Eligibility Requirements

Interested applicants must meet the Center for Native Education's eligibility requirements:

A La Conner student participates in a traditional carving class.
Photo credit: Jerry Davis

• Applicants can be high schools or districts, tribes, American Indian/Alaskan Native organizations, colleges or universities. Any of these stakeholders may apply, but all applicants must have prior successful educational programming experience and partnerships with the other stakeholders.
  
• Applicants may propose converting an existing high school to an early college model or developing a new early college altogether.
  
• Applicants must establish a grade 9-12 school. Priority will be given to applicants that propose a grades 6-12 school. All applicants, however, must work with a middle school to insure that a college preparatory, core curriculum is offered in grades 6-8 and that an early college class is taught to middle school students as well. Additional priority will be given to applicants who want to offer early college classes to adult learners from the community at-large.
• Priority will be given to applicants in Alaska, California, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington. At the same time, strong applications will be considered from anywhere in the country.
• Applicants may propose that an early college be located on reservations, or in rural, suburban or urban areas. Applicants should locate their school within 10 miles of a tribal reservation or partner and within 40 miles of a potential college partner.
• New schools may start small, but must anticipate measured growth within four years. Applicants must commit to developing an early college high school that, in its first year of operations, will serve a minimum of 60 students. By year four of operations, the school should serve 300 students in grades 9-12 or 13. Also by year four, at least 180 middle school students should be served in a grades 6-12 early college or by outreach to a middle school partner. Ideally, 50% of the school's enrollment should consist of American Indian/Alaska Native students. To reach these numbers, recruitment should include outreach to all Native families in the local community and a plan to re-enroll students who have dropped out.
• Applicants must demonstrate the capacity to financially sustain an early college high school beyond the grant period. Grant funds catalyze a new secondary school model and are intended to cover start-up costs only.