High School Reform

This is an article from my college alumni magazine, The Carleton College Voice. How can we begin this discussion here in the ECASD? Comm. Cummins has brought it up multiple times at the BOE Meetings but it never goes beyond that. Anybody out there who would like to begin to make some of these changes here in Eau Claire?

Maria

Redefining the American High School

By Elizabeth Larsen
Designed for a different era and economy, our outdated high schools are leaving far too many young people ill equipped to face the future. But a growing trend shows promise: Educators and communities are creating dynamic learning environments designed to prepare all students for success in today's world.

In Rebel without a Cause, Grease, The Breakfast Club, and other movies, the iconic American high school is portrayed as an institution where the smart get smarter and those who struggle take shop or drop out. When language arts teacher Jennifer Budenski '94--who currently teaches at the Hopkins Alternative Program in Hopkins, Minnesota--started teaching at a suburban Twin Cities high school in 1998, she realized that this is not just a Hollywood plot device.

"The curriculum seemed to prepare the talented students for college and to house the other kids," Budenski says, referring to the school's one- to four-star rating system that spelled out which courses were for the brains and which courses were for kids who simply were trying to graduate. "Struggling students would sign up only for one- or two-star classes because they were choosing the easiest possible way to get through high school. But then they were bored and often would get in trouble. The system was most damaging to the kids who didn't have the family support, value system, and experience to choose to challenge themselves."

The result can be a bleak future for the young people who fall through the cracks. As the gateway to college, the workplace, and life, American high schools must prepare students to succeed in a global economy and to become responsible citizens. Whether they go on to college or join the workforce, all young people need basic analytical and communication skills. To develop these skills, high schools must not only stay in step with the innovations and changes in the culture at large but also nurture students' ability to interact with others productively and respectfully.

In the past, many states didn't track those outcomes adequately. But since 2005, when the National Governors Association adopted a common formula to measure graduation rates, the quality of state data is improving. The facts we now know are sobering: The United States has one of the lowest graduation rates in the industrialized world. A 2006 report states that each year almost one-third of U.S. high school students drop out, and nearly 50 percent of African American, Hispanic, and Native American kids never get their diplomas. Those who drop out are at greater risk than their peers to be unemployed, live in poverty, receive public assistance, go to prison, and become single parents of children who themselves drop out of high school.

Those who do graduate, both top-performing and average students, complain that their education is not challenging or relevant to their interests. Nationally, more than a quarter of high school graduates who continue on to college have to take remedial courses in their first year, and some students find themselves ineligible for appropriate post secondary education because they failed to take prerequisite courses.

The failure of high schools to prepare students adequately for college is one reason the United States also is falling behind other industrialized nations in the percentage of young adults with a college degree. And the number of engineering, math, and science degrees awarded in the United States has declined by about a third since 1960, threatening our nation's ability to satisfy the demands of an expanding economy.

The ranks of Carleton alumni are filled with large numbers of high school teachers and administrators. Those we spoke with have much to say about the state of America's high schools, and they are invested in finding solutions to this crisis.

The Dropout Epidemic
Joe Nathan '70

Title: Director of the Center for School Change at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota
Skills Set: “Research has shown that participation in what we call extracurricular activities—debate, drama, journalism, speech, music, or the arts—is a key factor in predicting success as an adult. By relegating these activities to after school, we downgrade their importance in developing life skills. They should be integrated into what we do in the mainstream day of a high school.”

Education policy experts have their own perspective on why so many students fail to graduate. "There is a myth that suburban high schools are doing a great job," says Joe Nathan '70, director of the Center for School Change at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. "In many cases they are doing a good job with the top 20 to 25 percent of students. But the current structure of high school was designed when we did not expect all students to graduate with strong skills because many middle-class jobs required only a high school diploma. Today many schools operate much like they did 15 to 20 years ago, even though most middle- and upper-income jobs now require at least some education beyond high school."

