"We innovate to help students adjust to high school, to transition to college, and to build a bridge to their futures," explains Fred Crawford, Early/College principal for the Greenville Technical Charter High School located on the campus of the Greenville Technical College. As a Coalition of Essential Schools member, Greenville Tech offers Mastery Learning, Common Planning, Senior Projects, Critical Friends Groups, and Family Advisories. Greenville Tech enjoys a list of successes that includes a waitlist of over 200 students, an 'Excellent' rating from the state of South Carolina, a 98.9% graduation rate, a 97.2% proficiency rating in South Carolina's High School Assessment Program (HSAP), 70% Early/College participation, and a 100% college acceptance rate.Tech began with a core curriculum framed around project-based, mastery learning, which evolved into the Early/College model. This rigorous program serves 400 students in grades 9-12. Students need to achieve success in all parts of the COMPASS examination in order to be eligible for college course offerings. “Everything available to college students is available to our students," explains Crawford, "They can try electives we otherwise couldn’t offer." Tech students are also eligible to receive free college tuition when attending GTC for a 13th year.
"College readiness is about maturity, knowledge and the responsibility to learn," Crawford explains. Greenville Tech high school teachers work closely with Greenville Tech college professors to integrate co-curricular courses to meet the students’ needs. When eight of 109 seniors failed to pass the COMPAS math exam, Tech's faculty developed a co-taught Transition-to-College math course, which allowed all eight students to ultimately enroll in college Algebra. Of the 93 graduates last year, 100% are taking college classes. Of the 46 Tech students who continued their studies at GTC, 43 qualified for scholarships.
Crawford believes that parents must be involved in creating and maintaining a culture of high expectations. One way the school accomplishes this is through student-led conferences with the purpose of bringing parents and students together as partners in the educational process. All students have Individual Learning Plans that allow students to evaluate their strengths, weaknesses and interests with the help of Advisors who stay with them for their four-year high school career. The student-led conferences have a 99% parent attendance rate. To learn more go to: http://www.gtchs.org/
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