Now that’s a smart idea.
Crowley ISD is partnering with Dallas’ Paul Quinn College on a pretty simple idea: The college with run CISD’s four middle schools on a day-to-day basis. In exchange, every current sixth-grader in the school district will be automatically admitted to the college after high school graduation.
District officials hope the partnership will be a “slingshot” toward academic excellence.
KERANews has the story:
Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, could not contain his excitement.
The Crowley ISD school board had just unanimously approved a partnership in which Paul Quinn College will run day-to-day operations of the district’s four middle schools starting in the 2025-26 academic year. Administrators see the innovative partnership as a way to slingshot academic performance to new heights.
Sorrell had to tell an audience gathered inside the board room Aug. 8 his secret, one that almost certainly will affect the future of hundreds of students.
“I don’t really know if this is the time to announce this, but I’m horrible at secrets anyway,” Sorrell said, with a smile. “Our intention is to create a program that admits Crowley middle school students to college when they enter into sixth grade.”
Automatic admission changes the perception of higher education, Sorrell said. Too often, college is seen as a luxury item, particularly in communities of color. Instead, he wants Crowley ISD students to know from their first day of sixth grade that they will achieve great things and attend college.
Sorrell, who has led the historically Black college since 2007, compared the plight of low-income students beating generational poverty to the superhero team the Avengers.
“Spider-Man is part of the Avengers. No one expected Spider-Man to beat Thanos by himself,” Sorrell said. “So why did we expect first-generation college students to Pell Grant students to defeat generational poverty by themselves? It doesn’t make sense.”
More than 3 in 4 Crowley ISD students are from low-income families.
Crowley ISD is using a 2017 law called Senate Bill 1882 to forge its partnership with Paul Quinn College. The law provides financial incentives for school districts to create partnerships with third-party entities, such as colleges and charter school operators. The partnerships can focus on either innovation or turnaround.
Neighboring Fort Worth ISD has a partnership with Texas Wesleyan University that focuses on turning around underperforming campuses. The Leadership Academy Network covers four elementary schools and one middle school.
The Leadership Academy Network schools are among the highest funded in Fort Worth ISD.
Superintendent Michael McFarland described the Paul Quinn partnership, the first for both the district and college, as squarely in the innovation category.
The district started examining SB 1882 in 2017, when McFarland started his superintendency.
Since then, the district focused investments more at the elementary level — and it paid off, McFarland said. The district’s 13 elementary schools received either A’s or B’s from the state in 2022, the most recent year accountability ratings were issued.