Raising the Educational Achievement of Secondary School Students - Volume 2 Profiles of Promising Practices

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Introduction

Secondary schools in the 1990s face unprecedented challenges: they must prepare students for a rapidly changing workplace, train students to be effective purveyors of information, and help students become productive citizens. The national education goals call for schools to raise graduation rates and help students attain world-class standards. Achieving those goals will require that every school provides stimulating, substantively rigorous opportunities for all students to learn.

Several new federal initiatives are designed to spur efforts at comprehensive school reform and help secondary schools meet the challenge of enabling all students to attain higher standards. Title I of the newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), in particular, aims to improve the teaching and learning of youth in high-poverty schools. Rather than adding on to or replacing small parts of a secondary school student's day, as Chapter 1 services typically did, Title I will serve as a resource for the restructuring of a school's regular program. Four principles, embodied in the legislation, will characterize new Title I programs:

High academic standards with components of education aligned so that everything is working together to help children reach those standards.
A focus on teaching and learning.
Flexibility to stimulate local initiative coupled with responsibility for student performance.
Links among schools, parents, and communities.

A recent study of Title I's predecessor, Chapter 1, in secondary schools found that Chapter 1 generally played only a minimal role in shaping overall school reform efforts. In addition, Chapter 1 was not a major part of the academic experience of the students who received program services (Zeldin, Rubenstein, Bogart, Tashjian, & McCollum, 1991). The new Title I is designed to operate in a different way. Rather than adding on to or replacing small parts of a secondary school student's day, as Chapter 1 services in secondary schools typically did, the new Title I legislation encourages schools to integrate Title I services more closely into the schools' regular program by funding schoolwide projects in a larger number of schools and by requiring schools to set the same high standards for both Title I students and students in the regular program.

Two other federal initiatives--the Goals 2000: Educate America Act and the School-to-Work--Opportunities Act complement and reinforce Title I at the secondary level. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law in May 1994, is providing many states and local districts with funds to develop comprehensive school reform plans that reflect community consensus on important educational outcomes. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act aims to create a comprehensive and coherent system to help youth acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to make a smooth transition from high school to career-oriented work or further education. Students successfully completing a school-to-work program will attain a high school diploma, a skill certificate, and preparation for either a first job on a career track or admission to college.

Middle schools and high schools that are successful in improving the academic performance of their students have a number of features in common. They offer students access to challenging, high-quality curriculum and instruction, and they have adopted new organizational arrangements that support improved learning opportunities. They link school work to future opportunities, and they actively address the needs of the whole student, creating networks of support that allow students to succeed. Finally, they use many resources to energize and sustain their work, chief among them the enhanced professional skills of their faculty.

This idea book is one in a series designed to support the implementation of the new Title I legislation. This volume presents research-based ideas and promising practices for schools searching for ways to increase students chances of academic success. A companion volume contains profiles of successful secondary schools that illustrate how they have put principles of good practice to work.

Strengthening and Enriching the Secondary School Curriculum

Successful secondary schools engage students in work that is challenging and worthwhile; organizational arrangements ensure that all students, including low achievers, have access to high-quality, academically rigorous subject matter.

Engaging Students in Authentic Work

Students are more likely to engage in academic work when they perceive that it is significant, valuable in its own right, and worthy of their effort. Secondary schools demonstrating success with students at risk of school failure have engaged students in lessons that make sense to them and show the connections between what they learn in school and what they experience in their lives outside of school.

Academically challenging programs can stimulate learning among all students, including those at risk of academic failure. Starting with what children know, new models of intervention expose them to applications of higher-order thinking traditionally offered only to advanced learners. In a challenging academic curriculum for low achieving students, teaching for understanding and meaning take precedence over purely skill-based lessons--for example, by helping students write ideas that an audience familiar to them would care to know or by reasoning mathematically about issues that involve them.

