Corporation
of New York
Vol. 2/No. 4
Spring 2004
The History of South Africa: A Twice-Told Tale
Alternative Pathways to College
Centers of Education in Russia: The Case for CASEs
An Interview with Marta Tienda
Also in this issue:
Two Schools Collaborate and Students Succeed
Past Issues:
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Alternative Pathways to College
Such psychological and financial pressures, combined with curricula that don’t set high expectations for students, have produced a high school dropout rate estimated at nearly 50 percent for urban students. And one study of high school graduates in Baltimore’s non-selective high schools found that between 1993 and 1998, no more than 41 percent were attending college the year after graduation. Even students who manage to get to college find it tough going: 35.5 percent of first- and second-year college students had to take remedial courses in 1999-2000.
But creating one new high school model won’t solve these problems. Teenagers’ personalities and trajectories differ enormously, says Kurt Fischer, professor of education and development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. That means the U.S. needs a variety of alternate pathways to college.
Shalom Means Opportunity
When Alex Don Martin was 14, he spent his days skateboarding, smoking
marijuana, and drinking beer. He lived with his unemployed and mentally
ill mother, but also spent nights at his father’s apartment, sleeping
on the couch. “I was out with my friends all the time. I wouldn’t
come home at all on weekends,” he remembers. In the 10th grade,
he dropped out of school.
Today Martin, who graduated from Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee with high honors, works at a small law firm in that city. The 28-year-old husband and new father credits the turnaround in his life to Shalom High School, where his father took him in desperation when Martin was 16. Run by TransCenter for Youth Inc., a community-based organization in Milwaukee, Shalom is one of several dozen Community Based Organization (CBO) schools nationwide providing an increasingly important alternate pathway to college.
Shalom opened in 1973 as a private school for youth referred by local courts. (Its name comes from a sign remaining on its building from a 1960s-era Franciscan Brothers ecumenical drop-in center.) By 1981, six Shalom directors had burned out from the task of raising the school’s budget every year. The seventh, Daniel Grego, decided to work with community activists, state legislators and Wisconsin governor Tony Earl on legislation allowing districts with large numbers of high school dropouts to contract for schooling with private, nonprofit and nonsectarian community-based agencies. Enacted in 1985, this “money follows the at-risk student” law quadrupled Shalom’s budget overnight. (Minnesota has a similar statute.) Soon, says Grego, parents were knocking on the door saying, “Does my son have to rob a store to get into Shalom?”
Like Northwest Opportunities Vocational Academy (NOVA) and El Puente High School for Science Math and Technology, two Milwaukee schools also run by TransCenter, Shalom has 100 students. Most are high school dropouts. “We tend to get 16-19-year-olds who haven’t earned many credits,” says Grego. To graduate, they must earn 22 credits and demonstrate mastery of 300 core skills, often through a project chosen to match their interests. One girl, for example, wrote about characters—literary, cinematic and real—who succumbed to each of the seven deadly sins. Martin did a project on the role of the United States and the Soviet Union in Somalia. To graduate, he presented a portfolio of work, including a paper on the ethics of the death penalty, before a graduation committee of two teachers and three community members. After graduation, about half of Shalom’s students enter college.
Shalom has received funding from many different private and corporate foundations including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Helen Bader Foundation; the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Faye McBeath Foundation; Patrick and Anna M. Cudahy Fund; the Northwestern Mutual Foundation; Ameritech; Johnson Controls Foundation; the Walton Family Foundation; the Stackner Family Foundation; the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Supporting Fund; and the Miller Brewing Company.
Freedom and Responsibility:
A Model for Change
LaGuardia Middle College High School was founded with a Carnegie Corporation
planning grant on the campus of LaGuardia Community College in 1974. The
pioneering 530-student school (now downsizing to 430) was later replicated
at 31 sites nationwide. Today it serves as one model for the Early College
High School Initiative, which will work with nonprofit intermediaries
to establish early college high schools nationwide. Students will graduate
from these early colleges with an AA degree or two years of college credit
toward the baccalaureate degree. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation along with Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation
and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the more than $60 million, five-year
effort aims to increase college-going for underrepresented youth by creating
a seamless transition between high school and college, especially for
low-income and first-generation college-goers, English language learners
and students of color.
As of this writing, eleven intermediary or partner organizations, coordinated by Jobs for the Future, will each create or redesign between six and twenty public schools. They will enroll no more than 400 students, provide a rigorous curriculum and engage students in “active inquiry.”
“Not enough kids complete college in this country,” says Cecilia Cunningham, a former LaGuardia MCHS principal who now directs the 30-member Middle College National Consortium, based at LaGuardia Community College. “Now we’re going to see if by combining grades 9-14 into one institution we’re able to get more of them through. There’s no doubt that we will.”
Indictors are that Cunningham and her colleagues are on the right track. Ninety-seven percent of MCHS’ 2003 graduates will attend college (more than one-third will go to four-year schools), and the school receives more than 1,000 applications annually for its 100 ninth grade slots, says principal Aaron Listhaus. Applicants have to show potential for college work, but must have failed at least three courses or been truant for 40 days during the previous year.
The school offers a demanding curriculum and multiple support
strategies, yet simultaneously accords students a large measure of adult
freedom. Smoking in front of the entrance is allowed—although not
without fierce ongoing debate. Beyond losing grade points, there are no
penalties for cutting class, although teachers will talk to students who
do so. Students have unfettered Internet access; they choose their courses
and internships. And their opinions count: the administration rescinded
a hated ban on hats (which may signal gang affiliations) when students
promised to report any signs of gang activity at school.