Donna Rodrigues delivered the opening speech at "Exceeding Expectations," a May 2004 meeting of the partners and schools in the Early College High School Initiative. With over $50 million in investments from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the initiative is creating some 150 schools in this decade. Now an associate vice president at JFF, Rodrigues drew on her experience as founder of the University Park Campus School to discuss what it means to do this work from a practitioner's point of view. Located in one of the most economically disadvantaged sections in Worcester, Massachusetts, University Park sends a powerful message of possibility to urban schools across the nation: academic achievement for all students is within reach.
