Page 14 - BusinessWest April 3, 2023

Matt Brunell says Discovery High School was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of graduation.
field’s high-school graduation rates were improving, the number of students going to college, and succeeding there, were not growing.
“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path to a living wage,” he explained. “The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing col- lege, in the way we wanted.”
“Three years ago, we took a hard look at industry and labor
trends in the area, and we looked at which businesses were going to be growing over the course of the next several years,” he went on. “And we thought differently about a high-school model that would project and send students on that path to a living wage.”
Elaborating, he noted that DHS was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of high-school graduation. It does this by providing academic pathways that focus on high- demand careers in technology, computer science, engineering, and teaching.
But mostly it does this by inspiring students to “take themselves seriously.”
There are quotation marks around those words because all those we spoke with at DHS used them early and often.
Especially Declan O’Connor, executive principal of Discovery, who referenced one student who will have amassed 24 college cred- its by the end of her sophomore year.
“What she’s developed is an identity around college, and it’s really sticky,” he told BusinessWest. “Kids are just starting to under- stand that this is real, and they’re looking toward their future, and they’re taking themselves seriously.”
Farrika Turner, assistant principal at Discovery, agreed.
“We’re really excited to see our Black and Brown students not
be afraid of college, for their families not to be afraid of college and whether it will be attainable for them, to see parents become inter- ested in returning to college and maybe take some of the classes that their children are taking,” she said. “And to have students see themselves as a college student, not as a high-school student that’s taking a course or two here and there that doesn’t add up to any- thing — they’re working toward the degree they’re interested in after high school.”
It will be another two years before DHS graduates a class of stu- dents. And it will be several years before those involved can compile real data on the outcome of students. But those we talked with said the early-college model is demonstrating promising results in many settings. Meanwhile, they say it is not too early to say it is succeed- ing at Discovery — at least when it comes to the very unofficial mis- sion of getting students to take themselves more seriously.
“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path
to a living wage. The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing college, in the way we wanted.”
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