The Early College Alliance is an early college program

Early college entrance program

Early college entrance programs, sometimes called early admission or early enrollment programs are educational programs that allow high school students to be accelerated into college, together with other such students, one or more years before the traditional age of college entrance, and without...

 based at Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Ypsilanti is west of Detroit and eight miles east of Ann Arbor. The university was founded in 1849 as Michigan State Normal School...

 in Ypsilanti, Michigan

Ypsilanti, Michigan

Ypsilanti is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 22,362. The city is bounded to the north by the Charter Township of Superior and on the west, south, and east by the Charter Township of Ypsilanti...

 that allows its students to earn sixty free credits of EMU classes It began in 2007, becoming the ninth early college program in Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

. It takes high school students who show interest from many surrounding school districts each year, giving them a chance to enter through a raffle

Raffle

A raffle is a competition in which people obtain numbered tickets, each ticket having the chance of winning a prize. At a set time, the winners are drawn from a container holding a copy of every number...

. After beginning college classes at EMU, they can stay until they're twenty years of age or have completed their sixty credits.

Involved School Districts

When the program began in 2007, there were five school districts taking part in the program: Milan Area School District, Lincoln Consolidated Schools, Whitmore Lake Public Schools

Whitmore Lake Public Schools

Whitmore Lake Public Schools was established in the year 1944. The schools were located just outside downtown Whitmore Lake, Michigan. Originally, the High School, Middle School, and Elementary School were built on the same land...

, Ypsilanti Public Schools and Chelsea School District. Being added to the program in 2011 are two more school districts: Ann Arbor Public Schools

Ann Arbor Public Schools

Ann Arbor Public Schools serves the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan and parts of eight surrounding townships covering . The district operates 20 elementary schools, 1 K-8 open school, 5 middle schools, 3 comprehensive high schools, 3 alternative high schools, 3 preschools and 1 adult education program;...

 and Willow Run Community Schools. Some of these schools have more available slots than others due to district size

Goals

What ECA wants to be is a high school transformation program with personalized education. Their mission is to serve "as a scalable and sustainable model of collaboration among the public high schools and higher education institutions within Washtenaw County.

Education

Throughout the duration of a student’s classes in the program, they will be assigned an advisor. This advisor will help to track their performance and give them support, as well as creating a specific educational development plan for each student based on which classes they have already completed in High School. The program worked with the state of Michigan in order to create a list of required classes for each and every student. High school classes can fulfill some of these requirements, college classes can fulfill others. This allows for a lot of variation from student to student. Most students will complete the program in two to four years.

Enrollment

The program’s goal is to enroll 150 new students per year, with 400-500 overall students at a time in the program. Incoming students begin by taking four core high school classes: English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Math, Biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 and History

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 or Government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

. The students are evaluated on their academic commitment, development and emotional readiness coupled with basic skills, dubbed “Soft Skills” by the program. Depending on these factors and how well they do in their classes, students are moved on into EMU classes or, in some extreme cases, removed from the program. ECA has very high standards in terms of their students' performance. If students don't pass their Eastern classes with a C or higher, it is treated as a failure and, if the class is required, the student will have to retake it.