2026 Early College Summit

Educators and instructional leaders are invited to reflect on Innovation Early College's journey of cultivating faculty capacity to create a school-wide culture of student-inquiry. In this session, participants will develop a shared understanding of high-level inquiry as sustained investigation with increased student agency, examine how intentional development of a common language and exemplars builds teacher capacity, apply a practical observation tool to support inquiry-based instructional growth, and examine how inquiry-based instruction advances core Early College outcomes, including student agency, persistence, postsecondary readiness, and credit attainment.

Presentation Slide Deck

This session will present the results of a mixed methods experimental study that examined the impacts of the Early College High Schools in North Carolina on students’ success in college preparatory mathematics courses in the 9th through 11th grades, disaggregated for academically prepared and underprepared students. The results show that the Early Colleges have improved students’ course-taking and success for all students, but the impacts are larger for underprepared students. The analyses of classroom observations and interviews with mathematics teachers reveal that instruction in the ECHS displayed a mix of traditional approaches and rigorous student-centered instructional practices.