The University of Wisconsin’s Precollege Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence (PEOPLE) program, a pre-college pipeline for students of color and low-income students, will cut its middle school programs as well as pre-college programs outside of Madison and Milwaukee, in response to an extensive external evaluation, UW officials announced Monday.
UW Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate Patrick Sims said the changes are not a result of funding cuts and that the program will continue to serve the same number of students — 200 new students per year and a total of about 1,000 at a time. Students currently in the program will be allowed to finish, he said.
“The changes really are more about reallocating resources … to provide a better, more quality experience for those students who participate,” Sims said.
To begin with, the program will be streamlined to a single point of entry, said PEOPLE Assistant Director of Pre-college Programs Gail Ford.
Currently, the program recruits sixth-graders in Madison and ninth-graders in Milwaukee, Middleton, Sun Prairie, Verona, Waukesha, Kenosha and Racine, as well as Menominee Indian School District and other districts in Northern Wisconsin. The program provides extensive college preparatory support and pays tuition at UW. All students currently in the program will be allowed to finish, but beginning next fall, the program will recruit only eight-graders in Milwaukee and Madison. Menominee and other Native American students will be served by a new program still in development, Sims said.
“Really PEOPLE has five different intervention models,” Ford said. “We really wanted to create one common experience for anyone in this program.” And they wanted that one common experience to be a good one, not the “lowest common denominator,” Ford said, which requires the program to focus on Madison and Milwaukee high school students.
Summer programming will also be scaled back. Until now, middle school students have participated in half-day programs on campus and students between eighth and ninth grades have also taken classes in the afternoons, while high school students have stayed in dormitories on campus for six weeks each summer. Beginning this summer, the ninth-grade summer program will be cut to half-days, and the duration of the high school program will be cut back from 11 total weeks to nine beginning in 2019.
“We have reduced the total number of weeks, but those savings are then put back into the program. It’s a reinvestment, a retooling of what’s already there,” said Sims.
One of the new investments will be more hands-on tutoring and preparation for students in Milwaukee, Sims said, including the addition of three full-time staff there.
Sims said he hopes refocusing the program will also increase the number of students who successfully complete the program. Currently, about 64 percent of students complete the program; Sims said the goal is 75 percent.
Marie Nofodji is one of the students who’s made it all the way through. She entered the program as a Sherman Middle School student and came to UW after graduating from Madison East. She said the middle school program was especially beneficial.
“With the middle school program I was able to find a new way to study and better my habits. That’s what it helped me, is prep,” she said. Had she started in high school rather than middle school, she said, “I think I would a different image on the way to go about things. I would have different goals.”
Starting in high school won’t be as beneficial in the long term, she speculated.
“It’s just taking a kid and putting them into a situation that they weren’t used to before,” she said. “If you’re starting in high school and do it for just three or four years, you might just be in it for the (tuition). It doesn’t have as much value. (Starting in) middle school really just makes the work that you’re doing worth more.”
This story has been updated to correct some inaccuracies regarding some of the changes.
