IPS wants to make sure more of its students are exposed to college sooner.

That’s why district officials are setting a new expectation that every  student completes at least one college visit each of their three years in middle school.

“There’s a lot of research that shows that if a middle school-aged child is able to have access or get onto a college campus, then there is a significant increase in them feeling like it’s an attainable option,” said Lori Hart, IPS’ K-8 elementary and middle school counseling coordinator.

IPS hopes to achieve this through a new .

More than 200 students from the district’s  visited the IUPUI campus April 19 as part of a pilot of the program. The students were met with hands-on activities, such as creating their own zine with Herron School of Art & Design staff or examining organ dissections with pathology lab interns.

Longfellow student Melissa Austin was among about a dozen eighth graders who nodded along to Music and Arts Technology department adjunct instructor Michael Reynolds’ upbeat club remix of “Pump Up The Jam.”

Hart said students were chosen from the activities, which also included a Q&A with School of Education students, based on career interests they expressed to their teachers before the visit.

The visit comes as IPS  as a part of the district’s reconfiguration plan and as the state grapples with .

Indiana hit its lowest college-going rate in a generation in 2020 with just 53% of graduating high schoolers choosing to go straight to college, according to . The rate has stayed flat since then.

Monica Medina, a clinical associate professor in IUPUI’s School of Education, said waiting until high school is often too late to introduce students to college experiences, especially for students who will be the first in their family to complete education beyond high school.

“Introducing them to the opportunities, to the different options they may have, can help them think about what they’re doing in high school and the significance of high school,” Medina said. 

More than 1,000 middle schoolers are expected to participate in this spring’s pilot of the college visits program.Longfellow, Northwest, William Penn and Clarence Farrington schools are included in the spring pilot. The program is expected to expand to all other IPS middle schools next year and comes as the district shifts to a middle school model for sixth through eighth grades this fall under Rebuilding Stronger.

IPS has budgeted $25,200 for the program in the coming school year, according to . That includes funding for more than 80 field trips, reaching more than 5,200 students.

Partners in the effort include Butler University, IU Indianapolis, Ivy Tech Community College, Marian University, Martin University, the University of Indianapolis and Vincennes University’s Indianapolis Aviation Technology Center.

Hart said she hopes students take these experiences home with them to spark conversations in their families about what it means to go to college and how to prepare as a family for opportunities beyond high school.

“They will have that core memory to take in the culture and just that feel of being on a college campus,” Hart said. “I hope they take away really exciting conversations to have with their family.”

This was originally published at Mirror Indy.

For first-generation college students, the answers to these questions are often difficult to come by, leading to . These young adults are less likely to enroll in and graduate from college than those who have a parent with a degree, and, if they do earn a bachelor’s, tend to have lower incomes. 

Paid internships during high school may not seem like they have the power to address these challenges. However, at , a nationwide program that provides high school students in underserved communities with eight weeks of targeted skills training, paid corporate internships, college and career coaching, and alumni support, we know that they do. We’ve seen time and again how internships have transformed the lives of the young people we serve — 72% of whom are first-generation college students and 91% of whom are people of color.

While it’s important to make sure that young people have the guidance and resources to make informed decisions about their future — keeping them on a pathway to a career — a paid internship provides something that no college counselor can.

Some of the benefits are obvious. A paid internship engages students who feel pressure to earn money while attending school. Rather than getting stuck in a minimum-wage job, uncertain about how to achieve their goals and economic self-sufficiency, high school interns can experience a corporate environment at companies like Accenture, TransUnion and Medtronic, and feel like valued members of their teams. An internship can change their perception of themselves and what’s possible. 

It can also expose students to new industries and allow them to build their professional networks, providing them with the social capital that is so critical to launching a successful career. One of our students in Chicago had never envisioned himself working in finance before his internship at the Collateral Department at The Private Banks (now CIBC). Now, he’s a private equity analyst for an independent financial services firm. His internship gave him access to a network that guided him along his professional journey, illustrating the power of connecting young people to non-parental adults as mentors. 

And an internship can give students a lifelong career boost. After one of our students completed his senior year internship in tech support, the company extended the arrangement through college and hired him after graduation. Some 20% of young people who successfully finish the year-long program work full time for the companies they interned with during high school, in industries such as finance and technology. 

