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CASN News - Edition #269 April 2006
CASN News is supported by the Career Academy Support Network (CASN) at University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Our focus is on high schools and high school redesign, especially redesign which includes Academies/small schools/smaller learning communities. CASN believes that quality teaching and learning are at the heart of any good high school and that every student has a right to rigor, relevance, and supportive adult relationships. We also work to build community engagement and partnerships which support student success. Please share CASN News with others who might be interested.
Reminder: Any CASN_News group member can post a high-school related message, query, resource, etc. to the CASN_News community by simply sending your email to CASN_News@yahoogroups.com . To contact the CASN News editor, please email gaia_pc@yahoo.com OR patricia510@gmail.com
In this edition:
Oprah Show turns focus on High Schools 4/11 & 4/12 (time sensitive)
CES "Ask a Mentor" "Student Leadership: How to Foster Powerful Student Voice" 4/11 - 4/15 (time sensitive)
Update on FY2007 Education Budget Process
"Dropout Nation" (Time Magazine)
The Crisis in America's High Schools
Full Inclusion Helps All Students
Recovery Programs in Area Schools Help Students Stay on Track to Graduate (N.C)
If Only They'd Do Their Work! (What Can Teachers Do About Students Who Fail To Complete Their Assignments?
A New Read on Teen Literacy
Save the Dates! School Redesign Network Summer Institutes - June 19-22 Stanford University
OPRAH & TIME
On Tuesday, April 11 and Wednesday, April 12, the Oprah Winfrey Show will turn the focus of its estimated 49 million U.S. viewers to the dropout crisis in America's high schools. Also this week, TIME magazine's April 17, 2006 cover story, "Dropout Nation," provides an in-depth look at the nationwide dropout crisis and the repercussions that accompany it. The article is available online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1181646,00.html.
COALITION OF ESSENTIAL SCHOOLS: EAGLE ROCK SCHOOL "ASK A MENTOR" PANEL ON "STUDENT LEADERSHIP: HOW TO FOSTER POWERFUL STUDENT VOICE" April 11-15, 2006
The eighth “Ask a Mentor” panel is underway on The Coalition of Essential Schools’ ChangeLab interactive website from April 11 – 15, 2006. "Ask a Mentor" panels virtually convene educators from across the network to discuss specific topics and to learn from the experience of CES school leaders and students.
Beginning on Tuesday, April 11th you have the opportunity to directly dialogue with Eagle Rock School Staff. We all know that areas of student engagement, achievement and school culture improve when students are given a voice. Oppressing, controlling and silencing students should be a thing of the past. Giving students voice in the classroom, a say regarding school policies and a role in reform initiatives make schools more democratic, less autocratic and certainly more learner centered. But what does meaningful student voice look like? This panel is moderated by Eagle Rock School Head Robert Burkhardt, Director of Students Philbert Smith, Acting Director of Professional Development Dan Condon, and student Coral Ann S.
Participating in this panel is very easy. Copy and paste the following URL into your address bar of your browser: http://www.ceschangelab.org/cs/clpub/view/cl_askpanel/18. Or you can visit the Exchange section of the ChangeLab site, click on "Ask a Mentor" and then click on the current panel, "Student Leadership: How to Foster Powerful Student Voice".
Log on today! This panel only lasts from April 11 – 15, 2006. Don't miss your chance to pose questions that are guaranteed to be answered in this timeframe. If you don’t have a specific question to ask, we invite you to log on to find out what everyone else is inquiring about! If you miss the panel feel free to check out the dialogue’s transcript.
UPDATE ON THE FY 2007 EDUCATION BUDGET
Our Voices Mattered!!! Budget Resolution Vote Delayed!
The U.S. House of Representatives left for April recess without voting on the FY 2007 Budget Resolution, partially because of disputes over education funding. Thanks in part to the pressure many members of Congress have felt about education, Congress had trouble scheduling a vote on the budget resolution.
