College Preparatory Middle School Is Thriving in the Face of Adversity

Introducing Voice of San Diego’s Acorn Awards: This week are giving out a new set of recognitions to highlight schools that outperform expectations on a metric comparing student income to test scores, which we developed in partnership with UC San Diego Extended Studies Center for Research and Evaluation.    

Roughly half of College Preparatory Middle School students are living with financial struggle, yet students there are achieving academic success.  

College Preparatory Middle School was created in 2009 when roughly 80 students gathered to learn in the basement of a church. The school eventually had to moved to a bigger campus because enrollment grew to more than 200 students. But by the time they acquired the new campus, the pandemic hit — forcing the middle school into online learning. 

Their attention to detail and commitment to a full course load during online teaching proved to be a critical move. The school’s co-founder and administrator, Mitchell Miller said their extensive quarantine coursework helped them come back “better than ever” after students returned to in-person learning.  

“We can either be behind or we can be on top of things,” school co-founder and administrator Christina Calloway said.  

Despite the fact that roughly 45 percent of College Preparatory students qualify for free and reduced price meals, the school’s test scores are extremely high.  

For the first time ever, Voice of San Diego is giving out awards to recognize schools that outperform expectations on a metric we created in partnership with UC San Diego Extended Studies Center for Research and Evaluation. We are recognizing College Preparatory Middle as the top performing middle school in San Diego County.  

Our income vs. test score metric compares projected test scores based on a school’s percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals and compares it to the school’s current English language arts and math scores.  Schools with scores of “0” on the metric are performing exactly as expected for their income bracket, while schools in the negative are performing worse than their poverty level average and schools above “0” are performing better.  

College Preparatory has an income vs. test ratio of 86.  

Calloway said one of the most positive aspects of the campus is the outreach.  

“Mitch and I are in the parking lot every morning and afternoon,” Calloway said. “We are telling families ‘Hey, we are available if you have a concern or something you want to talk about.’”  

Both Calloway’s and Miller’s backgrounds lie in psychology and school counseling, and both see the partnership of student and staff as an ingredient of their success.  

“We have a lot of support in place to help students achieve the expectations we have for them,” Calloway said. “If there’s things going on at home, that student is not going to be as successful.”  

Both students and staff have coaching, mental health and further support opportunities at College Preparatory. 

 “If there is a pain point or something that is not working out, we want to know what we can do,” Calloway said.  

Miller said College Preparatory welcomes students of varying strengths and skill levels.“We get students from all different levels of ability,” Miller said. “We work close with students and families to make sure students are progressing.”  

Listening and assessing needs is half the battle when it comes to making consistent improvements, Calloway said.  

“Sometimes you will get a problem that is not automatically solved but a big portion is to let people know they are heard,” Calloway said.  

College Preparatory is purposely small, according to Miller, with a maximum of 25 students per classroom, which makes for a school structure with not as much red tape as the average campus.  

Things at College Preparatory are able to get a little more experimental in practice, Miller said.  

“We give them that tenacity and that grit,” Calloway said. “By the time they leave us for ninth grade they are more than ready to bust the doors off of high school.”  

The post College Preparatory Middle School Is Thriving in the Face of Adversity appeared first on Voice of San Diego.