Expanding high school options: Gates Foundation identifies first steps for transforming existing schools and creating new ones

School Administrator, Oct, 2003 by Tom Vander Ark

This fall, more than three million 9th graders began high school. As they entered their buildings on their first day, many were wondering what their next four years will be like. What classes will they take? What will their teachers be like?

Yet amidst these questions of hope and promise lingers a larger question. Of this year's freshman class, how many students will actually graduate?

As educational leaders, we know the answer: not enough. "Public School Graduation Rates in the United States," a 2002 study by the Manhattan Institute, indicates that nearly one in three 8th graders will drop out of high school.

Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is working with communities in almost every region of the country to expand high-quality educational options available to all students. We've visited high schools, consulted with educational and political leaders and talked to teachers, students and parents.

Through these experiences, we've met leaders who have made real strides in improving the secondary school landscape in their communities. Making such drastic change is not easy, but when leaders frame both the problem and the solution for parents, students and educators in a compelling way, these stakeholders are willing to support a system that helps all students succeed.

Through the Cracks

America's schools were designed to meet the economic, social and civic needs of a different age. Just as they did 50 years ago, today's schools sort, select and promote one quarter of the nation's students to the professions. Characteristics of this design are found across our school system:

* Beginning in the primary grades, "performance grouping" (an appropriate instructional strategy) becomes a slow track for struggling students. Rather than having their particular challenges addressed, struggling students are remediated, ignored or retained.

* In the middle grades, tracking becomes more visible. For example, algebra is only made available to honors students in urban areas and college-prep students in the suburbs.

* By high school, tracking is the accepted norm. Most high schools have six tracks: advanced college prep, college prep, the general track, the vocational track, the alternative track and special education. The top two tracks are populated by affluent white students, the bottom tracks by poor and minority students. High schools in low-income neighborhoods often don't even have the top two tracks, and the dated vocation courses offer preparation for jobs that no longer exist.

While this design may have been appropriate 50 years ago, today it simply replicates social class, especially for poor and minority students. The National Assessment of Educational Progress 2002 reading assessment data reflect a drop in reading scores among high school students in the last decade, with African-American and Hispanic students lagging behind their white peers. This achievement gap has become the graduation gap. According to the Manhattan Institute graduation rate study, 76 percent of white students graduate from high school compared to about 55 percent of African-American and Hispanic students.

While our students' high school performance levels have stagnated, our economy has shifted. The workplace demands a higher level of competency than ever before. Many young people sense these changes, and the vast majority of them aspire to attend college. Yet too few of them have the education, the guidance and the financial assistance to graduate from high school, attend college and lead successful, productive lives.

Most Americans recognize that our civic, social and economic future depends on our ability to dramatically increase the percentage of students that leave high school ready for college, work and citizenship. In poll after poll, education is at the top of the list of things Americans are most worried about. But concern alone will not rally support for change; parents and students must be offered a solution that addresses these problems.

A New Age

Leading educational research, including the 1996 book Teaching the New Basic Skills by Richard Murnane and Frank Levy, the 1998 book Standards for Our Schools by Marc Tucker and Judy Codding and Tony Wagner's 2002 book Making the Grade, has established the existence of a convergence in the skills required for college, work and citizenship. As a result, all students need a high level of literacy, problem-solving skills and knowledge about the world they will inherit. Therefore, we as a nation must adopt a new set of assumptions about the mission of our high schools:

* Set high expectations for all students.

We must think of high school as transitional, not terminal. All students should be prepared for college (or the postsecondary learning opportunity of their choice), work and citizenship. Rather than assembling courses of varying levels of difficulty, all students should be engaged in a rigorous, relevant and highly supported course of study. Students should have the opportunity to read, write and think about things that matter, become expert in area of interest, and demonstrate a mastery of important skills.