The College Promise

Guests: Keira Sloan Scholz, Director, The Provo Promise; Harris Rosen, President and COO of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, Founder of the Tangelo Park Program; Charles Dziuban, PhD, Advisory Board Member for the Tangleo Park Program, Director, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University of Central Florida If you’re a kid in a working poor family with parents who never went to college and you go to a school that doesn’t meet federal standards, what motivation do you have, really, to work hard and get good grades? You know you can’t afford college, anyway. Hope is the missing element. And that’s what Harris Rosen set out to restore in the low-income Florida neighborhood called Tangelo Park 25 years ago by promising to pay full college tuition, room and board for every student who graduated from high school. Hundreds of kids have taken him up on the offer. Today every high school senior in Tangelo Park graduates. And similar so-called “promise” scholarship programs have sprung up around the nation.  Learn about Promise Programs near you.