Secondary School Reform
Becky Smerdon and Kathryn Borman
As the United States moved into the 20th century, enrollment in public schools grew dramatically, as did school size. During the past 50 years of the century, the country experienced a 500 percent increase in student enrollment, but only a 70 percent increase in the number of its schools (Annie E. Casey Foundation 2001). To accommodate the vast numbers of students attending public schools, as well as their growing diversity, the comprehensive high school emerged with separate programs to prepare students for different career pathways. (Previously, secondary education was not universally mandated and was designed to prepare an elite population of students.) Designed to serve all of a community’s students in an efficient system, comprehensive high schools offer differentiated educational options to accommodate the diversity of students’ interests and skills and to prepare students for a broad range of post-high school options (Lee and Smith 1994). This experiment in grouping students by their personal characteristics and interests, whether authentic or perceived, and moving them from classroom to classroom in a large and often chaotic building, has since shown to be neither an efficient nor effective approach to educating a diverse population of students. Indeed, a wide breadth of indicators suggests that comprehensive high schools are not working for a substantial number of the 14 million adolescents they are charged with educating. At best, one in four public high school students does not graduate in four years (National Center for Education Statistics 2006). More alarmingly, high school graduation is only a 50-50 proposition for low-income and minority students (Editorial Projects in Education Research Center 2006; Herlihy and Quint 2006). Furthermore, only half of U.S. 17-year-olds can understand moderately complex mathematical procedures, while only about a third can understand the information they read (National Assessment of Educational Progress 2004). It is not surprising, then, that nearly one-third of all freshmen enroll in at least one remedial course at the postsecondary level (Alliance for Excellent Education 2006).
It should also come as no surprise that calls for high school reform have been plentiful over the past 100 years, reaching a crescendo at the turn of the current century. Of late, policy rhetoric around high school improvement has become much more focused on the need for increased academic rigor in the context of smaller, less chaotic school settings. For example, the American Diploma Project (ADP), a network of governors, state superintendents, business executives, and college and university leaders from 26 states representing more than half of all public school students in the country, calls for (1) increasing the challenge and rigor of high school standards, assessments, and curriculum; (2) better aligning high schools with the demands of postsecondary education and work; and (3) holding high schools accountable for improved performance (Achieve 2005). And while graduation requirements, in particular, have increased over the past two decades, increasing required coursework in core content areas, aligning these courses with postsecondary institutions and developing and implementing rigorous curricula and assessments have become the keystone of the most recent round of state plans for high school improvement (Education Commission of the States 2007).
The press for academic rigor has raised concerns about all students’ abilities to master the content. As Resnick (1999, x) has argued, “To establish standards and not simultaneously organize to teach all students well cannot be an acceptable social policy.” And there is good reason to expect that the success of this “raise-the-bar” approach to school improvement will depend on stakeholders’ abilities to provide the academic supports that students, particularly struggling students, need to be effective learners. Without these supports, the benefits of entering a “rigorous” high school with more course requirements or a college-preparatory mandate may not be realized; the odds are strong that many students will stumble during their first years, never get back on track, and then drop out of school. If we hope to disrupt this cycle, high schools must dramatically change the way they do business to effectively educate all students well.
One of this book’s key themes is that despite the difficulty of transforming high schools, there have been sincere and highly ambitious efforts to improve them (particularly those serving historically underserved students) and an influx of new resources. This is not to suggest that the vast majority of high schools and high school classrooms look fundamentally different from what they looked like 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. High schools are quite stable organizations, often impervious to change. Nonetheless, as described throughout this book, there is a changing tide with significant forces behind it and little doubt that some degree of change is afoot in many districts, high schools, and high school classrooms across the country. In the next section, we turn to an overview of the chapters contained in this volume, each of which examines a specific location in the United States and a particular reform effort. Each case implements a Gates-sponsored reform aimed at creating small school communities in high schools.
Chapter two provides a national perspective for high school reform, describing the largest private investment in public secondary education in history—the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s small high school initiative. Smerdon and her colleagues begin with a short synthesis of philanthropic investments in secondary education. The authors then quickly turn to an in-depth discussion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s small schools initiative. The authors argue that the Gates Foundation’s approach has attempted to create a movement to fundamentally change secondary education. However, they argue that despite a number of positive results, including sounding the alarm that high schools are indeed in trouble and funding the creation of schools where students feel supported, it remains to be seen if the foundation’s early attempts have resulted in large-scale systemic change. The authors conclude with reflections on the foundation’s new initiatives and the lessons the foundation has learned from its early grants.
In chapter three, Smerdon and Cohen drill down to the district level, describing Baltimore City Public School System’s (BCPSS) high school reform initiative. BCPSS is one of the first urban districts in the country to undertake large-scale high school reform, creating small learning communities by opening new high schools and transforming large, comprehensive high schools into small high schools. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a dozen local foundations, and reform support organizations, BCPSS opened 18 small high schools between 2002 and 2006. Using data from surveys, administrative records, and site visits, the authors examine the implementation and outcomes of this reform and provide a discussion of lessons learned. The authors find that reforming high schools, particularly new high schools, are serving their students relatively well with respect to positive school climate and student outcomes. However, the authors argue that the needs of youth in
Baltimore far exceed BCPSS’s efforts to meet those needs. Despite upward trends, a majority of students have not passed the English and algebra High School Assessment exams and only two-thirds have graduated from high school. As a pioneer in the high school reform movement, the authors contend that BCPSS’s efforts have important implications for Baltimore students, but also inform districts and schools contemplating similar initiatives.
