Diploma Plus: Our Students
Diploma Plus (DP) is intended for youth who have been failed by a traditional system that did not adequately nurture their gifts, curiosity, intelligence and power as learners. DP values the wealth of creativity, honesty, courage, and hopefulness our youth and their families bring. When students come to a DP School, they are making a commitment – to honor generations of struggle for the promise of education, to their families, legacies, and future. DP is an alternative in the best sense of the word. Its role is to transform students’ learning experience from what they’ve been told they can’t be to what we know they can and will be.
Many Diploma Plus students have had difficult and frustrating experiences in a traditional high school setting. Of students surveyed in 2003-04, most surveyed reported that they had struggled academically in their prior school, with some citing poor grades and low skills as reasons they were not successful. Students also experienced personal issues that made attendance and success in school difficult, including unstable living situations, involvement with the criminal justice system, mental health and substance abuse problems, and learning disabilities.
Historically, many DP students have dropped-out of high school before enrolling in DP. For students enrolled between 2001 and 2004 at DP Schools, approximately 70 percent of students had previously left school. While DP Schools are continuing to enroll students who have already left school, there is an increasing emphasis on drop-out prevention. Several of the new schools that joined the DP network were created for this reason and target 8th and 9th grade students.
Other specifics about DP students:
- Over 2400 students are enrolled across the 16 program sites in the Diploma Plus network (2007-08 school year).
- Race/Ethnicity (2005-06)
- African American – 45%
- Hispanic/Latino – 35%
- White – 12%
- Asian/Pacific Islander – 3%
- American Indian/Alaska Native – 1%
- Gender (2004-05)
- Free/reduced lunch eligibility (2005-06): 87%
- English Language Learners: 13%
- Most Diploma Plus students come from families with little history of postsecondary education. In a 2004 student survey, most students reported that they did not have family members with experience applying to or attending college. Additionally:
- Only 18 percent of students reported that a parent had completed a postsecondary degree;
- 13 percent reported having a sibling who had graduated from college.
- Colleges attended by program graduates include:
- Boise State University
- Bunker Hill Community
- College Cape Cod Community College
- Clark University
- Holyoke Community College
- Lesley University
- Massachusetts College of Art
- Mass Bay Community College
- Massasoit Community College Quincy College
- Quinsigamond Community College Roxbury Community College
- Salem State College
- Univ. of Massachusetts-Boston Univ. of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
- Lincoln Technical College
- Touro College
- Hudson Valley Community College
- City University of New York
- Lincoln College
- Daytona Beach Community College
- Borough of Manhattan Community College
- Cedar Crest College, PA
- Kingsborough Community College
- Sanford Brown Institute
- Art Institute of NY, Culinary Arts
- Nassau Community College
- LaGuardia Community College
- Broome Community College
- Technical Institute
- Benedict College, South Carolina
- Bronx Community College
- Herkimer County Community College, SUNY
- John Jay College
- Briarcliffe College
- Hostos Community College
- Pace University
- Westchester Community College
- Program graduates have also attended post-secondary technical certification programs in technology and in the allied health professions.
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