High school reform can mean different things to different people

What does high school reform entail? Is it restructuring large high schools into small learning communities?

Is it aligning rigorous curriculum to standards, benchmarks and assessment?

Is it block scheduling?

Is it adding literacy and intervention programs?

Is it setting up partnerships with foundations, colleges and the business community?

The correct answer is all — or any — of the above. It depends on who is doing the restructuring.

Groups calling for a redesign of high schools come from two starkly different perspectives, notes Education Week. One favors "a more policy-oriented, managerial approach" and advocates better alignment of content standards, curricula and tests. The other favors "a more student-centered approach" and advocates cultivating healthy and productive learning environments for young people.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in both types of reform. It has helped support more than 700 newly-formed small high schools and facilitated the restructuring of another 700 schools. In 2004, the foundation awarded CTA's Institute for Teaching a three-year grant of $1.93 million for its multiyear High School Outreach Program.

The program is part of the institute's Schools of Greatest Need Initiative, which is seeking to build community investment and teacher involvement in change at schools in the lowest two deciles of the Academic Performance Index. What type of reform will be selected will depend on which schools are selected for the project and what the stakeholders there reach consensus on. The institute is currently entertaining proposals from local chapters.

While high school reform means different things to different people, there is consensus on one thing: Any discussion must include strategies for bridging the gap between middle school and high school, and between high school and college.

The transition between middle school and high school "is one of the toughest things that a student will ever go through," says Curtis Washington, chair of CTA's High School Restructuring Task Force and a former member of the State Board of Education. Just having students go through an orientation is not enough.

He suggests pairing students with upperclassmen and with teachers. Then, as freshmen, "they have someone who cares about them and wants to see them succeed."

Easing the handoff would lower the dropout rate in 10th grade and reduce the number of students in alternative education programs, says Ellen Gervase, a special education teacher at Pomona Alterative School and a member of the task force. "If class size were reduced, more students might be able to bond with the school and feel a sense of belonging. Some students need a more personalized approach."

There also needs to be better communication between special education teachers at both levels, she says. Usually they only have one transition meeting.

In a report titled "Linking Career/Technical Studies to Broader High School Reform," the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) suggests:

• Educating middle school staff, parents and students about what students need to know and be able to do to succeed in rigorous high school and postsecondary studies without remediation.
• Providing accelerated instruction in reading, language arts and math to seventh- and eighth-graders who will need help to succeed in college-preparatory programs at the high school level.
• Providing extra help to students who are below state standards in those areas.

Some progress has already been made in bridging the gap between high school and college. A new early assessment test allows students headed for CSU to find out whether they need to take additional coursework in reading, language arts and math to avoid having to take remedial courses in college.

The test — a cooperative effort between CSU and the California Department of Education — was given to nearly 40 percent of the state's juniors last spring. As an incentive to take the voluntary exam, juniors who test "ready" for college can bypass placement exams in those subjects.

To help ease the transition between high school and college, the SREB study suggests:

• Making it possible for students ready for college at the end of the junior year to earn college-level credits in academic and career/technical courses in the senior year.
• Giving college placement tests to juniors planning to pursue postsecondary studies, and enrolling those who fail in remedial courses in the senior year.
• Developing criteria under which high school students can earn postsecondary credits in high-quality and high-demand career fields.

"A key issue is that high schools and colleges have not developed common standards and expectations," reports a study from WestEd titled "Schools and College Partnerships: The Missing Link."

"While K-12 accountability policies are prompting course alignment and articulation from elementary to high school, the push for coherence tends to stop there. Colleges and universities are not held to account for coordinating with high schools."

One of the report's recommendations is that colleges share information about freshman performance with high schools in order to help them better prepare students for college.

Many schools with once-flourishing vocational programs have been so decimated by funding cuts that the question of where vocational education fits in with high school reform isn't even part of the discussion.

In schools that stress heavy remediation, there may not be time for vocational education. Still, many schools have a goal of aligning vocational education classes to the standards so they can be counted for college admission.

Darlene Gilles, who teaches beginning and advanced floral classes in Madera High School's agriculture department, would like to see students — all students — able to explore their interests through electives instead of having electives used as a place to dump students who are not college-bound.

"Vocational education has been out of favor for a long time," says the Madera Unified Teachers Association member. "Every kid is told they have to be college prep. They are taking only English, science and math when they have no intention of going anywhere past high school, because everyone tells them they are nothing if they don't. We've got a population of blue-collar workers who are ready to retire, and no one to replace them with, because we've taught our students there is no honor or valor in any profession unless you have a degree."

"I've been teaching for 20 years," she says, "and we're constantly fighting for our legitimacy, whether there's high school reform or not."