Ford PAS to increase opportunities for students to apply the lessons of the classrooms to real-world problems and take an active role in the learning process.”

NEaED incorporates the strengths of the Ford and NCLR programs to create an initiative that will help build a diverse and talented future workforce by providing:

The Ford PAS project-based high school curriculum that consists of three core elements of instilling and developing academic knowledge, interpersonal and human performance skills, and business concepts;
Challenging high school courses that earn students two years of college credit from the NCLR Early College Project; and
Work readiness training and career exploration from the NCLR Escalera Project.

Pilot sites for the NEaED program are under way this summer and fall in schools in Washington, DC; Milwaukee, WI; Kansas City, MO and Lancaster, PA. This project will expand the success of the NCLR Escalera Project, which is in place in Chicago and Los Angeles, and the Early College Project, which is operating in 12 schools across the country. The NCLR Early College Project and the NCLR Escalera Project have seen impressive results in reducing drop out rates and encouraging major additional investments from the cities in which they operate.

“High school is a pivotal point in a young person’s life when there is potential to develop the academic and skill based foundation needed to go onto college and the world of work,” said Emilio Lopez, principal and executive director, Aurora Weier Educational Center in Milwaukee, WI. “Work readiness, career exploration and career development—all major goals of NEaED– take place once there is a connection in a student’s mind between academics and the opportunities available in today’s workforce.”