Across Chicago, about 1,000 students from over 80 high schools are graduating this year with at least a semester’s worth of transferable college credits from one of the City Colleges of Chicago under their belts. Of those Chicago Public School students, 211 are graduating with an associate degree – 13 of whom are doing so for the first time at Austin’s Michele Clark Academic Preparatory Magnet High School.
Brianna Hill is the first at Austin’s Frederick Douglass Academy High School to accrue over 15 college credits. She graduated early and will start in the fall at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s nursing program.
“I’m looking forward to learning more about something that I really want to pursue,” Hill told Austin Weekly News.
But that success, she said, didn’t come without struggle and perseverance. During Hill’s junior year in 2023, her brother died.
“That was one of the most painful moments of my life,” Hill said at a ceremony at UIC Forum on May 20, which recognized the hundreds of students who have completed at least 15 college credits, or a semester’s worth, during high school. “Balancing classes, starting early college work courses for the first time, and grief felt impossible, but I kept showing up.”
That same school year, Hill earned her Certified Nursing Assistant certification. She said early college programs have taught her not only academics, but time management, goal setting and discipline.
In addition to those who attended the celebration, this year, thousands of CPS students racked up credits that will count toward their college classes – more than 6,600 of them, representing nearly $10 million in college tuition.
That’s a record for CPS, which has been offering early college programs since 2012. Any school in Chicago can participate in the programs for free, where students take dual credit courses with qualified teachers at their high schools, or with professors at one of the City Colleges of Chicago, a partner university or online. These classes count toward both the number of credits a high schooler needs to graduate and toward college credits.
“A lot of the students who are graduating, they can go right to work in a high-wage careers and they can still continue earning credits,” Megan Hougard, chief of CPS’ Office of College and Career Success, told Austin Weekly News. “That part of how the credentials are stackable is really important.”
According to Hougard, CPS’ early college programs are fashioned after the New York State Pathways in Technology, which launched in 2011 to teach students workplace skills and help them earn college credit.
The first CPS schools to offer early college programs were on Chicago’s South Side, including Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, Solorio Academy High School and South Shore International College Preparatory High School. But as early college programs have become more popular with the Chicago Roadmap – which CPS and CCC launched in 2020 to streamline a postsecondary path for students – they got more traction on the West Side.
Hill said she found out about early college opportunities through CCC’s Basic Nursing Assistant training program. After enrolling, Hill researched other classes she could take to earn more college credits.
After her high school classes at Douglass, Hill started going to Malcolm X College three days a week until 7:30 p.m. to take nursing classes with college students. She also took clinicals on Saturdays from about 6:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. and attended two online classes for college credit.
“My biggest takeaway was the hard work and dedication that I put in,” Hill told Austin Weekly News. “Losing a sibling around that time when I first started college-level courses was really hard, but my school and my courses were keeping me going and helping me push through it. Although life throws rocks at you, you don’t have to get hit by them.”
That mindset is how Hill became the first at Douglass to graduate with 15 college credits. Though Douglass only had 35 students at the end of the 2024 school year, and Michele Clark had 427, students at these West Side schools are seizing college credit opportunities just like those attending Chicago high schools with thousands of students.
“What I heard today is there were a lot of firsts,” said Hougard of several high school principals who, on May 20, introduced their school’s initial students to graduate with an associate degree or a certain number of college credits. “This is the range of opportunity, and we are intentional that it includes Douglass, it includes Michele Clark and our schools that may be smaller, but that doesn’t mean the students don’t deserve these opportunities.”