Your calls and e-mails made a powerful difference! Thank you to each of you who contacted her/his member of Congress. If you have not yet taken action OR if you wish to continue your ed advocacy, please take a few minutes over the next week and a half to make sure your voices are heard. We need to continue to let Congress know the funding levels for education included in the current FY 2007 Budget resolution are insufficient. Our schools need more, but if the budget resolution does not adequately support education, it will be difficult to achieve sufficient education funding during the appropriations process.
A few Talking Points for possible inclusion in your message:
* Please help (your school district/state name here) meet the growing costs and needs facing our district. We understand that money alone is not the solution; however, without adequate resources, local schools are very limited in the options they provide to students.
* Japan, Australia, and other countries spend a higher percentage of their budget on education. These are countries that have outperformed the United States on the TIMMS test. To ensure our students remain competitive in the global economy, we need a substantial increase in education funding. We must make educating our students a national priority, and provide the best education possible for all students.
* Please write a budget resolution that provides a significant funding increase for education in FY 2007.
For contact info for your own Rep, please see: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The Crisis in America's High Schools
Imagine waking up one morning and learning that the entire population of Philadelphiaor Dallas - cities with populations between 1.2 and 1.4 million - had disappeared overnight. Would CNN, Fox News, and every major network immediately dispatch reporters to thescene? Would members of Congress and the president schedule press conferences to be among the first to address the story? Would everyone in the country be glued to their TVs and radios? You know they would. So it's surprising that so little attention is being paid to another crisis - one that is just as newsworthy, but that largely goes unnoticed. Every year, approximately 1.3 million students--that's 7,000 every school day--do not graduate from high school as scheduled. (source: Alliance For Excellent Education)
THE CRISIS IN AMERICA'S HIGH SCHOOLS & THE COST TO AMERICA:
Nationally, only about 71 percent of high school students graduate on time. In urban areas, only about one-half
half of students receive a diploma. Among minorities, the chances of making it to graduation day are also slim. Only about 52 percent of Hispanic students and approximately 56 percent of African-American students will graduate on schedule, compared to 78 percent of white students. So what does this mean and why does it matter? See article: http://www.all4ed.org/whats_at_stake/crisis.html
"A NEW READ ON TEEN LITERACY (U.S. News and World Report)
(CASN News Rerun) : "Willard Brown teaches chemistry at Skyline High in Oakland, Calif. But what he really hopes his students master on their way to learning science is a skill most people, the teenagers included, assume they nailed long ago: the ability to read. Too often, he says, students have an incomplete notion of what reading actually means. 'They think, 'My eyes passed over the page, and I pronounced all the words.' They don't notice that they really didn't get it.'" http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050228/28literacy.htm.
Full Inclusion Helps All Students
To ensure that all students achieve to high academic standards, Sanger High School in Fresno County, California created a culture shift that no longer allows teachers or the community to think in terms of these kids and those kids. A core part of this transition, and its resulting dramatic increases in student achievement, has been Sanger's outstanding full-inclusion special education program. In recognition of this program's success at integrating special education students into regular classrooms to the benefit of all students, in 2006 Sanger High was granted the CalSTAT Leadership Site award.
The first stage in full inclusion was intensive planning, which included learning firsthand what other schools were doing. It was essential to gather information and have release time for department collaboration and brainstorming. A pilot effort that first year focused on getting the general education and special education staff used to the program. Four of the seven special education teachers each acted as a consultant with a general education teacher in all core departments. The teachers were selected because of previous work with special education teachers and their willingness to adopt the full inclusion program.
The consultants started by working with students in the class, no longer pulling them out. They coached teachers on strategies that work with special education students, helped general education teachers reformat assignments, notes, and exams, and engaged in team teaching. Once the teachers became comfortable with each other, the collaboration accelerated. Teachers began to see improved performance for all students in the classes. The consultants also assisted in research, instructional strategies, and one-on-one instruction with all students.
This push-in scenario was coupled with a study skills class for incoming freshman identified for special education, giving them tools to be successful at the high school level, and also providing additional help for their mainstreamed courses. During year 2, while special education services continued to be provided for all departments, the major focus of the consultants was English and math. This was intended to reduce the overall stress level for the special education teachers and to provide maximum intervention for the subjects covered on state tests.