Restructuring Curriculum

To create a curriculum that is challenging and engaging for all students, the schools featured in this volume have employed four kinds of innovation:

Substantive depth in the curriculum. Sustained study of a few central themes in a discipline can give rise to richer, more complex understanding, leading to educational outcomes of broader utility than the outcomes produced by study that is thinly scattered over a wide array of topics and skills.
Interdisciplinary learning. Many successful secondary schools are discovering that increasing depth often requires an interdisciplinary approach. Developing an integrated curriculum complements reforms aiming to provide students with deeper understanding of complex ideas and related information.
Internships, community service, and service learning. Internships, paid employment, and community service offer a foundation for authentic learning experiences that nurture students' academic and social competence while producing work of value to the community.
Integration of academic and occupational focus. High schools can organize their programs around a particular academic or career focus to create an environment that stimulates common goals and interests among students. In addition, academic instructors can take advantage of applications in the career field to stimulate interest and achievement.

Increasing All Students' Access to Challenging Curriculum

The original rationale for tracking and other forms of ability grouping held that such practices benefitted high and low achievers by tailoring the instruction of teachers to their special needs. However, current research indicates that low-track students perform poorly in school in part because they receive less extensive and effective instruction overall. Designed to make teaching simpler and learning more efficient, tracking as it is usually practiced has had negative effects on the school opportunities and outcomes of many students. Among the approaches schools have used to increase access to challenging curricula for all students are:

Shifting to heterogeneous grouping. Many schools have replaced tracking in most subjects with heterogeneous grouping. Many schools implement cooperative learning, an approach that, when properly used, engages small, heterogeneous groups of students in structured tasks that stimulate individual achievement, social skills, and integration.
Integrating academic and vocational education. Students in vocational programs can master essential college preparatory content when they are encouraged to take high-level courses in a program of study planned around their vocational interests. Students who believe they are not bound for college may be inspired to consider further schooling when high schools combine college preparatory and vocational studies.
Promoting students' success in challenging coursework. Successful schools adopt effective programs that prepare students to succeed in courses such as eighth-grade algebra and ninth-grade geometry--the gateways to advanced work that is the prerequisite for career development.

Adapting Organizations to Increase Learning

To support innovations in teaching and learning, successful secondary schools develop new organizational arrangements, as needed. Schools profiled in this volume found two approaches particularly rewarding for making the organizational changes essential for lasting improvement: They created communities of learners on a manageable scale, and they reconceived their uses of time.

Creating Communities for Learners

Successful secondary schools create communities of students and teachers where learning is supported and valued. They often organize into small sub-units, sometimes based on a single academic or occupational focus.

Smaller school size. Although larger schools may achieve some economies of scale and offer a wider range of courses than small schools, a growing body of research on the effects of school size supports arguments for downsizing (Fowler, 1992; Howley, 1989; McIntire & Scott, 1989). Keeping learning communities small makes it possible for teachers to develop flexible, individualized learning plans for students who need them; students and teachers get to know and understand each other better.
Schools-within-schools. Addressing the anonymous and impersonal nature of large comprehensive high schools, schools-within-schools create a home for students--typically 200 or fewer--and teachers who share an interest or career orientation. Some schools, like Socorro High School for the Health Professions, enroll students seriously committed to a career choice; others, like Tuba City High School, use theme-based units such as those lend coherence to studies and offer opportunities for authentic learning experiences. Teachers in these smaller units find it easier to collaborate over common learning goals and behavior expectations--collaborations facilitated by the curriculum focus. Similarly, students see themselves as part of a learning community with clearly defined goals and expectations.
Clusters, houses, and teams. Providing another way to divide teachers and students, clusters, houses, and teams form heterogeneous groups with more manageable social dimensions within large schools. Students take core courses from teachers on their own teams, a factor that means control of scheduling for a significant chunk of the day rests with the team. Faculty arrange special learning opportunities that extend beyond the traditional class period, regroup students for special projects, offer interdisciplinary units and courses, and make other adjustments to accommodate team needs. Having common preparation periods, teachers can share perceptions of each student's strengths and weaknesses, learning styles, and work habits and develop appropriate responses.
The role of choice. Seasoned observers of successful secondary schools report that allowing students some freedom in choosing their school community may lead to greater commitment and deeper engagement in learning.