Nathan says these problems are compounded by the fact that many educators believe that there is relatively little they can do with students from low-income and troubled families, despite numerous examples of schools that are producing terrific results with such students. (See sidebar on page 36.) "In too many cases, educators have not had the opportunity to learn about schools that have been successful with low-income and limited-English-speaking students," says Nathan. "Teacher and administrator preparation programs sometimes contain too much theory and not enough practice. Educators often comment that they wish they had learned more about how to manage and motivate students."

Another challenge facing high schools, says Nathan, is the fact that our society gives more acclaim to sports stars than to those with academic or artistic accomplishments. This gives young people the wrong messages about what's important.

That assessment rings true to Jane Youngquist Berliss '68, an English teacher at the United Nations International School in New York City. "The United States doesn't value teaching," she says. "Every teacher has heard 'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.' Therefore, it is difficult to attract teachers and, because our salaries are so low, many teachers can't afford to stay in the profession."

And what do the dropouts themselves have to say? In a recent report on perspectives of high school dropouts, students cited a number of reasons for not finishing school, including family challenges, a need to make money, and having a baby. But many students also said their school experience failed to interest or inspire them.

Time for a Change

Microsoft founder Bill Gates says American high schools are in need of a serious overhaul. "Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It's the wrong tool for the time," he told the nation's governors at the National Education Summit on High Schools in February 2005.

In an effort to spur innovation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $1.5 billion to improve high school education since 2000, including support for more than 1,800 high schools around the country. The money is aimed primarily at redesigning the "one size fits all" model of enormous, district-wide high schools. Grants fund the start-up of new, smaller schools as well as the conversion of large high schools into more personalized learning communities so that families have more options within public school systems.

A recent report on the first seven years of the Gates Foundation's education grantmaking finds that results take root most quickly in new schools, while changes in the expectations and culture of struggling schools happen more slowly because they require the collaborative effort of students, teachers, parents, and leaders. Additional findings show that schools need comprehensive support from their districts to succeed and that supportive federal and state policies are essential for lasting school change. Future grants will focus on expanding the impact of the most promising approaches and solving the remaining problems.

Using funds from the Gates Foundation, the Center for School Change worked with the Cincinnati school district to improve high school graduation rates. After seven years of collaborative effort, the district's graduation rate increased from 51 percent to 79 percent, says Nathan, and the graduation gap between white and African American students, once more than 20 points, has been eliminated. "Cincinnati is not nirvana, and no one is satisfied with a 79 percent high school graduation rate," he says. "But the progress is encouraging."

Despite the challenges, some schools have identified workable solutions, and education reformers are looking to them as models for the future.

The Smaller the Better

Whether by reducing the overall size of schools or by shrinking class size within larger school settings, educators want to create intimate learning communities where teachers and students can develop personal relationships that foster individualized education and accountability. Studies show that students in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel safer, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers.

St. Paul Open School English teacher Leo Bickelhaupt '90 endorses the concept of smaller learning communities. For a public school, Open School is small--approximately 400 students in grades K-12. Students call teachers by their first names. Report cards replace traditional letter grades with narrative evaluations in which teachers discuss a student's ability to write a news lead or analyze how Brave New World relates to real life. Each student chooses an adviser, who acts as both homeroom teacher and guidance counselor and has a say in the student's curriculum choices.

"Students don't feel anonymous here," says Bickelhaupt. "We consider our students carefully and on an individual basis, and we think about what they need both academically and emotionally to succeed."

Nathan, who helped start and worked for seven years at the St. Paul Open School, points to considerable evidence that shows that among similar groups of students (comparing urban-urban, suburban- suburban, rural-rural), most students do better in smaller schools.Larger schools--which may offer more amenities, extracurricular activities, and diversity than smaller schools--are fostering intimacy by creating schools within schools. The students at Crosswinds East Metro Arts and Science School in Woodbury, Minnesota, a year-round public school that follows the academically challenging international baccalaureate (IB) program for sixth through tenth grade, are divided into six "houses" that share a gym, auditorium, and cafeteria. The approximately 50 tenth-graders take core curriculum courses with the same four teachers.

