High School Program

The Puente high school program is designed to help students graduate from high school, become college eligible, and enroll in college through the efforts and support provided by a Puente-trained team. The core Puente student program consists of 1) an academically rigorous 9th and 10th grade college preparatory English class that incorporates Mexican American/Latino and other multicultural literature, taught by the same Puente-trained teacher; 2) a four-year academic counseling program for students; and 3) mentoring/community leadership activities which provide a structured approach for students to examine and discuss the concepts of mentoring, community leadership and service, and as a result are then expected to return to their community as leaders and mentors to future generations.

Puente is open to all students and is designed to meet the needs of students from populations with low rates of enrollment at four-year colleges. After a thorough application and selection process, students are identified for the program at the end of their 8th grade year. During the recruitment and selection process, Puente counselors complete a thorough evaluation and assessment of the individual student's learning competencies, academic skill level, motivation and parental support. Selected students will represent a range of effort and performance levels and are usually the first in their families to attend college.

"High School Puente has been cast primarily as a program to help increase the number of Latino students who successfully complete high school and enroll in four year colleges. In reality, however, Puente is a major school reform effort with implications for broad curricular and organizational changes within high schools."
— Excerpted from an independent evaluation (funded by the Carnegie corporation) of the Puente High School Project