Using Time Flexibly

Besides reorganizing work groups, successful secondary schools use scheduling systems that permit adjusting time allocations to accommodate diverse learning experiences. A common approach to reconceiving the use of time is block scheduling, in which teachers can create class periods that last from 90 minutes to two hours or more. The extended period provides opportunities for students to work together on complex projects and for teachers to make presentations or arrange experiences that take longer than one period to complete. Another benefit of block scheduling is that teaching longer and fewer periods can reduce the number of students teachers see in a day.

In addition to dividing up the school day differently, a number of restructuring schools have loosened the boundaries of the traditional school day or year to accommodate alternative learning experiences. In a more flexible school week, high school students can combine their program of regular classes with advanced courses at local community colleges or universities in the afternoons and evenings. Other schools add evening classes and summer sessions to expand learning opportunities for students.

Linking Schooling to the Future

One of the primary functions of secondary education is to prepare students to function as informed and productive citizens. Students should graduate as skilled learners who can continue their education in college, technical school, or work-based programs and acquire the skills they need to achieve their adult goals. As they develop into competent adults, students must become lifelong learners, able to pursue their learning goals beyond their formal training.

School-to-Work Programs

Several school-to-work program models have proven successful in recent years:

Tech prep programs connect the last two years of high school with two years of postsecondary education. A typical Tech Prep curriculum enhances academic courses by focusing on applications of math, science, and communications in the occupational area. Academic experience is often coupled with opportunities for work experience, although students receive most of their training in the classroom.
Youth apprenticeship programs emphasize employer-provided training. During their work experience, participants are paid for their work and monitored by a skilled professional at the job site. A typical youth apprenticeship program also involves classroom instruction tailored to and building on the job experience. Youth apprenticeship and Tech Prep programs sometimes work in tandem.
Career academies use a school-within-a-school model and focus on a specific career field, such as health or finance, that presents good employment opportunities in the local market. Students typically apply to participate. Academies offer curricula integrating career topics with applied, hands-on activities and rigorous academic courses, supplemented with training at the workplace.

For the successful schools profiled in this volume, exposing students to careers and postsecondary education options is an important part of their mission. Among their career awareness activities are field trips to workplaces, job shadowing programs, and career days.

College Prep Programs and Support to Attend College

Successful secondary schools expand students' visions to include formal schooling after the twelfth grade and encourage them to continue. For students from disadvantaged backgrounds, enrolling in college prep classes and performing well in them are only the beginning of raising educational attainment. Once they have met the requirements for admission to postsecondary programs, students from disadvantaged backgrounds usually find the costs prohibitive; families with little college-going experience may not know how to seek out financial aid or how to help their children prepare successful applications. Schools that help their students continue with further education provide support by coaching them through the application process, guiding their search for financial aid, and, in other ways, making postsecondary education a viable option.

Creating Networks of Support for Students

Networks of support that address students' academic and personal needs can enable at-risk secondary students to persist and succeed in school. Successful schools in this volume have experimented with a variety of interventions to support students: more personal and responsive advising systems, mentoring programs providing the student with close contact with an adult, and comprehensive services networks reaching beyond as well as within the school walls. For at-risk students in particular, successful schools take an active role in responding to personal, emotional, and basic survival needs that frequently go unmet in traditional school environments.

School Membership

A sense of school membership is an important prerequisite for student success. Co-curricular activities such as student government, academic or special interest clubs, theater and music groups, and intramural sports teams have traditionally enhanced students' sense of school membership by providing them with additional avenues in which to succeed and find a "niche" in the life of the school. Fostering a sense of school membership for at-risk students requires an expanded role for teachers seeking to influence students' social and personal, as well as intellectual, development. Schools may also attempt to develop a sense of school membership through:

Peer tutoring and mentoring activities that have the potential to stimulate students' commitment to school by linking them through structured relationships with other members of the school community. In this way, students are integrated into the school community, finding a niche where they can make a contribution that will be valued by others. Recognizing that they can offer something of value can be an important source of motivation.
Adult mentoring programs that provide students with an opportunity to form a close relationship with an adult connected with the school. Replicating the influence of a strong parental figure, mentoring programs give guidance and support that is often credited with some at-risk students' success in school and later life. Schools profiled here tend to focus their mentoring programs especially on career awareness, providing opportunities for students to gain exposure to the workplace.

