Education Week - August 29, 2018 - 8

Teacher Links His First-Generation Students to Colleges
Ky. program battles
'undermatching'
As a teacher, Beau Baker has a lot
to be proud of in the just-graduated
class of seniors from Ivy Plus Academy in Louisville, Ky.
Of a class of 26 students, 23 will be
attending private colleges or universities in the fall, and 19 of them will
be at out-of-state schools; one chose
the U.S. Marine Corps. And just two
of those students will be paying
more than $10,000 in tuition. Five
students will only be paying for their
books and fees.
Before joining the academy, Baker's
students hardly thought they would
be able to attend the University of
Kentucky, with its approximately
$12,000 price tag, let alone private
institutions costing $60,000 or more.
Ivy Plus Academy is a special program offered by Fern Creek High
School, a 1,760-student public magnet
school. More than 80 percent of Fern
Creek's students qualify for free and
reduced-price lunch, or are considered
to be racial or ethnic minorities, or
qualify for special education or English-language instruction.
The academy program works to
match selected low-income, firstgeneration students with colleges
and universities that can assist them
with financial aid. Baker, an Advanced
Placement Language and Composition teacher and the academy's dean
and founder, is that matchmaker.
Students of Ivy Plus are required
to take specific advanced math,
English, science, and social studies
classes, in addition to AP courses
and electives. They also meet with
Baker before, after, and sometimes
during school to learn more about
opportunities available to them after
graduation.
The seeds for Ivy Plus were planted
15 years ago when Baker entered
teaching. He asked his students about
their pursuit of higher education, their
applications for college, and FAFSA
(the Free Application for Federal Student Aid). He found that most had
little knowledge of their options and
the admissions process.
"Most of my kids are first-gen kids;
they're from low-income families,"
Baker said. "They think, 'Yeah, but
that's not for a kid like me.'"
Of the 51 total graduates of Ivy Plus
Academy, 43 are first-generation college students, 35 received federal Pell
grants, and 19 are members of minority groups.

One-Man Operation
So Baker began meeting with students and parents individually. On top
of a full class schedule at Fern Creek,
he was also acting as a college counselor to his high-achieving students.
"[The other students and I] always
joked how he was kind of a father figure," Amaya Bradford, who graduated
last spring, said. "He wouldn't walk
our steps for us, but he would walk
right next to us."
Bradford said that before she en-

Patrick T. Fallon for Education Week

By Sasha Jones

Ivy Plus Academy graduate Iishe Davis is now a sophomore at Scripps College. She worked at her college campus this summer in Claremont, Calif.

tered the Ivy Plus program, she only
knew of the University of Louisville
and the University of Kentucky. She
will attend Davidson College, a private liberal arts school in North Carolina, this fall.
Four years ago, things changed
for Baker. He is still the only Fern
Creek teacher working directly
with Ivy Plus students to plan their
schedules and find the right college,
but he gained support from Fern
Creek Assistant Principal Rebecca
Nicolas, who took on some of his administrative tasks, gave funding to
the program, provided Baker with
an extra planning period, and helped
formally establish the now 200-student academy in the school.
"We really are capitalizing on something that I don't think a lot of other
schools are addressing: undermatching," Nicolas said.
High-achieving students are "undermatched" when they choose less-demanding colleges over more-selective
ones or don't attend college at all. According to 2014 research by Matthew
Chingos, the director of the Urban Institute's Education Policy Program, 27
percent of high-income students and
over 50 percent of lower-income students undermatch.
"High schools can help students understand the opportunities available,"
Chingos said. "But high schools, a lot
of times, don't have a lot of resources."

Travel to College
Baker said that his main goal
throughout the process is to help as
many students as possible find the
right match for them upon graduation, and outside funding helps further enhance that mission.
With donations from the school's

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 29, 2018 | www.edweek.org

alumni association and other supporters, Baker organizes two road
trips each summer so students can
visit schools that they may be applying to, or see campuses similar to the
schools they hope to attend. Each year,
Baker chooses a different region of the
country to visit. If students go on the
trip all three summers they are in the
program, they may see up to 40 campuses without having to pay for travel.
For the students who may not visit
the school they wish to attend on the
road trip, Baker finds funds for individual visits. He doesn't want students
to enroll until they have physically visualized themselves on that campus.
It is not enough to get a student to
the school of their choice, he said. He
wants them to succeed and be happy
when they get there.
"I remember what I felt like as a
first-gen college kid. I kind of felt like,
did I trick these people [into accepting
me]?," Baker said.
He uses the rest of the funding
that he has, the amount that does
not go to paying for applications and
sending transcripts, to make sure
students have what they need to get
adjusted on campus. In the past, this
has included luggage, bedding, a dorm
fridge, and even a winter coat for a
student attending school in Vermont.
Even after his baby birds are out
of the nest, Baker calls them throughout their freshman year to make sure
they feel like they belong.
"That school saw value in them.
They saw worth in them," Baker said.
"For a lot of my kids, they don't get
that on a day-to-day basis."
Iishe Davis, now a rising sophomore at Scripps College, a liberal
arts women's college in California,
said that she recieves five messages
a semester from Baker, which are

especially encouraging considering
how far away she is from home.
Before Ivy Plus, Davis was initially
set on attending a small school in
India after graduation, but going to
school in California has allowed her to
pursue her other passions.
"Being away let's me reflect on the
things that I experienced, being a
person of color," Davis said. "There
weren't many opportunties for me
to get involved in social activism [in
Kentucky]."

Plans to Expand
Baker admits his program has limitations. For one, students apply when
they are just out of middle school,
when they may not be considering
higher education yet. Others may go
through three years of Ivy Plus only
to find that they don't want to pursue
college. It is trial and error.
Still, Baker wishes that he could
take in more students. Ivy Plus serves
about 10 percent of Fern Creek's students now. He hopes to increase this
percentage to 20.
As a magnet school, Fern Creek
High School brings in students from
throughout the district. If a student attends the school for one of its
other magnet programs, like Marine
JROTC or computer science, he or she
may additionally take part in Ivy Plus
Academy, but the academy is not a
magnet program on its own.
In the future, Baker hopes to expand the academy within his school
by making it a magnet program and
to encourage other schools to create a
similar program.
Nicolas shares Baker's goals to expand and hopes to further embed the
program into classroom instruction.
"It's really a duty we're going to

have to share among all of our teachers and classrooms," Nicolas said.
Baker's matchmaking passion
developed from his time as a naval
officer. He remembers asking his
right-hand man, "Why didn't you go
to college?"
"He ... said, 'You know what, Lieutenant? Because you're the only one
that's ever said something like that to
me,' " Baker said.
That moment stuck with him. He
still sees Officer Tim in the students
who do not think that college is a possibility for them, but Baker knows his
work is worth it when his students get
their college acceptance letters and,
with tears of joy streaming down their
faces, realize it is a possibility after all.
In the spring, as the graduating
seniors of Ivy Plus Academy beamed,
ready to head off to colleges and universities, Baker asked them to write
letters.
Baker wanted his students to write
to themselves, to remind them of the
excitement that they felt in the last
months of their senior year; to remind
them that they had made possible
what they thought was impossible.
He plans to mail them to his students
before their first-semester midterms,
when they may be underestimating
themselves the most.
"These kids need to understand
what value they have. These kids have
made me a better man and a better
teacher because they showed me what
resilience they have," Baker said. "I
can't believe they pay me."
Coverage of the experiences of low-income,
high-achieving students is supported in
part by a grant from the Jack Kent Cooke
Foundation, at www.jkcf.org. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.

http://www.jkcf.org http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - August 29, 2018

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