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If you give a kid a challenge, . . .
She’ll ask what she has to do.Then she’ll want to know what the prize is when she meets the goal.If you tell a kid that by graduating he can go to college, . . .He’ll want to know how soon he can go.And what it will be like when he gets there.If you give some kids tuition, . . .They’ll race each other to the finish line.And follow their education to its logical — and happy conclusion.Just as giving author Laura Numeroff’s mouse a cookie led to all sorts of bigger and better things, a coalition of educators hope that giving the promise of college to students at Charles E. Nash Elementary in Fort Worth will lead them onward and upward.The Nash Academic Challenge guarantees that if this year’s students graduate from the school and from a Fort Worth high school, they’ll have their tuition, fees and books paid toward an associate’s degree at Tarrant County College and then another two years at the University of Texas at Arlington.Parents will be asked to let TCC track their children’s progress in school; students and their families who take the challenge will meet annually with officials at the college’s Trinity River campus.A full load (15 credit hours) costs about $2,900 a year for tuition, fees, books and supplies at TCC and $9,300 at UTA, according to collegeforalltexans.com, an informational site maintained by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.These are powerful promises. And this is the kind of partnership that can help plant the dream of a college education and nurture it to reality.Nash, which is near the Trinity River bluffs in downtown Fort Worth, has 258 students, about 75 percent of them economically disadvantaged. But it’s a school where students have excelled academically. The population is about two-thirds Hispanic, 19 percent Anglo and 13 percent African-American. About one-third of the students have limited English proficiency.During a rousing pep rally-style announcement of the challenge last week, Principal Pamela Day read the essay of a student who hopes to become a model or a doctor — and to find "a good husband who’s going to hold me in his arms and help with the cleaning.""I will do whatever it takes to get through school and go to college," this determined girl wrote. "I’m going to college because I want to make something of myself."These institutions are making an ambitious but splendid investment in the future of our community.If you give children an opportunity, there’s no telling what they can achieve.
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