Eastern University | Academic | School for Social Change

Eastern University Academy Charter School

Partners

For the initial establishment of the school, Eastern has formed major partnerships with the following:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Early College High School Initiative focuses on young people for whom a smooth transition into postsecondary education is problematic. These include highly motivated students who lack the academic preparation needed to meet high school standards, students for whom the cost of college is prohibitive, students who are English language learners, and students whose family obligations keep them at home.

Early College offers these young people a new kind of learning institution combining high school and college. They are places designed to:

Engage adolescents in serious intellectual work, rewarding performance with access to the rigor, depth, and intensity of college-level course work;
Inspire underachieving and better-prepared high school students alike to work hard and stretch themselves intellectually, making it more likely young people graduate not only high school but college as well;
Eliminate the need for high school seniors to select a post-secondary institution, enabling them to focus on their studies in high school rather than spend their time tangled in the maze of college and financial-aid applications;
Save tuition dollars for students and their families and tax dollars for everyone, making college more affordable;
Offer young people a much-needed alternative to traditional high school education and a path to college that includes substantive guidance and coaching from adults through the first two years of postsecondary education.

Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Founded in 1945 as a program of doctoral fellowships to encourage the nation’s best and brightest to pursue careers as college teachers, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has supported more than 21,000 intellectual leaders in the arts and sciences, business, and public service.

Over the past two decades, the Foundation has joined its longstanding commitment to excellence in higher education with its determination to meet changing national needs at all levels of education—from promoting diversity to building linkages between colleges and universities and public K–12 schools that will improve the quality of education, stimulating teachers intellectually and professionally.

Among the Foundation’s current programs is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded Early College Initiative. Eastern University received a two-year $300,000 grant through Woodrow Wilson to plan for and implement the Early College High School model at EUACS. This funding offset personnel, community relations, and curriculum development costs during the planning phase. In our first year of operation, the funding will offset the salaries and benefits of University staff working in the school (i.e. Dean of the Campolo College School for Social Change), partially fund the salary and benefits for an administrative assistant, fund the cost of hiring graduate students to teach in the school, and offset the cost of other professional services.

More than the funding, however, this partnership is important to the success of EUACS because it affords our charter school the opportunity to participate in a national network of Early College High Schools. Woodrow Wilson’s Early College Initiative supports bridge-building between institutions of higher education and secondary schools, so that more and better-prepared students from underrepresented and underserved populations graduate from college ready for high academic achievement.

The Woodrow Wilson approach relies on four emphases:

Engaging universities in fulfilling their civic missions;
Connecting and networking university faculty and high school teachers;
Creating systems and structures to sustain Early College High Schools; and
Identifying and shaping policies that support Early College High Schools.

The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO)

BAEO is a national, nonprofit, membership organization founded in 2000 with the mission to actively support parental choice to empower families and increase quality educational options for Black children. BAEO exists to:

Educate and inform the general public about parental choice initiatives on the local and national level.
Educate black families about the numerous educational options available.
Create, promote, and support efforts to empower black parents to exercise choice in determining how their children are educated.
Educate and inform the general public about efforts to reduce or limit educational options available to parents.

Among BAEO’s national initiatives is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Small Schools Project, which will enable BAEO to create 15 new, small high schools in urban communities throughout the country.

BAEO has partnered with Eastern University to implement the Big Picture model at EUACS, providing funding, start-up and ongoing technical assistance and training in creating a high quality academic environment that is rigorously challenging and meets the needs of today’s students.

BAEO has granted a three-year $150,000 grant to Eastern University to offset the cost of the planning year and the school’s first two years of operation. In the planning phase, BAEO funds offset the capital expenses and cost of supplies, consultants, and public relations activities. In the operating years, the BAEO funding will be used to offset the cost of consultants, student recruitment, student transportation, professional memberships, computers, summer school, and travel and conference fees

The grant will allow EUACS to be a participating member of the network of BAEO/Big Picture small schools. Through this partnership EUACS will participate in ongoing site visits and weekly phone conferences with BAEO’s small schools staff, attend BAEO’s annual Symposium, and participate in BAEO’s Small Schools Summer Institute.

The Big Picture Company

The Big Picture Company was founded by educators Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor, both formerly of the renowned Thayer High School in New Hampshire and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. In 1995, they began collaborating with Rhode Island policymakers to design a student-centered high school (The Met Center in Providence, RI), and created The Big Picture Company as the launching pad for what has now become a national education reform movement.

The Big Picture Company believes that schools must be personalized, educating every student equally, ONE STUDENT AT A TIME. Each student’s Learning Plan (ILP) should grow out of his or her unique needs, interests, and passions. We believe that the education system must ensure that students and families are active participants in the design and authentic assessment of each child’s learning. Schools must be small enough to encourage the development of a community of learners, and to allow for each child to be known well by at least one adult. School staff and leaders must be visionaries and life-long learners. Schools must connect students, and the school, to the community--both by sending students out to learn from mentors in the real world, and by allowing the school itself to serve as an asset to the local community and its needs. Finally, schools must allow for admission to, and success in, college to be a reality for every student, and work closely with students, families, and colleges throughout – and beyond - the application process.

the Big Picture Company has used its design of The Met Center as a model for the development of similar schools across the country with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To date, there are 34 Big Picture schools nationwide. Upon the approval of EUACS and the hiring of its Principal/CEO, BAEO will provide the Big Picture Company with a three-year, $93,000 grant to assist in the planning and implementation activities associated with replicating the Big Picture model at EUACS. In the planning year, Big Picture will provide training and support to the Principal/CEO. Principal training and support includes: an in depth residency of approximately 3 months in a Big Picture School, personal coaching each week, participation in the TYBO (The Year Before Opening) cohort led by a Big Picture staff person, videoconferencing workshops, a weekly reflective newsletter, a principals’ retreat, a national conference, and a visit from new staff to a Big Picture School. Each principal will be coached onsite by Big Picture representative at least two times during the TYBO year. Upon successful completion of this training, EUACS will have the right and responsibility to call itself “A Big Picture School.”