High-schoolers get UH head start

The state wants to increase the number of students taking University of Hawaii courses while still in high school as part of a push to "blur the lines" between high school and college.

The initiative includes efforts to offer University of Hawaii courses on high school campuses and allow career technical education students to attend college full time.

This semester, students at Waipahu High have the option of taking a UH history or speech course without leaving the school grounds. In the spring, the school plans to offer two more courses. That number is expected to grow next year to meet rising student interest.

As part of the program, Waipahu High covers the students’ UH tuition and textbooks. Students who pass the class, and who are technically considered "early admissions" to UH, earn three college credits.

Similar classes are planned for Waianae and Nanakuli high schools in the spring, as part of the state’s Running Start program.

Meanwhile, there are 10 high school seniors this year participating in a pilot program at community colleges aimed at giving them an early start on an associate’s degree.

The Jump Start program was offered for the first time last school year at four participating high schools —Farrington, Kaimuki, Roosevelt and McKinley — and in its first year attracted 13 students. Jump Start caters to career technical education seniors, who can opt to attend community college full time and receive free tuition, books and career counseling assistance.

Karen Lee, executive director of nonprofit P-20 Partnerships for Education, said early-admission efforts are aimed at decreasing barriers to college and giving students the confidence to pursue post-secondary studies.

"We want to try to blur the lines between high school graduation and the start of college," she said, "so students have momentum going into their college careers."

The work comes amid a statewide initiative to better prepare Hawaii’s high school grads for college or careers, and as schools also look to continue to boost the number of students who take Advanced Placement courses. Students who pass AP exams can also earn college credit.

Hawaii debuted the Running Start program, which allows juniors or seniors to enroll in UH classes, as a pilot in 2000.

In 2003, 338 students enrolled in the program. In the 2010-11 school year, that number was up to 861.

Most Running Start students take UH courses on UH campuses, and only those who are low-income can qualify for tuition scholarships (the rest pay for tuition out of pocket).

That has made Running Start a more expensive and potentially inconvenient proposition for some students than AP courses, which only charge for an exam and are all on high school campuses.

The state is looking to remove barriers to Running Start, though, with fledgling programs offering courses on campuses and covering tuition costs.

Waipahu High is at the forefront of that work. (At the same time, it is bolstering its AP offerings).

The school recently hired former Leeward Community College Chancellor Mark Silliman as a transition coordinator, overseeing the growth of the on-campus Running Start program and other initiatives aimed at making students’ passage from high school to college or a career smoother.

Silliman said the school has long offered a UH speech class on campus but premiered a UH psychology class on campus over the summer.

The results were encouraging: Some 30 students enrolled in the class and all of them received college credit. The average grade for students in the class was a high B.

This fall semester, about 30 students have enrolled in Waipahu’s speech course, while eight are taking History 151.

Silliman said each course costs the school about $7,000, through a partnership with Leeward Community College.

He said the on-campus college courses are designed to give students better accessibility to UH college credit, and to show those who may not have seen themselves as college material that they can do well in a college course.

The message the school wants to send, he said, is, "Yes, college is for you and you can do a great job."

But the school has hit a small snag in its push to offer more college courses.

To enroll in Running Start courses, students have to take a UH reading and math placement exam, and some are falling short of what’s required for courses.

To get into History 151, for example, students must place into English 100. But of 49 students tested for the fall term, about half fell short.

"It just says to us we have to do a better job of preparing them," Silliman said. "One of the major initiatives statewide is to try to do a better job of preparing our students for college and career readiness."

The Jump Start program also has struggled with the placement exam.

Sheldon Towata, a high school-to-college coordinator at Kapiolani Community College, said part of the reason enrollment in the program has remained low this school year is because students aren’t doing well enough on the placement exam to qualify for the classes they need to take.

He said the number of applicants to Jump Start was whittled down by a third this year between the placement test and the hesitance of some parents to allow their children to attend community college full-time.

The program is seeing a large number of students placing in pre-algebra and well below English 100, he said.

Students in Jump Start can choose from one of 16 vocational programs at Kapiolani or Honolulu community colleges. In their first semester, they must maintain a 2.0 GPA or they will be sent back to their home schools.

Ann Mahi, recently appointed Nanakuli-Waianae complex area superintendent and Jump Start Coordinating Council chairwoman, said the program isn’t for everyone. Some students don’t like the idea of being away from friends and potentially giving up the "senior experience," for example.

But Jump Start does give some a "chance to excel" in a different type of environment, where they are pursuing a passion. The program kicks off before the fall semester begins with a boot camp of sorts, giving students a taste for the time management and study skills they’ll need to successfully complete a college course.

Mahi said while the program is still small, she sees opportunities for considerable growth in the future.

"We’re going slow to go faster later," she said, adding that expansion will depend on funding availability from partner schools.

Mahea Kulukulualani-Ascino, 18, enrolled in Jump Start as a senior last school year to pursue a culinary arts degree. She is in her second year of the program at KCC.

Kulukulualani-Ascino said she jumped at the chance to pursue her dream of being a chef, but once she enrolled at UH, she didn’t take the classes seriously. She ended up being kicked out of Jump Start in the spring 2012 semester because her GPA was lower than 2.0.

"That kind of wake-up call, it shook me," she said.

So rather than dropping out of culinary classes, Kulukulualani-Ascino resolved to stick with it. She got a job to pay for her classes out-of-pocket and struck a deal with her high school to remain at KCC full time.

In her second semester in the program, she excelled, earning As and Bs.

Now she’s a model student — and a role model for the program. At the start of this semester, she spoke to incoming students about the perils of goofing off and letting the freedom of college life go to one’s head.

"It took a lot to get me where I am now," she said. "It’s like a mentality-type thing. I told the new Jump Start students, ‘If you don’t have the focus or the commitment or even the drive, you’re going to fail.’"

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On the Net:

» www.hawaii.edu/runningstart

» www2.honolulu.hawaii.edu (click on "Academics," then click on "Jump Start")