Arkansas town's scholarship program sends 81 percent of high school graduates to college

Only 18.2 percent of Arkansans had a bachelor's degree in 2000, the the lowest among the states except West Virginia (16.5 percent). In the town of El Dorado, Ark., a local oil company's scholarship program is trying to improve that by offering to send all local high school graduates — regardless of grades or income — to college, Steve Brawner reports for The Christian Science Monitor. (Brawner also took the photo of an El Dorado High School classroom above.)

The program has helped spark growth in the town of 22,000 near the Louisiana border. Brawner explains the renaissance:

The percentage of graduating seniors attending college has risen from about 60 percent to 81 percent. Families are moving into the school district to take advantage of the program after decades of population decline. The student body has risen by at least 140 students to more than 4,500, and this year's kindergarten class is 12 percent larger than the last. In 2007, the town passed a property-tax increase to replace its 45-year-old high school and created a local sales tax to fund economic development.

The program, called El Dorado Promise and sponsored by Murphy Oil Corp., is the latest in a line of similar community programs that are springing up around the country. (We recently mentioned one sponsored the Rotary Club in Hopkinsville, Ky.) The El Dorado program was inspired by Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan, but it has some differences, Brawner writes. In the El Dorado program, students must enroll in the fall after high school graduation, and they can attend any college anywhere, while receiving tuition and fees equivalent to Arkansas' most expensive state school. Students who have been enrolled in the El Dorado district longer receive more money, with ninth grade being the final time to enroll to be eligible for participation in the program. (Read more)