Student Advising

Although guidance counselors traditionally serve as students' primary advisors, their ability to provide the quantity and quality of service that at-risk students need is often compromised by caseloads that are too high and responsibilities that are too broad. As a result, most students have very little contact with the one adult assigned to take an interest in them. Most of the schools profiled in this volume have taken steps to ensure that students have sustained contact with adults who serve as advisors. Small-group advisories, homerooms, or other arrangements enable teachers or other staff to actively provide guidance and monitor the academic and social development of students.

Safe and Disciplined Schools

In a school setting, harmonious interaction between students and teachers requires substantial agreement about the expected norms of behavior. All students must know their obligations and be supported in meeting them. In safe and disciplined schools, students develop self-management skills through classroom routines and school practices that encourage them to contribute positively to the learning of others. One way they can learn appropriate behavior is from adult modeling and coaching. Disciplined schools also take steps to strengthen school safety measures.

Creating Partnerships with Parents

Parents and other family members are crucial links in the network of support that students need to succeed in school. Parents and other family members influence their children's academic and social development by supervising how they spend their time outside of school; fostering the development of their children's confidence and motivation to become successful learners; and influencing the work of schools through their participation in governance, advisory, and advocacy groups.

At the secondary level, however, working in partnership with schools presents special challenges for most parents. Middle schools and high schools are larger, located farther away from students' homes, and often do not have a single clear point of contact if parents want to discuss their children's progress or how they can help. As middle school and high school students progress through adolescence, they grow increasingly independent of their parents. Instead, secondary schools must work with a whole network of adults--including community members and potential employers--who influence students' lives.

Although research indicates that students of all ages do better in schools where parents and other family members are involved, there is little empirical data that shows which strategies for fostering partnerships with families work best at the secondary school level. It appears that the same principles that govern successful elementary school parent involvement programs hold true for middle schools and high schools as well. Schools must view parent involvement as a process rather than a series of isolated events; communication between the school and families should be ongoing and two-way; and there must be commitment on the part of leadership coupled with provisions for on-going assessment of parent involvement efforts to inform future planning.

Developing Comprehensive Support Systems

A school-based program incorporating social, economic, and health services--usually provided by agencies other than the school itself--can help reduce dropout rates, improve student achievement, and promote long-term self-sufficiency. Among the services having the potential to increase the capacity of students to fare better in school are child care, health care, transportation to and from school and work, family support services, and substance abuse treatment. In a coordinated system, services are comprehensive, responding to the full range of child and family needs. Such a system is preventive, rather than reactive. Separate services are connected by common intake, eligibility determination, and individual family service planning so that each family's entire range of needs is addressed.

Resources for Improvement

Secondary schools with well-deserved reputations for effectiveness use many resources to nurture and sustain their growth. Among the most important of these resources is school faculty.

Professional Development

Adopting the innovations that contributed to their effectiveness engaged many of the schools in this volume in more extensive, long-term professional development efforts than they had previously undertaken. Successful staff development programs include the following components:

New methods and materials that form the cornerstone of innovations in schools profiled here. Professional development activities must encourage teachers to replace the familiar with new methods and train them to do so.
Peer collaboration. Many new approaches to teaching require extensive collaboration among peers. Interdisciplinary courses, team teaching, or coordinating the activities of a school-within-a-school all demand knowledge and skills that are not typically part of the education of teachers. Professional development activities should help faculties develop new norms that nurture useful collective efforts.
Principles of reform. By cultivating participants' deep knowledge of subject matter, professional development activities support the critical thinking and explorations demanded by new curriculum and instructional programs. Good professional development designs meet the participants' need for understanding key principles of action.
Creating a climate that supports professional growth. Many reform strategies confer greater decision making authority on teachers. In schools described here, teachers testify to the importance of establishing a professional climate that accepts occasional floundering as the natural consequence of trying out promising new approaches. They discovered that, over time, thoughtful experimentation and reflection generate a culture that assumes continuous professional growth.
Resources for learning. Partnerships with nearby universities provide mutually enriching resources for professional development: research sites, credit coursework, preservice and graduate field experiences, and access to subject matter specialists. Schools that are part of a network such as the Coalition for Essential Schools benefit from experiences developed and supported by the sponsoring agency.

