Crowley ISD Superintendent Michael McFarland lifted his arms in the air and pointed around the foyer of Tarleton State University Fort Worth as he chatted with two high school students.
“You’ve probably already seen yourself in college, but now you’re actually here, in college, and you’re doing well,” McFarland told Crowley High senior Leah Mullens and North Crowley High senior Mekenzie Livingston.
Leah and Mekenzie enrolled along with more than 250 other students in a program that allows them to receive high school credit from Crowley ISD while also earning college credit hours from Tarleton — for free. Crowley ISD and Tarleton celebrated the formalization of their dual credit partnership Sept. 4 at the university’s burgeoning campus along Chisholm Trail Parkway in south Fort Worth.
“I get to take this amazing opportunity for college for two years completely free,” Leah said. “They pay for all of my textbooks. They pay for the transportation here. They pay for my classes. It’s amazing. I’m very grateful for them.”
Crowley ISD is the only district partnered with Tarleton under a new dual credit model, according to both education institutions. Courses include English and U.S. history.
Students receive instruction in classrooms at the Tarleton Fort Worth campus from Crowley ISD teachers who are credentialed as courtesy instructors for the university. Students receive college and high school credit from a single course.
In contrast to dual credit students, dual enrollment students remain at their school while simultaneously taking high school and college coursework. Students earn individual grades for their high school credit and college credit.
Tarleton State University President James Hurley hopes that dual credit students will complete their degrees at his college. However, he has a bigger aspiration.
“I believe that if we recruit them from the region and we train them in the region, they’ll stay in the region,” Hurley said.
Mayor Mattie Parker, who previously led the Tarrant To & Through Partnership, has pushed for that outcome since her election in 2021. She launched the Mayor’s Council on Education and Workforce Development with an eye toward boosting the career readiness of students across Fort Worth so that they may stay and further ignite the city’s growth.
Watching high school students come to Tarleton Fort Worth is exciting for Dean Rachael Capua and her team. Five days a week, a yellow school bus pulls up in front of the campus and a stream of Crowley ISD students march to their classes.
In fact, the Crowley ISD students, alongside Tarleton Fort Worth’s inaugural freshman class, were among the first to use a new building that opened in August, Capua said.
“What is so beautiful about this is that we want students to feel that they belong in these spaces and places. That these walls and these buildings are more than just walls and buildings. That it’s a place that they can feel a part of this greater community,” Capua said.
The new partnership helps deliver on a goal the school board established nearly a decade ago, McFarland said: Graduates should leave Crowley ISD with more than a high school diploma and have choices and opportunities they otherwise would not have.
Opportunities such as earning credit at a college campus change student mindsets, McFarland said.
“This is the kind of work that moves kids from understanding what’s possible to making it probable,” the superintendent said.
Mekenzie recognized the opportunity she now has thanks to her school district.
“This is something that not many people get to experience,” she said. “I mean, we’re in high school taking college-level classes at a new college campus, so this is a really big experience for us.”
Jacob Sanchez is a senior education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