Consultants also assisted any general education teachers or students in science or social studies classes requiring help on an as needed basis. In order to best meet the needs of all students on the special education caseloads, consultants teamed with a partner, one consultant working with students in English, the other with math. During this year, the special education teachers helped make curriculum more accessible to special education students, using strategies such as graphic organizers, think-pair-share, and cooperative learning. Teachers report that these strategies have not only helped their special education students, but have improved achievement for all students.
During year 3, the program's continuing success is shown through higher state assessment scores and improved social skills. The use of instructional assistants has also increased in the general education courses. Their role has become pivotal, especially in classes where a consultant cannot attend daily. The assistants have improved their own knowledge greatly and help all students, not just special education. In fact, a casual observer would find it hard to single out the special education students in the general education setting. The site leadership reports that because of this program, there is a noticeable increase in overall teacher collaboration, and a willingness of teachers to seek help.
The program is a work in progress and the department is not afraid to tweak it in order to best serve the students' needs. Read West Ed's SchoolsMovingUp's full profile of Sanger High http://www.schoolsmovingup.net/cs/wested/view/sdp/28
RECOVERY PROGRAMS IN AREA SCHOOLS HELP STUDENTS STAY ON TRACK TO GRADUATE (North Carolina)
By Natalie Jordan
The bell had already rung for dismissal, yet Troy Roberson was still in class. "I thought about dropping out. I just got sick and tired of coming to school," said the 18-year-old senior. "But I'm trying to graduate. I'm trying to do something with my life."
The state's dropout rate has declined slightly over the last two years, with a considerable decrease during the 2002-03 school year. And while the dropout rate in the Twin Counties schools has seen a decline, it has gone through something similar to a roller coaster's up and down. However, in response to the dropout statistics, Edgecombe and Nash county school systems have put in place several programs that keep students from falling through the cracks.
Along with implementing career academies such as the Teacher Academy and the Agriscience Academy and freshman academies to help incoming ninth-graders make the transition to high school, high schools in the Twin Counties are offering students a way to graduate on time, through credit recovery.
"If a student failed a course and couldn't graduate with their friends, they often opt not to come back and complete the course they failed," said Robert Carroll, facilitator of the credit recovery program. "We should have three students graduate with their class, so it's helping our dropout rate."
Several students sat at computers in a classroom at SouthWest EdgecombeHigh School, all recovering credits they missed along the way in their high school careers. And for Roberson, it's his biology credits.
"Troy's grandmother called, and I was telling her his progress," Carroll said. "And all I heard was a lot of 'hallelujahs' and 'praise Jehovahs.' She's so proud that he's going to graduate with his class."
The Credit Recovery program at SouthWest Edgecombe was started in February and allows students who have missed a credit somewhere in their high school career to make up that credit. The program is Internet-based and monitored through attendance. Students are referred to the program through teachers or administration, Carroll said.
"There are 25 slots allotted through the program, and attendance is very important, and we are very strict on that," he said. "But the students in the program have been on time and on task, and they are taking this program very seriously. Our students see a need. They are kids that have decided to take care of themselves."
Tarboro High School has a similar program called Buy Back. "The program allows a student to 'buy back' a class," said Principal Mike Lutz. "It doesn't change their attendance for the day they missed, but it doesn't count against them."
Tarboro High teachers are required to stay an extra hour and 15 minutes one day out of the week. Students can make up English, vocational and foreign language classes on Mondays; science, physical education, fine arts and health on Tuesdays; and social studies, math and exceptional children's classes on Thursdays.
"Say if a student misses a day at school, that student misses four classes," Lutz said. "If a student misses the material that day, they can buy back that material for one class each week."
Edgecombe County Public Schools' droput rate experienced a decrease from 8.55 percent in the 1999-00 school year to 5.97 percent last school year, which is down from the 6.34 percent the previous year. The dropout rate dropped to 5.79 percent in 2001-02 but rose again to 6.83 in 2002-03. Tarboro High School had 39 students in grades nine through 12 drop out during the 2004-05 school year, while North Edgecombe had 17. SouthWest Edgecombe had 88 students drop out.
