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Blooming Achievers

By Ann Geracimos
December 10, 2007

Christol Flowers, 17, a senior at the Marshall Academy, is applying to five colleges this year. She hopes to become a social worker, saying enthusiastically, "I love to give advice, and I love to hear it."

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It may take a village to raise child, but it can take a small fortune to educate one — and that isn't only because of rising college tuition fees.

The effort is especially difficult when it concerns young people who need nurturing to stay focused on academic achievement — students from low-income homes in underserved neighborhoods where role models often are absent and college degrees — and even high school diplomas — can be rarities.

In District Wards 7 and 8, only one in three students finishes high school within five years. Of those who do, only one in 20 earns a college degree within five years, according to several nonprofit organizations aiming to rewrite those statistics.

An investment of $122 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to aid the efforts of the D.C. College Success Foundation and the D.C. College Access Program has given a dramatic boost to their goal. The money, directed through the College Success Foundation, establishes a D.C. Achievers scholarship program in six public high schools that is unusual in scope. In addition to contributing money for five years of higher education for qualified students, the program subsidizes guidance personnel as well.

The model for the D.C. partnership operation comes from the Washington State Achievers Program, in the home state of philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose wife, Melinda, is a co-chairman of the foundation along with Mr. Gates and his father, William H. Gates II.

"We pay the [college] directly and put the last dollar in after the student gets other monies available, including whatever the [college] would normally do," says Herb Tillery, executive director of the one-year-old College Success Foundation. Additionally, a university has to agree to provide a mentor for the students in freshman and sophomore year, ideally a senior upperclassman, faculty member or member of the administration.

"We want to be sure the kids are taking the right courses and being properly socialized as they enter into the college experience, which is where most kids fail," Mr. Tillery says.

Realistically, he adds, the foundation would be pleased if 75 percent graduated in five years, "knowing there are life situations that could derail them."

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