Crowley ISD partners with Paul Quinn College to run middle schools. How will it work?
Middle schoolers in the Crowley Independent School District will soon get an up-close look at what college is like under a new partnership between the district and Paul Quinn College.
On Thursday, Crowley ISD’s board approved a partnership under which the district will turn day-to-day operations at its four middle schools over to Paul Quinn, a historically Black college located in southern Dallas. District officials say bringing in a partner from higher education to operate the middle schools will give students earlier exposure to educational opportunities after high school.
Michael McFarland, superintendent of Crowley ISD, said the district and the college will use the upcoming school year as a planning year, and begin work in earnest during the 2025-26 school year. Part of that planning will include developing ideas for how the middle school student experience will be different once Paul Quinn takes over, he said, but he expects it to include trips to the college’s campus for middle schoolers and virtual or in-person visits to Crowley by Paul Quinn faculty.
The agreement, known as an 1882 Partnership, gives districts financial incentives to bring in outside partners like foundations, colleges or charter schools to run public school campuses, either with the goal of turning around struggling schools or spurring innovation. The partnership is named for Senate Bill 1882, a bill state lawmakers passed in 2017 laying out the framework for such agreements.
McFarland said the district selected Paul Quinn as a partner because of its track record of innovation. In 2010, the college made national headlines when it converted its football field into an urban farm. The college also has a work program in which students spend 10-20 hours per week working as interns with the college’s corporate partners, a list that includes Bank of America, Children’s Health and the Dallas Zoo. One possible feature of the new partnership could be Paul Quinn students coming to Crowley to work with middle schoolers as a part of their internships, McFarland said,
As part of the partnership, Paul Quinn plans to offer letters of acceptance to Crowley middle school students. Students will still have to graduate from high school and meet the college’s academic requirements to qualify. Many of the details still need to be worked out, said Paul Quinn President Michael Sorrell, including whether those letters come when students start sixth grade, when they finish eighth grade or at some point in between.
Part of the reason for offering college acceptance to middle schoolers is getting them to think in those terms earlier, Sorrell said. Most students from middle class and affluent families understand early on that there’s an expectation that they’ll go to college after high school, he said. But students from low-income families often don’t start thinking about college until they get to high school, he said, if they ever start thinking about it at all. By reaching students earlier, educators can change the way they think about themselves, he said.
For many Crowley students, that could mean helping them see college not as a dream or even as a possibility, Sorrell said, but as an inevitability.