"Students leave usually because there is another priority in their lives," Lutz said. "They're growing up too fast or feel the need to work. It's just something else taking precedent over going to school. "As a principal or a teacher, you look at kids and try to counsel them into staying. You're trying to catch up with them before it's too late. That's what you're trying to do. The first two years are the most imperative to be more involved."
According to the annual dropout report presented to the N.C. State Board of Education, one out of every 20 North Carolina high school students dropped out of school, jeopardizing their opportunities for future success. That equated an annual high school dropout rate of 4.7 percent. The state experienced 712 dropouts that were attributed to long-term suspension and 226 attributed to incarceration.
"The High School Alternative Learning Program runs the full calendar as the high school does," Lutz said. "We have a separate space within the school, and the program caters to students from all four high schools who are on long-term suspension. "It gives them a place to go rather than the street."
Another Internet-based credit recovery program called Novel STARS is used in Nash-Rocky Mount high schools. The program, which lets students make up 21 classes, has 220 slots divided among the four high schools. Novel STARS was implemented in all four Nash-Rocky Mount high schools during the 2003-04 school year to give at-risk students the opportunity to earn credits for the classes they failed. "In that school year, 326 credits were recovered," said Sylvia Matthews, executive director of secondary education for Nash-Rocky Mount Schools. "That's 355 failing grades recovered to give passing grades, and the program is very challenging."
Since the program is Internet-based, Matthews said it can be accessible at home, the library or anywhere a student can access a computer. The program is available seven days a week, 24 hours a day, she said. Matthews said during the 2004-05 school year 416 credits were recovered.
Although the data for 2005-06 has not been completely compiled, Matthews said students enrolled during the fall semester recovered 291 credits. "This give them an opportunity to make up credits that were lost beyond the regular school day," she said. "It helps seniors graduate on time. Our first priority would be to seniors that need that credit for graduation. Another priority is for those students who miss more than 10 days. A student could be motivated to do well in classes, but at the end of the day, he or she is still missing credits to graduate, and that can be very disappointing. This encourages them to stay in school."
While Edgecombe saw a decrease in its dropout rate, Nash-Rocky Mount Schools saw an increase. The school system's dropout rate for the 2004-05 school year was 6.13 percent, up from the 5.93 percent the previous year. In its high schools, there were a total of 294 students that were considered drop outs. The annual dropout report stated that in 2004-05 60 percent of dropouts were attendance-related, 10 percent were due to community college enrollment and 8 percent was school status unknown. However, a study done through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that 47 percent of dropouts said classes weren't interesting and 69 percent were not motivated to work hard.
"Sitting in class all day is boring," said SouthWest Edgecombe 11th-grader Shatavia Knight. "Kids get bored. And if they took (a course) once they often don't want to take it again. "But programs like credit recovery help. There should be more programs like this. It's easier and faster."
IF THEY'D ONLY DO THEIR WORK? What can teachers do about students who fail to complete their assignments? - Linda Darling-Hammond & Olivia Ifill-Lynch
In innovative urban schools, educators work together to find solutions to the perennial problem of getting struggling students to do homework.
High school teachers often have difficulty motivating struggling students to complete homework—especially in inner-city schools in which many students are discouraged by stressful living conditions. The authors consulted with successful urban educators who were involved with innovative, small high schools in New York City, and asked what strategies they recommended for engaging students in doing their schoolwork. Five effective approaches emerged: assigning work that is worthy of effort, making the work doable, finding out what students need to do the work, creating space and time for homework, and making work public. The article gives examples of how teachers in these successful schools collaborate to implement these five strategies.
Urban U.S. high schools are often factories for failure. An estimated 40 percent of urban students fail multiple classes in 9th grade, and in many cities 50 percent or more leave school without graduating (Neild, Stoner-Eby, & Furstenberg, 2001). Teachers complain that many adolescents enter high school unprepared to act like students—to sit still and listen, take notes, study on their own, engage in classwork, and finish homework. The plaintive refrain echoes through the staff room: “If I could only get them to do their work!”
