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Contact:     Carmon Cunningham, Jobs for the Future 617.728.4446, ext. 133; 617.335.4839 (cell) ccunningham@jff.org EARLY COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOLS COULD HELP AT-RISK STUDENTS EARN A BACHELOR’S DEGREE, WITH A POTENTIAL $500,000 LIFETIME BENEFIT    “Return on investment” study also shows clear benefits for schools, districts, and states. Read "Return on investment" Boston – September 29, 2006: Young people at risk of dropping out of high school would recognize significant financial advantages in terms of savings on college tuition and increased lifetime earning from attending early college high schools. Early college high schools are small schools from which students graduate with a high school diploma and an Associate’s degree or up to two years of college credit. Designed for underprepared young people who may lack opportunities for a rigorous high school education, these schools target students of color, low-income students, and students who would be in the first generation of their families to attend college. In addition to the savings to students and their families, states that invest in this new school model would benefit in terms of higher educational attainment for young people, increased individual earnings, and a longer working life for graduates—and hence increased future tax revenues. These are among the findings released by Jobs for the Future, which commissioned the development of a financial analysis model for calculating the “ROI”—return on investment—for early college high schools. The financial model was created by Augenblick, Palaich, & Associates, Inc., (APA) a Denver-based consulting firm with over 20 years of education policy experience. “We believe that early college high schools show great promise for increasing the number of young people who earn a postsecondary credential,” says Marlene B. Seltzer, president and CEO of JFF. “Yet even if they succeed in doing that—and we believe they will—state and local  officials rightly want to know whether funding this innovative school design will yield a positive return on the public’s investment.” This is the goal of APA’s model, which can be tailored for any state to use to calculate the return-on-investment for early college high schools. APA created the model for JFF, which coordinates the Early College High School Initiative. Through this national effort, 13 partner organizations are creating or redesigning more than 250 of these pioneering small high schools. Start-up funding for the schools in the initiative comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and a number of local foundations. Foundation support for school planning and start-up costs totals more than $124 million to date. However, these start-up resources are minimal compared to the ongoing operating budgets of early college high schools, which must come from their respective district and states, as it does for other public schools. Policymakers and others want to know if such investments will pay off. “APA’s cost-benefit model suggests that students and their families benefit tremendously from participation in early college high schools,” says Ms. Seltzer. “Indeed, it is clear that the students participating in early college high schools are long-term winners when their participation is analyzed from an ROI perspective.” According to APA’s model, over the course of 25 years, an early college high school student who went on to attain a Bachelor’s degree would earn $509,400 more in lifetime earnings than a student who did not complete a high school diploma. One factor that APA considered in projecting the educational attainment of early college high school students was data from two schools that have been part of the initiative long enough to graduate their first class. Seventy percent of the first cohort graduating from Harbor Teacher Prep Academy at Los Angeles Harbor College earned high school diplomas and Associate’s degrees. Sixty-seven percent of the first cohort graduating from the Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community College earned diplomas and Associate’s degrees. Equally impressive was the reduction in the percentage of students who dropped out of school: 8 percent for the first graduating classes in both early college high schools versus 29 percent for students with comparable economic backgrounds. APA’s analysis also offers encouragement to state leaders interested in investing in early college high schools as a strategy for promoting educational attainment. Looking at California and New York, states with very different education finance structures, APA calculated that every dollar invested in an early college high school would yield $1.33 to $2.11 more than it would when invested in a traditional high schools over the course of 15 years. The additional ROI would be $2.51 to $3.95 over the course of 25 years. Robert Palaich, principal investigator at APA for the project, cautions that the oldest early college high schools have had only one graduating class, and most of the 86 schools now open are in their second or third years. When more complete data are available from a larger sample of early college high schools, the preliminary results in APA’s study will be updated.     Methodology: Calculating the Return on Investment APA collected data from selected early college high schools and developed a cost-benefit model focused on the ROI for early college high schools. APA also illustrated the use of that model with data available nationally and from early college high schools in California and New York. The difference in benefits between an early college high school and the traditional school determines the “marginal” benefit of the early college high school. Benefits to students and their families are identified in terms of quantifiable benchmarks (student attendance, student persistence, graduation rates, and college credits and degrees, savings in college tuition). Benefits to the state and communities are in terms of higher attainment rates for young people, yielding increased earnings and hence increased future tax revenues, as well as a longer working life based on completing a postsecondary credential earlier. There are no costs to students and their families for attending early college high schools. Costs to the state and communities are calculated in terms of the costs of running the early college high school and providing the postsecondary and other additional services.     ### Jobs for the Future (www.jff.org) Jobs for the Future is a Boston-based nonprofit that seeks to accelerate the educational and economic advancement of youth and adults struggling in today’s economy. JFF partners with leaders in education, business, government, and communities around the nation to: strengthen opportunities for youth to succeed in postsecondary learning and high-skill careers; increase opportunities for low-income individuals to move into family-supporting careers; and meet the growing economic demand for knowledgeable and skilled workers. The Early College High School Initiative (www.earlycolleges.org) Early college high schools are small schools from which students leave with not only a high school diploma but also an Associate’s degree or up to two years of college credit toward a Bachelor’s degree. By changing the structure of the high school years and compressing the number of years to a college degree, early college high schools have the potential to improve graduation rates and better prepare students for entry into high-skill careers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is funding the Early College High School Initiative. The 13 partner organizations are creating or redesigning 239 pioneering small high schools. Jobs for the Future coordinates the Early College High School Initiative and provides support to the partners and to the effort as a whole.