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Tony Habit

Photograph of Tony Habit
Tony Habit
President
The North Carolina New Schools Project

With more than 20 years experience in public school innovation and reform, Tony Habit began his educational career as a middle and high school counselor for special needs students. Tony was tapped to head the North Carolina New Schools Project in November 2003. Previously, Tony was president of the Wake Education Partnership in Raleigh, and he was the founding executive director of the Durham Public Education Network.

In 2000, Tony was named an Eisenhower Fellow and traveled to New Zealand and Australia to study market competition in public education and the use of technology in the classroom. The Public School Forum of North Carolina presented Tony with its inaugural Lever Award in recognition of his leadership for private-public partnerships for innovation in the public schools in 2002. He serves on many boards and committees including the State Board of Education Leadership for Innovation Committee, High Five, the Research Triangle regional high school reform partnership.

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Question 1: Do you have evidence that students who attend Early College High Schools are more likely than their counterparts attending other high schools to enter and graduate from 2 and/or 4-year post secondary institutions? If there is evidence of post secondary success, what characteristics of the Early College High School experience to attribute to that success?

North Carolina’s early college high schools (ECHS) will see their first significant numbers of graduates with the class of 2010, so this year should tell us a lot about the schools’ success in helping students advance to post-secondary institutions. But even with that limited experience, the schools have good reason to be confident of strong results. The initial findings of a soon-to-be-released study show that students enrolled in the state’s early college high schools are surpassing their peers in traditional high schools in terms of key preparation. The independent, randomized study finds, for example, that a significantly higher percentage of students attending an early college high school have completed algebra I by the end of 9th grade than a control group of students enrolled in traditional high school. Students in both groups applied for an early college but were randomly selected by lottery. By the end of 9th grade, 81 percent of the early college students had successfully completed algebra I compared to 67 percent of the control group. Furthermore, 98 percent of the ECHS students had taken at least one college preparatory math course by the end of 9th grade compared to 76 percent of the control group.

The study is also finding that early college high schools are reducing the performance gap between minority and non-minority students. In the early colleges in 9th grade, there was just a 2 percentage-point gap in the progression rates for algebra I between minority and non-minority students. This compares to a 13.6 percentage-point gap in algebra I progression rates between the same two sets of students in the control group.

Apart from the study, data from the state’s community college system shows that early college students are earning better grades in their college courses, on average, than their college-age peers. Including all college courses taken by early college students on community college campuses in 2008-09, 75 percent received a passing grade of C or better. For all other students in community college courses, 70 percent earned a C or better.