Crosswinds drama teacher Tinne Rosenmeier '83 thinks the small-school structure nurtures relationships between students and teachers, which in turn allow teachers to push their students to challenge themselves academically--a key factor when it comes to the rigor of the IB curriculum. "Our students are incredibly focused," she says.
Below the Surface

It's not just size that matters. Reformers insist that in an era when many jobs require analytical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills, high school students must know more than a set of facts about a variety of topics: They need to learn how to explore subjects at greater depth. That's not an easy task when you consider that testing has become paramount to determining a school's success and, ultimately, funding. But even the rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) programs have been called into question because they emphasize breadth over depth. "The National Academy of Sciences has criticized some AP classes for focusing so much on the end-of-course exam," says Nathan. "Some courses are a mile wide and an inch deep. They don't always prepare young people for the challenges they will face in college."

A recent American College Testing program survey shows that nearly two-thirds of college instructors across the country say that state standards prepare students poorly. College instructors expect deeper understanding of fundamental skills in a few key disciplines--such as math basics, science process and inquiry, reading proficiency, and basic grammar and usage--while high school teachers tend to emphasize knowledge of specific content across a broader range of skills and topics.

Social studies teacher Amie DeHarpporte '95 supports this challenge to motivate her upper middle school students to think independently and do more than the rote work necessary to earn an A. At the Blake School in Minneapolis, a private college preparatory school, DeHarpporte and several of her colleagues embrace a pedagogy called Teaching for Understanding, an approach that forgoes the memorization of dates, facts, and minutiae in exchange for deeper conceptual understanding of big ideas, themes, concepts, and skills.

"What you have to do is go deep instead of broad," she explains. In her ninth-grade world cultures class, DeHarpporte has thrown out large chunks of the traditional curriculum in favor of a yearlong course organized around the theme of conflict and compromise. "We look at examples of conflict--from the conflict between Islam and the West to the ethnic struggles in South Africa and Tibet--and ask big questions: What are the roots of conflict? Why can't we get along? What would enable people to reach solutions? What can we do to get along better?" DeHarpporte's students know their way around an essay test, but they also earn marks by simulating South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission or by running a peace conference.

"At the end of the year, we will be able to give the students a new conflict that they know nothing about, and they will be able to research it, ask intelligent questions, and draw conclusions about why it occurred and how to solve it," says DeHarpporte. "That is the test of true understanding--when you can approach a novel situation and conquer it in an intelligent way."

The concept of in-depth exploration is taking off in some public schools. At Boston Arts Academy, which specializes in the arts, and the School of Environmental Studies, located at the Minnesota Zoo, and High Tech High in San Diego, students learn critical thinking skills by pursuing their interests.

"Many high school kids don't see much connection between their school's curriculum and the world in which they live," says Nathan. "The majority of kids who graduate from specialized schools don't go on to pursue careers in the arts or zoology or biology. But the schools engage students in something that interests them and allows them to broaden their skills and knowledge."

Nathan endorses programs that allow students to explore their personal interests while they're learning how to research, analyze, and organize data. But he also notes that there are some things that all teenagers need to know "to be active citizens in our society. For example, they should understand the evolution of American history, key struggles, and debates over things like civil rights and liberties, both resolved and unresolved."

It Still Takes a Village

In an age when emotional intelligence is essential not only to land a job but also to live a happier life, communication skills matter. "We don't have enough going on in high schools to help students learn how they can make a difference in the world and work cooperatively with other people," says Nathan. To that end, he advocates putting public high schools not on self-contained campuses but in multipurpose facilities that informally connect schools with social services, day care centers, nursing homes, and even businesses. Shared facilities not only support students' emotional and physical needs but also give them opportunities to interact with people of different ages in a community setting.

