Early college:
an experiment gone right

Southeastern Early College’s Magna Award is a well-deserved honor for a program that is drawing national attention.

SEC is doing many creative things to warrant the attention, but its basic recipe for success is simple – the students get individual attention.

SEC can do that because it is smaller. It has about 100 students now, but its popularity is causing growth. The student census will be capped at 250, however.

The program began with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is a collaborative effort among the city and county school systems and Southeastern Community College.

There are many benefits for students. It is often a good fit for those who don’t thrive in the traditional high school setting. Essentially, students begin college once they get into high school with an eye either on a specific job they can train for on the SCC campus, or on transferring into a four-year university program.

SEC’s success can’t help but make us wonder if the concept couldn’t be applied to the tenets of education as a whole.

SEC is almost a throwback – essentially an old-school, one-room classroom with a 21st Century bent: smaller class sizes and individualized attention and counseling that isn’t available in large high schools, families are required to volunteer in the program, students participate in fun and enlightening field trips to places like Washington, D.C., and teachers aren’t beat over the head with the stupid test-taking mandates that No Child Left Behind demands.

This isn’t to say that the traditional high school setting doesn’t work well for many students, because it does, but at SEC, it’s interesting and exciting to see that what has begun as an experimental program is getting the job done in splendid fashion.