Early Intervention Programs: Opening the Door to Higher Education. ERIC Digest

This digest summarizes a larger document of the same title which examines early intervention programs providing services and resources to encourage low-income/minority youth to finish high school and enter college. It notes provisions of federal law which encourage such programs and the unifying mission of the National Early Intervention Scholarship and Partnership Program. Such programs are seen as either broad early intervention programs, "academic outreach" programs operated by academic institutions and designed to encourage at-risk students to plan for college, or school-college collaboration programs. Programs are differentiated into six types: (1) programs established by philanthropic agencies, (2) federally supported programs, (3) state-sponsored programs with matching federal support, (4) entirely state-supported programs, (5) systemic changes involving school-college collaboration, and (6) college- or university-sponsored programs. Implications of the growth of these programs for college and university administrators are considered and include recommendations to coordinate institutional outreach programs with early intervention programs and document efforts to increase access to their institutions. (DB)