While it's not part of a multipurpose facility, Loudon Valley High School in the small town of Purcellville, Virginia, has the community support that Nathan envisions. "The school is a rallying point for the town," says Susan Ross '80, Loudon Valley's principal. Ross credits the community's high level of support and involvement for the fact that 80 percent of Loudon Valley students go on to college. Elderly community members attend football games and plays. High school students mentor kids at the local elementary schools. "Our school is a point of civic pride, and that pride translates to the students," says Ross. "Our coaches and teachers make it very clear to the kids that they are representing the school to a wide variety of people in a variety of situations."

While Loudon Valley is successful in preparing its students for college, staff members don't overlook the kids who choose a different path. To make sure those students graduate with skills that make them employable, Loudon Valley gives juniors and seniors the option to take classes at the district's technology center, where they can study anything from prenursing to baking to automotive repair skills. The center also offers on-site programs in prearchitecture, small-business ownership, and graphic design, which allow postsecondary students to forgo a four-year degree in favor of a two-year option.

The strategy addresses the reality of the current economy. "The high-paying, low-skill jobs that were outsourced to other countries probably will not be coming back to the United States," says Nathan. "Therefore, some education beyond high school is critical if people want a middle-class life. A student's goal should not be just to graduate from high school, but to prepare for some sort of postsecondary education, whether it's a four-year or a two-year program." Ross agrees: "These programs help students understand that what they're learning will apply to life after high school," she says.

Although schools that embrace the Loudon Valley model exist in districts nationwide, they are few and far between. Experts say the key to fixing the high school crisis in the United States is to ensure that all young people receive the best education possible. And that means educators, communities, and legislators must be willing to think creatively and strategically about how to serve an increasingly diverse population and meet the challenges facing our nation in the future.

According to Gates, "The success of one school is not an answer to this crisis. You have to be able to make systems of schools work for all students. . . . If we can focus on three steps--high standards for all, public data on our progress, turning around failing schools--we will go a long way toward ensuring that all students have a chance to make the most of their lives."

America can't afford to settle for less.

Elizabeth Larsen is a freelance writer who lives in Minneapolis.

KIPP It in the Budd

Education reformers say it's time to retool American middle schools, too.

Kelly Wright '96 was teaching fifth grade at a San Diego public elementary school when she learned that 0 percent of the students at the local middle school had passed the state aptitude test. "That alarmed me because it meant that all of the hard work we had been doing [in grade school] would be lost once our kids got to middle school," says Wright.

Wright's solution was to found the KIPP Adelante Preparatory Academy, a charter school in San Diego for grades five to eight that is free and open to all students who apply. The instructional program is based on the success of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) model, a national network of free, open-enrollment public schools in underfunded communities whose mission is to put students on the college track.

KIPP was founded in 1994 when two teachers launched a fifth-grade public school program in inner-city Houston after completing their commitment to Teach for America. In 2000 the teachers formed a partnership with the founders of Gap Inc. to replicate the success of the original KIPP Academies across the country through the nonprofit KIPP Foundation. Currently, 57 KIPP public schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia enroll more than 14,000 students.

Begun in 2003, KIPP Adelante takes the view that sweating the small stuff prevents larger problems down the road. KIPP students wear uniforms. They walk to class in single-file lines. Homework planners have to be signed by a parent or guardian every night. No junk food is allowed on the premises.

Visitors comment on how calm the school is, Wright says. That atmosphere allows teachers and students to focus on learning instead of discipline. The 7:30-to-5:00 school day provides time for enrichment classes as well as a mandatory foreign language program and a string orchestra. An end-of-the-year trip to San Francisco or another city combines sightseeing with tours of local colleges.

The KIPP formula--based on the principle that all students can achieve when schools set high expectations, demand results, and provide opportunities for students to excel--is working. When the school's first eighth-grade class graduated last spring, 47 percent went on to local college preparatory high schools and 43 percent earned scholarships and other financial aid to attend high-performing schools outside their districts. "We have tried to create a small, supportive atmosphere where it is okay to work hard and care about your studies," says Wright. "Our students feel safe here, and they can be who they want to be."

--E.L.