This common problem, which surfaces in school after school, led us to consult some of the most successful urban educators we know—teachers and principals who have been involved in founding new, small high schools in New York City and Boston, Massachusetts.
We consulted the following educators by e-mail and telephone: Jacqueline Ancess, Codirector, National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, and founding Principal of Manhattan East Middle School, New York, NY; Sanda Balaban, Autonomy Zone Liaison for New York City Department of Education and Coordinator of Homework Audit for New Mission High School, Roxbury, MA; Avram Barlowe, history teacher, Urban Academy, New York, NY; Ann Cook, Codirector, Urban Academy, and Cochair, New York Performance Standards Consortium, New York, NY; Cecelia Cunningham, Director of Middle College National Consortium and former Principal of Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community College, New York, NY; Herb Mack, Codirector, Urban Academy, New York, NY; Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar, New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, and founding Principal of Central Park East Elementary and Secondary Schools, New York, NY, and Mission Hill School, Boston, MA; Marian Mogulescu, education consultant and former Codirector of Vanguard High School, New York, NY; and Sylvia Rabiner, Project Manager, the Institute for Student Achievement, and founding Principal of Landmark High School, New York, NY.
These schools, which serve low-income, minority communities, have begun to routinely graduate and send to college more than 90 percent of their students. To achieve this level of success, school staff members have worked together to transform students with little history of school success into young scholars who are engaged in doing academic work.
Students fail to do homework for many reasons. Deborah Meier, the founder of a number of successful schools, notes that her staff at Central Park East in New York City reflected together about how to solve the problem of students' failure to complete their work:
We soon realized that a sizable number of students didn't really know how to do the homework, or at least how to do it well enough to get any satisfaction from it. A smaller number truly didn't have time, and we needed a whole-family conference to tackle the issues of jobs, baby-sitting, etc. A third group just couldn't or didn't plan, so we tried having a brief meeting at the end of each day to plan for homework. Some students were just expressing their general despair this way.
Despair has many sources. It may arise from difficult home circumstances, in which children and youth live in overcrowded, inadequate housing or in homeless shelters; lack good nutrition and health care; or live with adults who are under severe stress. Difficult school circumstances can also cause despair. Overburdened teachers may meet with five or six large classes a day. And poor teaching and learning conditions often convince students that they cannot learn. By the time many struggling students reach adolescence, they have learned to protect their self-esteem by saying they “don't care about the (stupid) work” rather than risk proving themselves incompetent by trying and failing.
Some teachers believe they must “teach students a lesson” by giving them failing grades when they don't turn in work. This response is understandable—how can you reward students when they don't do anything?—but it doesn't usually solve the problem. Instead, punishment merely confirms students' view that they cannot succeed. Unfortunately, struggling students know what the experience of failure is like, and they have learned to survive it. In many cases, accepting failure has become a strategy for not having to try.
A more difficult but effective approach is to create a strong academic culture that changes students' beliefs and behaviors, convincing them to engage with their schoolwork. Here are some ways in which educators from successful schools have created such a culture.
Although it may seem obvious, the first step is to examine the kind of homework that we assign. What is our purpose in giving a particular assignment? Are we providing students with adequate support in completing it? As Deborah Meier asks, “Does it make sense? Is it necessary? Is it useful, given the circumstances under which it is carried out at home?”
Most important, we need to ensure that homework tasks are authentic and engaging—that students have a reason to do them (other than avoiding a zero). Project-based work is an approach that teachers have found intrinsically engaging for students, says Sylvia Rabiner, founding principal of Landmark High School in New York City:
I've found that students respond best when working on longer class projects in which they become deeply involved. At Bushwick, where I coach teachers, kids who routinely neglected homework behave differently when working on final Inquiry Projects. Teachers report kids coming to school early, staying late, and even asking to complete their projects after the school year has ended.
Marian Mogulescu, former codirector of New York City's Vanguard High School and current consultant to other schools, suggests that staff members working together can help one another discover what kinds of homework yield high completion rates. At one school, teachers participated in a workshop titled “Homework: To Be or Not to Be.” They talked about experiences in which they had really learned something, and they shared and analyzed successful homework assignments.
