Raising the Educational Achievement of Secondary School Students - Volume 1 Summary of Promising Practices - 1995

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, where workers can expect to change jobs and develop new sets of skills four or five times over the course of their career. Schools must train students to be effective purveyors of information in a world that generates new information at an astronomical rate, lifelong learners who analyze, reason, and communicate their ideas effectively. Schools must also help all students become effective citizens in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex democratic society.

At the same time that the mission of schooling has become more complex, the students whom schools serve are more diverse than ever before. For example, the number of students in grades K-12 with limited English proficiency has increased more than 20 percent in ten years, so that now more than 40 percent of the school districts in the nation enroll limited English proficient students. Demographic projections suggest the increase will continue. New laws ensure that students formerly excluded from mainstream school settings now attend school with other children their age. Furthermore, research has added to our understanding of the variety of students' intelligences, experiences, and learning styles, which are all key to the learning process. Schools are struggling to respond to these new developments.

Expectations for schooling have also grown. A series of reports in the 1980s galvanized public opinion around demands for increased performance from schools. The National Education Goals call for 90 percent of all students to graduate from high school by the year 2000, a significant increase from the current rate of approximately 75 percent. Schools are expected to meet "world class standards," create model citizens, and meet calls for increased public accountability. An emphasis on higher standards is the cornerstone of several new federal initiatives, as well as the centerpiece of reform in many states. Among the most serious concerns is equity. It is not acceptable for only an elite few with high educational ambitions to benefit from the new knowledge for achieving these goals. Achieving national and state goals will require that all schools provide stimulating, substantively rigorous opportunities for all students to learn.

Restructuring Secondary Schools

If all students are to meet higher standards of achievement, and schools are to be successful in preparing students to participate in the workforce and contribute to their communities, schools must develop new models for ensuring the success of those students most at risk of failure. The problems that interfere with school success are often complex. For example, students who end up dropping out of school may experience the compounded impact of growing up poor, living in a neighborhood where violence is commonplace, balancing time for schoolwork with the demands of caring for younger siblings, and lacking the skills to escape from a limiting track of remedial classes. These young people have a range of needs, and equipping any school to cope with those needs requires that teachers, administrators, and policy makers recognize the multiplicity of causes that put students at risk. Discrete, self-contained solutions will not be enough. If the problem is complex, so must be the solutions.

Secondary schools planning to restructure their programs to better meet the needs of at-risk youth should consider a range of arenas for change. First, schools must find ways to introduce an accelerated and enriched curriculum that will provide the neediest students with the learning experiences that will enable them to reach higher standards. A challenging curriculum engages students in schooling by drawing clear connections between learning and the world beyond school. Often schools make these connections explicit through school-to-work or career and college awareness programs. In addition, schools must find ways to make challenging and high-quality teaching and curriculum available to all students, including those traditionally relegated to remedial or low track classes. Second, creating new opportunities for learning typically requires that schools reorganize, creating smaller, more flexible communities of learning and finding ways to extend the school day or year. Finally, schools must find ways to create a network of support that ensures each student's success. This network might include peer tutoring and mentoring programs, adult-student mentoring, more effective student advising, improved partnerships with families, and comprehensive support systems that include health and other social services.

Successful efforts to raise the educational achievement of at-risk secondary school students touch all facets of school life. Ted Sizer, whose critique of traditional secondary schools led to the development of the Coalition of Essential Schools, summed it up this way (1991, p. 31): "In a school, everything of importance touches everything else of importance. Change one consequential aspect of that school and all others will be affected. . . . Reform-by-addition, a tactic possible in earlier decades, is no longer an option. We are stuck with a school reform game in which any change affects all, where everyone must change if anything is to change."

Opportunities Created By New Federal Policies

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 to enable them to meet challenging academic content and performance standards. To achieve this goal, the new Title I gives schools increased flexibility to decide for themselves how to spend their Title I resources. 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. State Title I plans will describe high-quality content standards specifying what children must know and be able to do, ambitious performance standards that children are expected to attain, and a set of high-quality assessments aligned with the standards. Under Title I, every aspect of the education system--curriculum and instruction, professional development, school leadership, accountability, and school improvement--will be working together to ensure that all children served by Title I attain challenging standards.
A focus on teaching and learning. Schools will use Title I funds to increase the amount and quality of learning time, help provide an enriched and accelerated curriculum for all children, and enact a comprehensive plan to help students meet the state's high performance standards. Professional development will be a central component of each Title I school. Title I will play a key role in ensuring that teachers, administrators, and other school staff receive the professional development they need to improve the quality of instruction so as to enable children to meet the state's challenging standards. These efforts will be tied to professional development efforts under Title II of the ESEA.
Title I will also ensure that the highest-poverty middle and high schools (those with poverty rates over 75 percent) receive Title I funds. Based on proven methods for raising achievement, Title I programs in secondary schools must provide an accelerated, high-quality curriculum and such additional services as counseling, mentoring, college and career awareness and preparation, occupational information, enhancement of employability and occupational skills, and services to prepare students for the transition from school to a career.
Flexibility to stimulate local initiative coupled with responsibility for student performance. The new Title I brings decisions down to the school level so that schools, in consultation with their districts, can determine uses of funds in ways that best meet the needs of their students. Waiver provisions under ESEA provide schools, districts, and states with further flexibility.
Links among schools, parents, and communities. The new Title I focuses on increasing parent involvement and strengthening Title I school-community connections to better meet children's needs by fostering integration of Title I with other educational programs and health and social service programs. Title I allows schools to work with the community to provide health, nutrition, and other social services that are not otherwise available to the children being served.

