Brandan Montgomery did very well at the public high school he attended in Washtenaw County. Too well for the effort he put into it, he says. He didn’t study, slept through classes, and still received As on tests. “Everything comes easy for me, but school was just too easy. I felt I wasn’t being challenged.”
He stayed because he enjoyed high school sports and excelled at them—he had plans to try for a college football scholarship and dreamed of making the NFL. That changed three years ago when he decided on impulse to apply for admission to Washtenaw Technical Middle College. “I knew about WTMC because one of my best friends had applied,” he says, “and a few of my cousins had gone there.”
A Michigan Public School Academy, WTMC was chartered by Washtenaw Community College and established on its campus in 1996. One of the first middle colleges in the state, WTMC requires students to take a combination of core high school and college academic courses as well as acquire and demonstrate life management skills. They must get sixty college credits to earn an associate’s degree or technical certificate in one of more than sixty programs. Graduating seniors leave ready to attend college as juniors or start careers—all at no direct cost to themselves or their parents, since funding for a public school education covers middle college. Students must have completed the equivalent of ninth or tenth grade and meet other criteria to attend. Currently WTMC has 350 students and a waiting list.
In 1974, Janet Lieberman, a professor of psychology at LaGuardia Community College in New York, originated and developed the concept of a collaborative high school/college program that could support the academic and psychosocial needs of at-risk urban youth. Mott Middle College in Genesee County was the first to open in Michigan, in 1991.
Gunder Myran, president of WCC from 1975 to 1998, says that although the original impetus behind charter middle colleges was to address the needs of at-risk students, WCC had a different idea: “We wanted to create a school with an emphasis on career and college education.”
Deborah Trapp, the middle college’s dean, believes that high school kids are generally sold short.
“They are capable of great things, ready to accomplish more than we believe they can…Middle colleges give them another option.”
Brandan Montgomery was accepted at WTMC but wavered about attending. He knew the intellectual and emotional stretch he’d have to make at WTMC would be a great opportunity—but he would miss playing sports.
When he and his father met with Trapp to discuss his decision, the dean asked him when he had last felt excited and challenged in school. “His father started laughing,” she says, “Brandan looked at him and said, ‘Dad, she’s totally tricking me.'”
Montgomery graduated with a 3.0 GPA, a high school diploma, an associate’s degree in liberal arts, and a certificate in computer-aided design. He’s been admitted as a junior to the University of Missouri, aided by two scholarships, and plans to major in marketing, minor in psychology, and try for a sports marketing career. He now knows that, at 5 foot 7, he could never have had a pro sports career. His WTMC education is helping him reach far more realistic goals.
