Helping urban students learn at a higher level

Jasmine Davis hadn't heard of Advanced Placement classes until she got to Garfield High School.

On her first day in AP European history in her sophomore year, she was surrounded by kids who had been in the Seattle School District's gifted program since kindergarten.

She was smart enough to succeed, but she didn't feel like she fit in. She had no idea how to read the college-level textbook and didn't have the study skills to prepare for the pop quizzes and discussions.

Without a Garfield program called Urban Scholars, Davis, who is entering her senior year, said she likely would have quit. The program provides tutoring and college prep, but it also provides a peer group for kids taking their first advanced courses.

"It's been a support group for me because AP classes are really hard, and I'd never been in anything like that before," she said.

The Urban Scholars program, which has struggled for funding and stability over the past seven years, this summer received a $115,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help pay for the program's next three years.

Urban Scholars recruits bright, hard-working middle-school students and helps them — and their families — navigate through honors classes, college applications and financial aid. Most of the students in the program are African American, most don't have parents who went to college, and many are in poverty. Urban Scholars seeks to fill the gaps left by overtaxed school counselors and underinformed parents.

Having choices

"We want the kids to have options and choices," said Amber Jenkins, a Garfield language-arts teacher and director of Urban Scholars. "We want to make sure that they would be able to do what it is that they want to do."

About a third of the students at Garfield High School are part of Seattle's Accelerated Progress Program for gifted students. Any student can take the advanced classes there, but many promising students don't because they don't know the other students in the courses or don't understand how important those classes can be to getting into college.

Garfield Principal Ted Howard said its four guidance counselors don't have time to work one on one with the school's 1,600 students, so Urban Scholars is crucial. The accelerated students already have their own peer group. The scholars "become their own little community," he said.

"We want the students to take advantage of what Garfield has to offer."

James Kelly, executive director of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, said the program helps students catch up to others in advanced classes.

"We now have students who are going to be able to demonstrate to others that, 'hey, we can hang with these folks,' " Kelly said.

Davis said the first conversations she had about college were during her freshman year, when she got involved in Urban Scholars. Now she's taking SAT-preparation courses and plans to go to a four-year university out of high school. She hasn't decided what she wants to study, but she has it narrowed down to business, communications or marine science.

Committed teachers

Urban Scholars started in 2000 with a grant that gave a teacher one free class period a day to work with and recruit students. That ran out in 2004, and since then, it's relied on a couple of committed teachers. Most recently, business teacher Gary Thomas has kept the program afloat in his free time, but students often felt uncertain about the program's future.

Last year, the Urban League teamed up with him and changed the program name from African American Scholars to Urban Scholars. About 40 students participated last school year. Some met weekly with program leaders. Others went on field trips or took advantage of tutoring.

The first Urban Scholars class will graduate in 2008. Of about 30 who started three years ago, 19 are still in contact with Urban Scholars. Of those 19, 18 are taking calculus and at least one AP course next year.

The Gates money "is going to take [the program] off the backs of the teachers," Howard said.

"It really helps to address what seems like a disproportionately small number of African-American students succeeding in the AP curriculum at Garfield," said Ken Thompson, program officer for the Pacific Northwest at the Gates Foundation. "A lot of the work of the foundation is about addressing inequity."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com