Chapter four moves up the East Coast and summarizes the development, operations, enrollments, and student outcomes of the New Century High Schools, a large-scale initiative in New York City. Foley and Reisner place the NYC small high schools initiative within the city’s larger educational reform program and draw on data collected over four years as part of the evaluation of New Century High Schools. The chapter also presents descriptive information obtained from multiple sources on the schools themselves. Analyses link student-outcome trends with patterns of school operations (in areas such as instructional focus, youth engagement and support, principal leadership, and community partnerships) to yield conclusions about specific school characteristics associated with varied trends in student outcomes. Analyses conducted to date suggest that students in New Century schools experience more positive educational outcomes (especially in terms of likelihood of graduating from high school) than do students with similar demographic characteristics and similar baseline educational characteristics in other schools. Furthermore, patterns of positive school implementation mirror patterns of positive educational outcomes, suggesting that the schools (and not other unmeasured factors) are responsible for students’ educational successes. Finally, the chapter examines how the new small high schools are affecting secondary education generally in NYC.
Traveling west, Kahne and his colleagues describe findings from the first four years of the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI) in chapter five. Their data enable them to compare the surveys and outcome data for students in CHSRI small schools with data on similar students who attend larger but otherwise similar schools in Chicago. Drawing on these data, the authors assess the impact of the reform and conclude that school contexts and student experiences fostered by small schools may be related to these outcomes. The authors report that small schools are characterized by more collegial and “empowered” contexts for teachers, but that they do not appear to promote shifts in instruction or improved academic outcomes. On the positive side, the authors find that small schools offer more supportive and personal contexts for students and that dropout rates and graduation rates are better in small schools than in otherwise similar schools that serve similar students. The authors discuss implications for small school reform and for high school reform more generally.
Chapter six describes a statewide initiative in Ohio targeted at transforming high schools, as well as the framework and technical assistance components of the statewide initiative, the implementation progression, and school performance outcomes. Jones and her colleagues begin by describing the KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI), a statewide initiative focused on redesigning comprehensive high schools and transforming them into autonomous small schools characterized by personalization, collaboration, and innovative curriculum and teaching that prepare students for college and work. Drawing from site visit data from 7 high school campuses, survey data from 15 campuses, and outcome data, this chapter examines how the small schools changed with respect to structure and organization, school autonomy, distributed leadership, school climate, community involvement, curriculum, instruction and assessment, professional development and collaboration, and the role of KnowledgeWorks. This chapter also describes the degree to which the OHSTI small schools reached the 15 non-negotiable attributes; gauges the changes the schools made from the first to second year of implementation; provides insight into progress and challenges; and examines changes the schools have made over the course of this evaluation. The authors conclude that this initiative resulted in schools that appear changed regarding structure and, to some degree, culture, but that remain largely the same when considering the state of their teaching and learning.
In chapter seven, Coltrane and his colleagues provide a very different and compelling lens through which to view high school reform; they summarize the policy environment surrounding high school reform in North Carolina, one of the few U.S.states to have a statewide high school reform initiative. Governor
Mike Easley has implemented an ambitious high school-reform agenda to create at least one innovative, 21st century high school in every county in the state. The North Carolina New Schools Project (NCNSP), an initiative of Governor Easley and the education cabinet with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is one of the leading organizations in creating innovative high schools in the state. NCNSP is creating two types of innovative high schools: redesigned (or conversion) high schools and early college high schools. This chapter shows how North Carolina’s rich policy environment has both facilitated and supported the development of innovative high schools across the state. Despite this environment, the authors contend, many challenges to successful high school reform in North Carolina remain. The biggest challenge facing school districts and schools that seek reform is the sometimes staunch resistance to change from community leaders, parents, teachers, and administrators. This chapter also describes these challenges and shows how North Carolina is working through them.
In the final chapter, Smerdon and her colleagues summarize key findings from the chapters in this book, stating that these findings support prior research and practitioners’ experiences that large-scale reform is extremely challenging, requires significant support (including material and human capital and time to implement and demonstrate results), and should be grounded in and guided by one (or more) vision(s) of effective teaching and learning. The authors’ descriptions of these reform efforts and their own reflections on what can be learned from them suggest a number of overarching lessons that can significantly inform and improve future efforts. In this chapter, the authors highlight their thoughts on the reform, research, and policy implications of the work described in this book.
References
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Alliance for Excellent Education. 2006. High School Dropouts Cost the U.S. Billions in Lost Wages and Taxes, According to Alliancefor Excellent Education, http://www.all4ed.org/press_room/press_releases/03012006.
Annie E. Casey Foundation. 2001. “Success in Schools: Education Ideas that Count.” Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. http://www.aecf.org/publications/success/smschool.htm.
Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. 2006. “Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Rates and Policies.” EdWeek 25(41S).
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Herlihy, Corinne M. and Janet Quint. 2006. Emerging Evidence on Improving High School Achievement and Graduation Rates: The Effects of Four Popular Improvement Programs. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.
Lee, Valerie E. and Julia B. Smith. 1994. “Effects of High School Restructuring and Size on Gains in Achievement and Engagement for Early Secondary School Students.” Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
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Resnick, L. 1999. “Foreword.” In The New American High School, edited by D. D. Marsh and J. B. Codding (vii–xvi). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