One insight, Mogulescu recalls, was that even routine homework tasks can be meaningful if they are related to authentic classroom learning: Yes, there are times when homework is not fabulously creative and unusual—there are times when we all have to stuff envelopes, for example—but if the focus is project-based, or inquiry-based, or part of what the class is actively engaged in, the follow-up outside of class will have more meaning.
Cece Cunningham, former principal of Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community College in New York City, observes that the perceived usefulness of the work is also important. Students are most likely to complete homework
when the homework is actually used the next day in class. For instance, if students have to read a passage in a book and highlight or underline selections to share with their classmates the next day, they tend to put in the effort.
Teachers can also make homework more useful to students by providing relevant and engaging classwork that draws on students' ideas in ways that require them to prepare.
An example is the course “Looking for an Argument,” developed by teacher Avram Barlowe and codirector Herb Mack at New York City's Urban Academy. Using a Socratic seminar format, the course incorporates oral and listening skills, reading, research, writing, and critique in an inquiry-based approach. Students are required to cite primary texts to debate their ideas. As they get involved in defending their opinions about important topics, students increasingly do the hard work of reading dense texts and preparing their points.
As Barlowe and Mack note, Through a structured format, students learn to make connections between the “talk” of the class, the materials they read, and the essays they write. As students become more informed and articulate, they also become more engaged and empowered and gain confidence in their ability to have and defend a point of view.
Even if the work is engaging, students won't do it if they don't know how. Sylvia Rabiner, founding principal of Landmark High School, suggests that teachers ask themselves, Are the directions clear? Is the homework doable without any assistance? How does it relate to the lesson? Is it being collected and returned or reviewed in class the next day so that students are getting immediate feedback? What kind of comments is the teacher writing on the homework? Can homework be started in class so that the teacher may observe and see where problems for students arise?
Unless homework is a clear continuation of well-taught classwork, it can actually exacerbate inequalities in learning instead of closing the gap. Students whose parents understand the homework and can help them with it at home have a major advantage over students whose parents are unable or unavailable to help.
Teachers at Middle College High School presented their student portfolio assignments to their colleagues. They were surprised to discover that their peers often could not navigate the material successfully. According to former principal Cece Cunningham, Being confronted by the difficulties their fellow teachers experienced in deciphering their assignments gave teachers insight into similar challenges faced by their students. Vetting projects with one another, across disciplines, created opportunities for collective revision of individual teacher assignments. It was key in refining teacher skill in developing and fashioning assignments of high intellectual quality nested in language and scaffolding that were accessible to students.
We can also confirm that homework is doable by making sure it gets started under teacher supervision at school. At a school led by one of us (Olivia), the staff created a weekly 50-minute study hall in which advisory teachers could support students in completing work. This homework supervision—along with common teacher meeting time for ongoing reflective conversation—enabled the staff to take a fresh look at their homework assignments and assess the value of these assignments in promoting student learning.
Even when students have engaging work that they can do, they have to be motivated and organized to do it. Founding principal of Manhattan East Middle School Jacqueline Ancess and her staff wanted their small school to provide strong relationships and authentic intellectual experiences for students. They also found that it was important to identify and address individual students' problems. Ancess notes that A good strategy is to help make the kids part of the solution rather than the problem. Teachers can meet alone or as a team with individual kids, discuss their strengths with them—where they have succeeded—and then ask the kids what would be necessary for them to complete the homework and the assignment. This has to be a positive intervention with no sneak attacks. The teachers must seek from the students or suggest one or two specific strategies for one problem at a time.
For example, they may agree that the student will tell his advisor or particular teacher what he has to do to complete the assignment, how he plans to do it, when it is due, and what he needs help with. The teacher or advisor will assess what help the student needs to complete the assignment. The teacher and student should write this down together, so that success becomes inevitable.
The goal is to make the process of doing the assignment transparent, concrete, manageable, and as simple as possible. As Ancess notes, “The point is for the student to learn that it feels better to succeed than to fail.”