Other Resources

When teachers are involved in setting goals, designing reforms, brainstorming options, and making implementation decisions, long-term improvements are more likely to result. Site-based, shared decision making is evident in our small sample of schools and programs. In most sites, teachers developed the reform plans and identified the resources needed to implement them. Using the flexibility offered by site-based management, faculties adopted multiple approaches to expand learning opportunities for students; flexibility in their internal operations enabled some schools to adopt bold new approaches step by step, department by department, grade by grade, or team cluster by team cluster.

Reforms in many of the schools profiled here began with teachers coming together to brainstorm options for change. Successful projects typically engage teachers in decision making and problem-solving early and often, and this engagement contributes to the staff commitment that real change requires. Active engagement in planning and time to reflect on their experiences as they unfold permit faculties to adjust course thoughtfully and make appropriate haste. Many schools profiled in this volume use time wisely for comprehensive planning.

Change requires extra financial resources for training, released time, new materials and equipment and time for coordination and management. Most of the schools in this volume receive supplementary funding from government, foundations, and other sources to support their programs; some receive very large sums. Project implementers reported that these additional funds were central to their success.

Schools Profiled in this Idea Book

Schools that succeed in raising the educational achievement of their students set high standards for student achievement, engage students in the business of learning, and provide students the support they need to accomplish their goals. Toward these ends, successful secondary schools develop new and more challenging curricula, reorganize the environment for learning, develop programs that link schooling to the future, and develop networks of support for students. The school profiles that follow provide concrete examples of real schools that have struggled--and succeeded--in putting principles of good practice to work and improving academic outcomes for their at-risk students.

In selecting schools for this idea book, we chose not to limit our search to schools currently receiving Title 1 funding (although all the schools profiled in this idea book serve students who would be eligible for Title 1 services). As noted above, the new Title I is designed to operate differently from previous programs that Chapter 1 typically supported in secondary schools. Rather than adding on to or replacing parts of a secondary school student's day, Title I will serve as a resource to restructure the school's regular program. For low-achieving students to reach the performance standards set by the state for all students, Title I funding to secondary schools will support an accelerated, high-quality curriculum and additional services such as counseling, mentoring, college and career awareness and preparation, occupational information, and enhancement of employability and occupational skills. As a result, the new Title I will support a far greater range of services in secondary schools than did Chapter 1 in the past; the new law encourages practitioners to be creative as they seek ways to use Title I funds to support their school's general restructuring goals.

For this reason, we have deliberately chosen a variety of programs that traditionally have not been associated with Chapter 1; examples include the apprenticeship program at Liberty High School, the internships at City-as-School, and the case management system at West Mecklenburg High School. As a resource for practitioners, we hope the profiles presented here will serve as inspiration and a source of useful ideas that may be adapted by schools seeking new ways to use Title I to improve the educational achievement of secondary school students.

Finally, several of the schools included in this idea book operate under special circumstances--some have special charters, some are magnet schools, and some receive most or all of their funding from special grants or private sources. Although the flexibility that these circumstances offer has no doubt contributed to their success, these schools still have valuable lessons to offer those operating within the more conventional constraints that schools typically face. Boxes at the beginning of each profile highlight special features or "lessons learned" that we hope will travel across contexts.

This idea book is one in a series designed to support the implementation of the new Title I program. A companion volume to this one presents the research base for the principles of good practice described here. That volume looks at five interconnected program areas that schools must consider as they search for ways to improve students' chances of success: curriculum and instruction, organizational arrangements, links to adult life, networks of support for students, and resources for improvement. Following the 13 profiles included in this volume, appendices provide contact names and addresses for all the schools profiled, selected references on secondary schools, and contact information on selected organizations offering information or services to schools serving at-risk secondary students.
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[Acknowledgments]

[So Many Courses, So Little Time]