The less obvious benefits of an internship pertain to college outcomes. A network of professionals — including internship supervisors and seasoned colleagues — can offer students guidance on their career path and help them understand the link between a particular degree and work. Nearly half of our alumni stay connected with their internship supervisors and co-workers after their internship ends.   

As a result, 72% of our alumni graduate from college, compared with 45% of U.S. adults over 18, and report median earnings of $50,000 a year within six years of graduating high school — than the average income of many individuals six years after they enroll in college.

I believe every high school student would benefit from a paid internship. Purposeful interactions and interventions at the high school level result in improvements in college enrollment, degree attainment and early career success. For first-generation college students, meaningful professional experiences are especially vital. High schools that want to support their students’ long-term success and help them achieve their education goals should look into partnering with organizations, like Genesys Works, which have a portfolio of companies that they work with and that understand their needs. 

When vetting a potential program partner, high schools should make sure they can:

• Speak with local employers about their talent needs and how high school interns could fill certain roles after some targeted skills training.
• Highlight the return on investment for employers in terms of tapping a diverse talent pipeline.
• Discuss additional career benefits, such as professional development, for existing employees who are preparing for management roles. The opportunity to mentor interns can be a valuable experience for everyone involved. 

High school interns can be tremendous assets to any organization, following some short-term skills training and ongoing support. These opportunities are a win for students, schools and local employers — and they can make all the difference in the trajectory of a young person’s life.

Twelve states have taken notice, as have high schools and universities that increasingly see volunteering for Schoolhouse.world as a desirable credential in their applicants.

Launched in 2020, the platform offers high schoolers free Zoom-based tutoring in math, as well as SAT and Advanced Placement test prep. Some 20,000 students so far have participated in over 8 million minutes of live learning through ‘s evening homework help sessions, small-group math tutoring or test prep boot camps, says Chief Operating Officer Drew Bent.

“Our goal is really to level the playing field and do it completely for free,” he says. “Our tutoring is available to everyone.” 

Founded by Khan but operated separately from his online, nonprofit Khan Academy for grades K-8, Schoolhouse.world has forged partnerships with a dozen states. No money changes hands, but the states help connect districts and parents with the nonprofit, letting them know free tutoring is available. Certain states, Bent says, are forming deeper partnerships with particular districts that may eventually result in integrating the service into the school day or the classroom curriculum. 

New Hampshire was the first state to partner with Schoolhouse.world. “This is a great opportunity for New Hampshire youth to take advantage of free SAT prep courses,” says Frank Edelblut, the state’s commissioner of education. “These small-group SAT tutoring sessions can help students of all abilities to find the motivation, knowledge and confidence to reach their goals.” The most recent state to sign up was Virginia, in October.

The fully volunteer service has over 3,000 tutors, the majority of them high school students. Bent says the platform’s primarily peer-to-peer nature — teachers and professionals also volunteer — is the best way for it to grow while empowering high schoolers. Tutors are trained and their hours tracked, in hopes of creating a cycle in which students who were once tutored are able to become tutors themselves. 

A handful of universities, among them MIT, Georgia Tech, Florida State University and the University of Chicago, “have places on their applications where they ask if you are a Schoolhouse.world tutor,” Bent says. “It is a great way to demonstrate mastery and a very powerful motivator for high schoolers.” 

The two main areas of content focus are math and test prep. Before each SAT date, Schoolhouse.world hosts four-week boot camps, with one tutor and up to 10 students meeting for eight one-hour-long sessions. Early research shows that students who participated in the tutoring scored as much as 55 points higher on their SATs, compared with their PSATs, than students who did not participate in tutoring.

The next boot camp launches Nov. 5 and is open to all.

Khan’s idea of an online tutoring service for high school students had percolated for a while, but it was the pandemic that unlocked the opportunity. “The thought of having people around the world tutor each other over Zoom would have been a foreign concept five years ago,” Bent says. “Now, that is accepted and normalized.” Tutoring can happen around the clock because of the worldwide virtual nature of the platform. 

“As a nonprofit working to offer free tutoring, our whole thing is to level the playing field,” Bent says. “Historically, the more money you have, the more educated your parents, the more supports you receive. We want to change that.”