A recent study of Title I's predecessor, Chapter 1, in secondary schools found that Chapter 1 generally played only a marginal role in shaping overall school reform efforts. Chapter 1 was not a major part of the academic experience of the students who received program services, and Chapter 1 classes were not well-integrated into other parts of the secondary school curriculum (Zeldin, Rubenstein, Bogart, Tashjian, & McCollum, 1991). The new Title I program is designed to operate in secondary schools 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 their regular program.

One way that Title I will serve as a resource for whole school restructuring is by enabling many more Title I schools to develop schoolwide programs. Beginning in 1995-96, the minimum poverty level at which a school can become a schoolwide program will drop from 75 percent to 60 percent; the threshold will drop to 50 percent in subsequent years. Schoolwide programs will be able to combine Title I with other federal, state, and local funds to serve all students in the school. By allowing schools to integrate their programs, strategies and resources, Title I can support comprehensive reform of the entire instructional program provided to children in these schools. A one-year planning period and increased technical assistance through school support teams and other mechanisms will further support high-quality reform in schoolwide programs.

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 with funds to develop comprehensive school reform plans that reflect community consensus on important educational outcomes. It will also eventually lead to development of voluntary state curriculum standards. Local districts, funded by the states through Goals 2000 subgrants, will participate in developing districtwide education improvement plans aimed at enabling all students to meet state content and performance standards.

The School-to-Work Opportunities Act, administered by the Departments of Education and Labor, 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. Under the new act, annual competitions will be held for grants to fund development and implementation of statewide school-to-work systems. Grants will support the integration of school-based and work-based learning and linking activities. 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.

With Title I of the ESEA, these initiatives are designed to enable all secondary school students to reach the high expectations set for them and to enter adult life after graduation prepared to succeed in the workplace and contribute to their communities as active citizens.

Attributes Of Successful Secondary Schools

Secondary schools that have proven successful at raising the educational achievement of all their students employ a number of strategies in common; this volume describes those features that research has shown hold promise for raising the academic achievement of secondary school students. Common strategies employed by successful secondary schools correlate closely with the driving principles of the new Title I legislation, and schools interested in implementing some or all of them will find Title I to be a valuable resource:

First, successful secondary schools offer students access to challenging, high-quality curriculum and instruction. In some schools, this means revising existing courses--perhaps the whole curriculum--to provide more opportunities for critical thinking and inquiry-based learning. Providing these kinds of learning experiences are necessary if students are to meet the higher standards called for in Title I. In many schools, this means abolishing a tracking system that has become a method of relegating some students permanently to greatly restricted educational experiences.

Second, they adopt new organizational arrangements that create communities of learners, in which students and teachers know and trust each other. Successful schools use models such as schools-within-schools and teams or houses to bring group size down to a socially manageable level. They rearrange schedules to give students more time to work on extended projects and teachers more time to collaborate. They extend the school day and the school year to accommodate their new approaches to learning. These new organizational arrangements support new teaching arrangements that make the introduction of an enriched, accelerated curriculum possible.

Third, they link school work to future opportunities. Some schools integrate vocational and academic programs around a particular occupational focus. Other schools link secondary and postsecondary education in unique ways; for instance, by allowing high school students to take college courses for dual credit or by facilitating the transition to college. Successful schools help students see where their academic success can take them. Schools will find new opportunities to pursue work-based learning for students through the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; career and college awareness is also an important focus of Title I in secondary schools.

Fourth, they take an active role as student advocates, coordinating and focusing their own diverse services and drawing in the work of other agencies whose missions target student welfare. Their own school-based efforts respond to the diversity of students' real needs, and they encourage the collaboration of other service providers. This work coordinating services and linking schools to the community can also be supported with Title I funding. Keeping the educational program at the center of their attention, successful secondary schools do what they can to nurture the whole student.

Finally, they use many resources to energize and sustain their work, chief among them their teachers. They commit resources to enhancing teachers' ability to identify and solve educational and organizational problems. They give teachers authority, through school-based management teams and other shared decision-making venues, to shape the environment in which they teach and work. They plan carefully, expecting that some risks might result in failure, but recognizing that thoughtful consideration will usually lead to better practices. Professional development efforts supported by Title I will enable many schools to invest in the development of their teachers, and the emphasis on planning and school-level decision-making in Title I grants teachers the authority to restructure their schools.

Implementation

This idea book is one in a series designed to support the implementation of the new Title I legislation. This volume describes an array of promising practices and principles for reform supported by current research in five interconnected program areas. It describes the possibilities open to schools searching for ways to improve students' chances of success. A companion volume provides profiles of a baker's dozen secondary schools, illustrating how they have put principles of good practice to work and improved academic outcomes for their at-risk students. These profiles provide a look at how the reforms and innovations described here appear in practice. The process of school restructuring is complex, time-consuming, and often costly. Change requires careful planning; even so, the best planned efforts are frequently subject to failure or redirection. Having a good idea is often not enough. Implementing the idea, and seeing it succeed in a school with its own particular needs and circumstances, often proves to be the true challenge.

In this idea book, we attempted to present as comprehensive a range of innovations and reforms in secondary schools as possible. The variety of ideas presented--from detracking to extended time to peer tutoring, for example--made it difficult to spell out in detail how schools might grapple with the problems associated with implementing each type of reform. In chapter five, we argue that schools must have the adequate resources to support implementation efforts, including professional development for teachers, time, freedom for teachers and other school leaders to experiment and learn, support from district administrators, and access to outside expertise. The specific challenges of implementing any idea will depend on the needs and circumstances of each school, the plans it is attempting to implement, and the resources available to it.

Recognizing the challenges presented by the implementation of any new idea, the need for each school to plan change in response to its own students' needs, and the need for adequate resources to make new ideas work, we turn now to a discussion of what promising practices look like in schools that have implemented them successfully.
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[Executive Summary]

[Strengthening and Enriching the Secondary School Curriculum]