At the Julia Richman Educational Complex in New York City, teachers work in teams and have collaborative planning time in which they can work together to understand why certain students aren't doing their work. Teachers ask questions about a given student—How does she learn? What motivates her? What are her concerns, attitudes, aspirations, and beliefs, as well as behaviors?—and then use this information to create an individualized strategy for the student who is struggling.
Sanda Balaban recalls how her teaching colleagues in a pilot school in Boston identified student needs by asking the students themselves. Involving students in gathering this information added value to the process:
We employed all of the personalization strategies that we knew were essential and tried to make every homework assignment engaging and appealing to our students, based on our knowledge of their interests and learning styles. Nonetheless, we still were stymied with a sizable number of students who weren't doing work outside of class.
We decided to conduct a Homework Audit to try to get to the root of what wasn't working. Since I was facilitating our student council at the time, I encouraged student leaders to design and administer a survey to their fellow students to gain insight. One of the key findings was that many of our students had after-school jobs that impeded their ability to complete work outside of the school day.
As a result, I worked with each student in my advisory group to craft work-based learning plans that identified the competencies they were aiming to develop at their jobs. We developed the curriculum to further capitalize on this learning. This also served as an instrument of advocacy with their employers to provide them with more meaningful work experiences.
We have all passed by the classroom of a teacher during her lunch period and glanced inside to see the teacher working at her desk while one or two students read, write, or bend over a poster completing a project. Typically, it's up to an individual teacher to decide to provide students with that space for quiet work time. Some schools, however, have put in place systematic ways of ensuring that students have opportunities to get their schoolwork done in school. As Ancess asserts, “The school needs to make it harder not to do the work than to do it!”
Aside from the skillful use of block scheduling and double periods to extend learning time, successful schools have added homework time at the beginning or the end of the day, in advisory periods during which students work under the watchful eye of their advisor, in Saturday sessions, in weekday breakfast clubs, in after-school programs run by community organizations, and in other settings that provide dedicated time and personalization. Often, these extra-time sessions are available for all students but are required for students who have fallen behind.
In some schools, principals have taken on a direct teaching role by creating and running success classes. Typically, these classes target students who have become trapped in a cycle of not completing schoolwork. Classes generally take place during elective periods or extended lunch hours and focus on skill building and work completion. Having their principal take a public, hands-on role in their learning can be a high-level motivator for students. By participating in the delivery of instruction, the school leader reinforces the primacy of the teaching and learning relationship.
At the Urban Academy, the daily schedule includes a period called Drop-In—a teacher's preparation period that he or she voluntarily shares with a small number of students. The teachers don't necessarily teach or talk to the students; they just provide an opportunity for the students to sit in the presence of a caring, supportive adult for an extended period of time to complete schoolwork. The codirector of the school, Ann Cook, explains,
Drop-In provides what many of us experienced at home when we were young students. Our parents would insist that we sit at the kitchen or dining room table and just do our work. We developed the habit of sitting and completing school tasks. Many students have not had that experience.
Urban Academy students may have as much as four hours of homework a night. During one of our visits, a student who had a child attending the infant-toddler center was leaving school at the end of the day with her baby in tow. When asked how she would handle the late night ahead of her, caring for the baby and facing so many hours of homework, she responded, “Well, I don't usually do much of my homework at home. I have double Drop-In, and I get most of my research and homework done there.” Her matter-of-fact reply revealed how her school's policy enabled her to meet rigorous academic standards and be a good mother at the same time.
By viewing time as expandable, many schools move beyond an attitude of just “getting it done” and, instead, hold all students to high standards of quality in their work. Such schools assign ambitious large-scale projects to all students and create the scaffolding to support success. If students need additional time to complete their projects and exhibitions, schools may extend the learning period into winter or spring break, or even into the first two weeks of the summer vacation. In effect, if the semester or grading period ends before the student has completed the work that demonstrates mastery of the required content, the student receives an incomplete and continues to attend school. Teachers are available during this extended time to provide support, to tutor, or to give feedback for revising or amplifying the work.
