The Dayton Early College Academy, a Dayton Public Schools high school housed on the University of Dayton campus, will showcase its success nationally in April. 
DECA has been invited to participate in the Breaking Ranks 2007 Urban Secondary School Showcase in Chicago April 23-24.
The showcase convenes about 20 of the most innovative and successful middle and high schools from the around the country to present their programs and strategies for success. Schools were chosen based on their outstanding reputations for quality and innovative approaches with challenging populations.
DECA students have considerable freedom to follow their academic interests in a system structured around passing increasingly rigorous “gateways,” while receiving considerable personal attention from teachers, administrators and parents.
Operated in partnership with UD’s School of Education and Allied Professions, DECA, which opened in August 2003, is the first early college high school in Ohio with a singular focus of preparing urban students for college. About 82 percent of the students are black and most come from homes where few parents have earned college degrees.
DECA will graduate its first class this spring; every student is planning to attend college or continue post-secondary education and half have already been accepted to universities.
The school is unusual, in part, because it is a public school operated by a private, Catholic university and located on the campus. Students attend classes at the high school as well as the university and Sinclair Community College. Students have earned more than 1,500 college credits and several will graduate from DECA with associates’ degrees from Sinclair.
