Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 2 | Meeting the challenge of the urban High School, page 3

Educators have made progress in revamping failing middle schools, and there are examples of dramatic changes in urban high school redesign, situations in which schools on the brink of being closed have been rescued at the last minute, transformed in a way that captures the mind as well as the heart. Whole new schools have also been created, based on new approaches to teaching and learning. These isolated efforts provide information about what works and what does not.

One tenet of urban high school change is the creation of smaller schools, learning communities where teenagers are known as individuals by one, and hopefully more than one, adult. Small schools provide settings where the hopes and dreams of youth can be nurtured, where teenagers can be nudged and prompted to learn, and where a teacher can help rescue a student before he or she slides behind or passively lets the studying pile up until it is unmanageable.

Some educators hope to break the cycle of failure in part by addressing the need to help students successfully negotiate the transition from the middle school to the high school. The Talent Development High School Model, which was created by educators and researchers at Johns Hopkins University features a Ninth Grade Success Academy, a self-contained school-within-a- school that includes programs designed to help all students meet with success in college preparatory algebra and language arts courses. To bolster social and study skills, a Talent Development High School includes a freshman seminar tailored to help students develop computer and study skills as well as understand the connection between their high school studies and college and career.

This model also provides block scheduling that includes increased time for learning, a core requirement of college preparatory courses for all students, Career Academies for grades 10, 11 and 12, and strategic reading, transition to advanced mathematics and freshman seminar courses as well as alternative after-hours programs for those students with serious attendance problems.

These and other schools, including those in the Annenburg Rural Challenge program, help students make the link between what they learn in school and work by providing field internships. For example, pupils in Rural Challenge schools study the history of their towns, publish newspapers, work at a local library or a nearby museum and find other opportunities to complement their studies.

Although small schools can provide the leverage needed for change, experts say that creating a “small” setting in which students and teachers can interact merely provides the foundation for helping students achieve and that schools must work on many issues including the need to have high standards for all students.

“Comprehensive high schools are trying to be everything to all students and are probably little to most,” says Judy B. Codding, a co-author of The New American High School (Corwin Press, 1998).

Codding, who was principal of Pasadena High School for five years beginning in 1988, says academic rigor is the bedrock of school redesign. “The purpose of a high school is to prepare all students for college without the need for remediation,” she explains. “That doesn’t mean that all kids need to go to a four-year college, but they do need to have the knowledge and skills to live productive lives. If teens don’t have that, they will be assigned to a life of poverty.”

The reality, however, is that expectations for students do vary. ›Our (Philadelphia) data and other data nationally show that in the large urban schools we simply are not offering students the courses, the rigorous learning that they need,ś says Rochelle Nichols-Solomon, senior program director of the Philadelphia Education Fund. ›We generally have a different set of expectations for students of color and poor students enrolled in the comprehensive (or non-magnet) high schools, even though we have the rhetoric of high standards for all students.ś

Expectations for Faculty and Students

The kinds of skills, knowledge, support and expertise that teachers need are an important aspect of school redesign. “My attention is focused on the teachers, and the expectations for them and support for them that will then in turn help them be more effective with the students,” Nichols-Solomon says.

Her sentiments are echoed by Steve Leonard, principal of Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Leonard has been instrumental in turning the school from a failing institution where few of the more than 1,000 students (most either African American or of African descent) even considered higher educaton into one where almost 100 percent of seniors are applying to college. “The key to improving students’ academic performance,” he says, “is to improve teachers’ instructional performance. One cannot happen without the other.”

Faculty commitment is key to the success of High Schools That Work (HSTW), a large-scale effort of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) that aims “to improve the way all high school students are prepared for work and further education.”

“You must engage the faculty in a dialogue. You must do that,” says Gene Bottoms, director of High Schools That Work and senior vice president of SREB. “We have good teachers in America; they are committed, and they work very hard. But they are in a system that no longer functions very well when we have to raise standards significantly with the rising workplace requirement.”

“Unlocking from that system is the biggest challenge we have,” Bottoms says. “That system is built on the ability model that says some students can learn complicated material but most students can’t, so you dumb down the curriculum for the rest of the students. What we say is that you can teach the rest what you’ve been teaching to the best, but you will have to teach it differently. To get faculty to really begin to believe and shift from the old ability model to an effort-based model you have to change your language, mindset and teaching techniques.”

The HSTW program bolsters learning in part by advocating a solid academic core curriculum and by enrolling grade nine youth who lag behind in an 18-week program geared to help them catch up so they will be as prepared as their peers to take the more rigorous algebra and language arts classes. Results so far have been promising. Some examples: At Loganville High in Georgia, where the HSTW principles have been implemented, 86 percent of students pursue education after graduation (up from 62 percent before HSTW); chronic absences are down and the dropout rate has gone from nine percent to less than four percent. In 1998, in Oklahoma schools participating in the program, students averaged above 50 percent in math, science and reading for the first time.

Engaging Parents and Youth

Parental involvement is another element that can affect a student’s success. Schools can reach out to involve parents by keeping them informed and by organizing volunteer activities and providing parent education programs.

“There’s no way we’re going to raise the achievement level of students unless we engage parents on behalf of their kids,” says Codding. When Codding saw that only a small fraction of parents attended a back-to-school program at Pasedena High School, she set up a structure that reached out to parents with telephone calls and mailings to inform them about their teenagers’ school programs including the names of students’ advisors, advocates and head teachers. “The line of communication became clear to parents,” Codding explained.

Youth, too, must be heard. Students clearly, often plaintively, describe their world, providing information central to successfully redesign urban high schools. “We know the way to effect change is to have that change be based in reality, to be data-based,” says Michele Cahill, senior program officer in the Education Division of Carnegie Corporation. “Quantitative data are becoming more available, but there are also incredibly important qualitative data—narratives that convey the experiences of young people in school. This youth voice has been missing in the past, yet a key part of changing the high schools is seeing young people as assets and seeing them as active learners. We recognize the need to hear the youth voice because we get new information from that about what needs to be changed and what might work that we can’t get from any other source.”

A Clarion Call

Overarching themes echoed by urban educators are the need to personalize education and to tailor rigorous education to reach all high school students, not just some of the students. This requires a revamping of the system, not just a minor alteration, and a commitment from all members of the school community as well as members of the larger community. High school redesign is one of the greatest challenges facing our nation at the start of this new millennium: the challenge to create a vision of the American urban high school that will provide the best education possible for each and every student.

“It’s not too late,” says Nichols-Solomon. “Older students can be engaged. I’ve seen ninth grade students running to beat the clock to get into school. They can get energized.”

Page 1 | 2 | 3