Extending the time for students to complete work and obtain a solid grade in a class has long been the practice of colleges and universities. Implementing such a practice in a secondary school requires careful scheduling of teacher time—which can only take place when the school staff has helped to develop the school's learning goals and decide how resources will be allocated to support those goals.
Struggling learners benefit when learning goals and the desired quality of learning products are public and explicit. As research has shown, students who do best in school are often those most adept at figuring out what the teacher wants (McCombs & Whisler, 1997).
Accordingly, one school instituted a going public policy. Every teacher posted in the classroom the content that the class was currently studying; where the class was in that study; a list of products that students were required to create to demonstrate learning; and the completed student work products. Documenting the teaching and learning process in this way provided support for teacher conversations about student work. It also enabled students to more easily identify where they were falling behind and where they needed support.
When schools engage students in major projects, it is important to show them models of work and exhibitions that meet the standards. This practice helps demystify the work, demonstrates that it can be done, and illustrates how to do it. Cece Cunningham's staff at Middle College High School decided to maintain folios of student work exemplifying high standards related to specific assignments in the school office, a location accessible to both teachers and students. The school also provided many opportunities for students across grades to work together in academic settings so that 9th graders could benefit both academically and socially from interaction with 12th graders. For example, 9th and 10th graders were members of the panels that evaluated 11th and 12th graders' portfolio presentations. This practice gave students the opportunity to examine in-depth models for their own academic work.
To develop effective strategies to address the needs of struggling students, educators need opportunities to work together. Time for collaboration and teacher inquiry played a pivotal role in these schools' successful responses to student disengagement. Schools that are organized as supportive learning communities with opportunities for collegial problem solving can better support their students in developing the practices and habits essential to doing schoolwork.
SAVE THE DATES. SCHOOL REDESIGN NETWORK SUMMER INSTITUTES
JUNE 19-22 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Through the Looking Glass:
Reinventing Districts and Schools Through Redesigning Teaching and Learning
The Summer Institutes are hosted annually by the School Redesign Network and facilitated by Stanford faculty and nationally acclaimed experts.
Participation is open to educators and intermediaries engaged in redesigning high schools, as well as school teams consisting of stakeholders from diverse constituency groups.
Duration of each Institute: 2 days
(June 19-20 or June 21 -22)
Reinventing the Central Office: 10 Challenges of High School Reform
As the work of restructuring high schools progresses around the country, school districts are discovering that traditional central office organization and practice can interfere with reform. Participants will engage in critical dialogue and action planning around 10 research-based "challenges" that districts are facing in their efforts to support high school reform. This institute is designed for district office leaders and central office teams.
Collaborating on Conversions: Working Together to Transform the American High School
This interactive, multi-media institute carefully examines how four comprehensive high schools in different contexts converted to small schools and learning communities in ways that promoted personalization, collaboration, equity, and democratic decision-making. Institute participants will study best practices for sustaining a focus on equity and improved instruction in the redesign process, and learn how promising conversion schools have effectively supported structural change to leverage improved instruction and student outcomes
Developing Gateway Assessments for Graduation and College Entrance
For school leaders and school teams who are developing standards based performance assessments for high school graduation and beyond. School teams will learn about the key features of a standards based “Gateway Assessment(s)” that are creditable (valid), defensible (reliable). A prototype digitized assessment system(s) will be featured to provide a framework for examining student work and its’ relationship to teaching and learning. Design studios will be included to build understandings around task design, rubric development and training/moderation processes.
Redesigning Schools and Teaching:
Personalization, Collaboration, and Academic Rigor as Functions of School Structure and Instruction
A professional study of structure, organization, and instructional practice in new and redesigned schools. School leaders and school teams will engage in an interactive hands-on study of the history, rationale and best practices for high school redesign. Working in small groups, participants will study instructional strategies such as project based learning, successful practices with struggling learners and school organization and teaching for English Language Learners. As this Institute is product based, participant teams will develop a context specific set of design recommendations and a professional learning plan to present to their school community.
For detailed information and registration please visit http://schoolredesign.net starting April 20, 2006.
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