Community-Connected Learning - Jobs for the Future - Company Profile - Industry Overview

School Administrator, August, 2000 by Adria Steinberg

Jobs for the Future develops partnerships to ease student transitions into life beyond high school

Young people are not shy about telling adults what they want and need from their high school. Their list almost invariably includes a desire for more challenge, choice and connection.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of students can count on finding these three C's in their high school experience. They get their challenge from Advanced Placement courses, their choice via a full set of electives and extracurricular commitments and their connection to caring adults through the access provided by their leadership positions in the school as well as from their own families.

For many other young people, high school is a vastly different experience. As they will freely tell you, they do not work very hard in school. In fact, they find it boring. With graduation requirements increasing, they can make fewer choices and have less access to electives, and they do not believe their teachers either know or care about them. One large-scale survey indicates that around 40 percent of our high school students are simply "going through the motions."

As a result, they leave high school inadequately prepared for college or careers. Although most head to some form of post-secondary education (the national average is approaching 70 percent), at least half leave before getting a degree or credential and spend the next five to 10 years in some combination of coursework and youth labor market or temporary jobs.

For many young people, this floundering period can last into their late 20s. They enter adulthood lacking either credentials or the kinds of critical thinking and problem-solving skills and habits of mind and work, such as persistence and self-management that seem to be the basic currency of the emerging economy.

New Relationships

For more than a decade, Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit organization based in Boston, has documented and worked with school districts committed to addressing these challenges and giving students more help in making the transition into adulthood.

In these communities, education reform is directed not only at improving the academic achievement of young people, but also at strengthening their engagement in and connection to productive activities in the community. As Thomas Payzant, superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, said recently to a gathering of JFF's Connected Learning Communities: "It's not enough to say to students you have to meet high academic standards, but we have to show what that will mean for them once they leave high school."

Such an educational strategy demands that schools enter into new relationships with a variety of community partners and build with them a system of opportunities and supports to help young people move successfully into college and careers. Four key principles characterize this approach to high school reform:

* Rigor and relevance.

When students ask, as they frequently do, "Why do I need to know this?" they are searching for a more apparent connection between what they are learning in school and the potential uses of that knowledge in the world beyond school. A robust body of research in cognitive science confirms that such connections serve both to motivate students and provide rich contexts for deepening their understanding of key concepts and sharpening their skills.

While the focus in many schools and districts on setting and measuring high academic standards is a necessary step to educational improvement, it is also necessary to focus on innovations in teaching and learning that will enlist young people in meeting those standards--particularly at the high school level where students are passive recipients of a steady diet of lecture, whole-class discussion and drill.

One way districts are making headway in combining rigor and relevance is through sustained professional development for teachers in contextual and project-based learning, such as in North Clackamas, Ore. Although students doing projects may cover fewer topics, they are much more likely to get the combination of cognitive, interactive and problem-solving skills they will need as adults.

* The school "plus."

Even with more active and engaged forms of teaching and learning, the high school classroom is not the only or, for some students, even the best setting for learning. It is important to look beyond the box of the insular, self-contained high school to a broader conception of secondary education that takes advantage of the rich variety of learning contexts, teachers and resources a community has to offer.

In this vision of high school reform, the student experience encompasses not only rigor and relevance in school, but also high-quality learning opportunities in workplace and community settings, where adults support and push them to do their best work.

Jobs for the Future has coined the term "community-connected learning" to characterize the boundary-crossing nature of the best practices we are finding in high school districts and communities across the country. JFF is working with 20 school districts in 12 communities that are building what we call community-connected learning systems. In these districts, school-community partnerships play an important role in providing quality learning experiences outside of school. Intermediary organizations, such as the Youth Trust in Minneapolis and the Private Industry Council in Boston, are undertaking the challenge of giving large numbers of students structured opportunities for career exploration, including job shadowing, work-based learning and community service. These efforts include new creative alliances with learning programs during non-school hours and in the summer as well.