Oregon Public Broadcasting

Idaho isn’t doing a good job of getting it’s kids into college.  According to recent studies, Idaho ranks near the bottom, nationally, in college attendance and graduation.  But there are people trying to help Idaho score a higher grade.  Guy Hand reports.

A “D+.”  That’s the grade the National Center for Public Policy in  Higher Education gave Idaho for the low and declining percentage of students the state sends to college.

Joni Finney is with the Center.  She says Idaho sent only 35% of it’s high school grads to college in 2006.    

Joni Finney: " . . . and that was down from 40% a little more than 10 years ago, so that's a pretty sharp decline.  Now the best states are sending more than half of their 9th graders to college four years later.  So you can see how far Idaho has to go on this measure."

Washington and Oregon do a little better.  The national study gave them Cs for the percentage of students who go on to college.  Idaho’s D puts it in league with Mississippi.

Mark Browning: "We definitely have challenges in getting kids from high school graduation through post secondary training."

Mark Browning is with the Idaho State Board of Education.  He thinks part of the problem comes naturally, with life in a predominantly rural state.  Like a kid working on the family farm.

Mark Browning: "He simply doesn't have the ability to leave the family business.  For others, it's cultural.  Everyone in my family's just been a high school graduate and that will have to be good enough for  
me."

And then there's Idaho's traditional commitment to low taxes.

Mark Browning: "That's why many people have moved here. . . the tax burden is lower than a lot of places in the country.  And if you increase that to get more education, you don't have the people here to support it."

Idaho offers little college level financial aid.  And operates only a sprinkling of community colleges.  However, a new state scholarship program and new 2-year college are in the works.  In addition, several federal and privately funded college-prep programs are already up and running.

Fairmont Junior High in Boise—the most impoverished school in the district—is using a private program to target kids unlikely to get beyond high school.

Paul Altorfer: "Sit down, write in your tracker, get out your questions please . . . "

AVID is the oldest privately run college-prep program in the country.  It’s in 45 states, but relatively new to the Northwest.

Washington has 82 schools enrolled, Oregon 18, Idaho 2.  Fairmont's program is just a couple of years old, but AVID elective teacher Paul Altorfer has seen dramatic results.

Paul Altorfer: "This year during the parent, teacher conferences, I had a number of parents that cried, because their kids are taking accelerated classes and they're excelling and they've never had this opportunity before.  And we tell the parents your kids are going to go to college and I had some parents that would get teary eyed."

Many of those parents didn't go to college themselves.  AVID tries to  break that tradition, focusing on kids with academic potential, pushing them with advanced classes and supporting them with college-student tutors.  The curriculum also includes some seemingly simple lessons.    

Paul Altorfer: "I teach kids how to sit up in their chairs.  I teach them how to shake hands with people and how to approach and ask questions.  Life skills that maybe they don't get at home or maybe for some reason they don't know.  And I'm amazed—I'm just new at this also—at how much they don't actually know."

But amazed at how quickly these 8th graders learn and gain confidence.

Boy: "You have to really concentrate for these accelerated classes so it helps you get better grades."

Girl: "It challenges you, it makes you think of like harder questions to ask."

Boy: "Before I got into AVID I really didn't know what I wanted to do.  I wanna go to USC and become an advanced chemical engineer."

AVID is one of several college-prep programs funded privately or federally in the Northwest.  There are critics in Idaho’s education community who say these out of state programs can’t do it alone. They claim there’s no way around spending more state tax dollars to fix Idaho’s low college attendance rate.

Online:

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education

Idaho Board of Education

The AVID Program

Other College Placement Programs