d) Tutoring and mentoring.  The findings of several of the program evaluations, as well as a substantial body of other research, indicate that tutoring is a highly effective strategy to help students succeed in rigorous college-preparatory courses.  Many students can be successful in these courses if they can take additional time outside of the regular class period and have personal assistance.  Since the college-preparatory sequence builds on prior knowledge and skills, especially in mathematics, the key is to prevent students from falling so far behind that they require remedial classes.

Tutoring also appears to be a relatively cost-effective intervention.  Tutoring can work one-on-one or in study group situations.  All of the programs included in this review provide some type of tutoring, and some have made tutoring a central part of the intervention.  For example, EAOP, MESA, and High School Puente have all organized regular tutoring services for program participants.  The College Readiness Program was designed with tutoring as the primary intervention to help Black and Latino students in the middle grades build an academic foundation to get ready for college-preparatory mathematics and English by the ninth grade.

College students are an especially good resource as tutors and also serve as role-models for K-12 students.  An additional potential benefit is the recruitment of college students into the teaching profession.  While many outreach programs already use college students as tutors in K-12 schools, there is currently no statewide system for recruiting, training, and placing college student tutors in K-12 schools and for training K-12 teachers to make effective use of tutors.  A current project of the ICC and San Diego County Office of Education is developing a prototype and pilot test of such a system.

Community members and other adults can also be effective mentors.  Through MESA mentors in the business community help build bridges for students to the world of work.  However, we noted in our review of the evaluations that many programs struggle with organizing and implementing mentoring components.  In the Puente Project, Gandara reports, The mentoring component is the most problematic, the most difficult to pull off, but in many ways holds the greatest potential for making a unique contribution to both students and schools.

As for college student tutors, there may be a need for a systemwide or even statewide design for recruiting, training, placing and making effective use of community members as mentors to K-12 students.   

e) Study skills and specific academic skills.   Many student-centered programs provide in-class instruction or special seminars on study skills and other specific academic skills that can help disadvantaged students succeed in rigorous college-preparatory courses.  For example, MESA has a teacher at each site who serves as program coordinator and provides instruction to MESA students in study skills and test-taking.

AVID provides intensive instruction in note-taking, study skills, test-taking, and writing skills.  This instruction is provided through the elective AVID class, and the instructional materials are standardized and packaged by the AVID Center.

f) Transition programs and summer residential programs.  Transition programs help build bridges from one level of schooling to the next.  Significant transitions occur for students moving from junior high to high school, from high school to college or university, and from two-year to four-year colleges.  Transition programs provide academic classes, skill-building instruction, study groups, social support, and survival skills in a new and sometimes alien environment.  Programs linking specific high schools with college and university campuses help increase the numbers of graduates from those high schools enrolling at the host campus.

Several of the programs reviewed in this study provide transition programs or other summer residential experiences.  At UC Berkeley, for example, EAOP and MESA collaborate to provide a summer residential program for high school students.  Middle College has self-contained high schools on two community college campuses.  This program is designed for at-risk high school students with college potential.

Within the category of transition programs we would also include opportunities for individual students to take more college classes while still in high school.  Some programs, such as Project Advance at Syracuse University, have organized opportunities for high school students to take college classes on their high school campuses. 

g) College admissions and placement test preparation.  College admissions and placement tests play a critical role in determining a students eligibility and competitiveness for the University and for many other higher education institutions.  Test preparation activities can be quite effective, and several student-centered programs ( e.g. MESA, Cal-SOAP) already provide test preparation activities for their participants. 

Since test preparation services seems so on point in helping disadvantaged students to overcome one of the barriers to University access, these services could be offered on a much broader scale.  Test preparation activities can be specifically designed for students who are academically under-prepared.  A project reviewed in the 1992 CPEC report (The College Admissions Test Preparation Programs) showed substantial increases in underrepresented students test performance and overall college preparedness as a result of specially designed test preparation services.

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