Sixteen-year-old LaQuinton Archie dreams of one day becoming a lawyer or psychiatrist. A student at Dayton Early College Academy, Archie recently told a reporter from The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Everybody I know, they didn't go to college. I want to be different."

An innovative, successful model for Early College High Schools, Ohio's Dayton Early College Academy (DECA) has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Columbus Dispatch, and Journal of the Ohio School Boards Association, among other publications. Just one of three Ohio Early College high schools sponsored by KnowledgeWorks Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jobs for the Future, and the Kellogg Foundation, DECA is giving over 100 disadvantaged kids the opportunity to graduate from high school with not only a diploma, but an associate's degree or 60 hours of college credit.

In addition to DECA, our Foundation helps sponsor Youngstown Early College and Lorain County Early College High School in Elyria. Ultimately, we'll support five additional Early College high schools in Canton, Toledo, Columbus, and Cleveland. The power and potential of these schools is that they will demonstrate that students who have been labeled and even dismissed as "not college-going material" can in fact not only graduate from high school, but also succeed in postsecondary education.

Ranked 41st out of 50 states in our number of college graduates, Ohio is well behind the nation in college graduation rates. While this is affecting the lives of individual Ohioans, it's also greatly affecting our state's economy. Research shows that providing struggling urban high school students with more challenging, college-level school work, paradoxically, increases their desire and ability to learn.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation believes that champions of change for Ohio's high schools exist in every area of society -- from policy makers to business leaders to communities. Find out how you can Become a Champion of Change for Ohio's high schools.