The New Urban High School: A Report Card

Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 7:45 AM to 9:15 AM
Mass College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences
Worcester, Massachusetts

Co-Sponsored by
The Rennie Center for Education & Research Policy at MassINC
Worcester Regional Research Bureau

Corporate Sponsor: Massachusetts Electric

Speakers
Adria Steinberg, Program Director, Jobs for the Future, Boston, MA
James Caradonio, Superintendent, Worcester Public Schools 
Representative, Schools for a New Society, Providence, RI 
 
Moderator
Paul Reville, Executive Director, Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC
 

Summary Transcript
he following is a summary of the main points of the forum. It is not an exact transcript and should not be relied upon. This summary was prepared by State House News Service and is reprinted here with their kind permission.

ROBERTA SCHAEFER, WORCESTER REGIONAL RESEARCH BUREAU: This program is entitled "The New Urban High School: A Report Card." It is being cosponsored by Massachusetts Electric. We would like to thank FleetBoston Financial, the Telegram and Gazette, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. The bureau's next event is the 19th annual meeting June 8th at Mechanics Hall. It will feature John C. Gannon, staff director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

KEVIN CARNEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOCHEMISTRY, MCPHS: I would like to welcome you this morning. Our president and dean are unable to join you. The college is very interested in secondary education. Our students are working in the high school as MCAS tutors. We wish you well in this important forum.

ROBERTA SCHAEFER, WORCESTER REGIONAL RESEARCH BUREAU: The state of urban high schools is very much in the news. The Botsford decision raises questions about funding. Worcester has come in for some criticism recently from the Carnegie Foundation. Recent press coverage indicates the district is not moving fast enough in developing schools. What is the design of the new urban high school? What evidence do we have that it works? Paul Reville is a lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He will lead this discussion.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: Thanks Roberta and to you all for coming. We are here today to talk about a topic that is central to the whole reform question in public education. Secondary school reform has been the most intransigent, difficult issue of school reform. Notwithstanding that, there are many fine examples in this city and elsewhere that are working. We want to take the islands of excellence and transform whole systems so they work for each and every child. Adria will make an overview presentation. She is an outstanding national leader and scholar on this topic. James Caradonio will tell us about work in Worcester. We hoped to have a Providence team but they will not be able to join us. We will open this up to the audience.
I am chairing a Worcester Education Partnership Steering Committee and am a parent of students in the Worcester public schools. I want to be part of a path-breaking effort here. I bring that perspective to my moderation of the panel.

ADRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: I have been in education about 37 or 38 years. We are going to move swiftly through some twisty terrain. We will start with why urban high schools in particular are on the chopping block. We will talk about strategies in play and where all of this is heading. I want to acknowledge that this is not the first wave of high school reform. I have personally experienced three or four, starting with the post-Sputnik era. This wave feels different to me. There is more known about learning and the nature of learning and teaching for understanding. There is more willingness to question notions like one size fits all. And there is much more school development now. Let's go to the why. There are fewer and fewer young people as you go down the educational pipeline. Seven of ten students who start high school complete it in the standard number of years. In the urban areas, it's more like 50 or 60 percent.

What makes this so important today is the economy, where there are fewer opportunities for people without that level of skills. It is becoming almost impossible to get income to support a family. Problems are worse for those with low income. The percentage of dropouts is much lower among high-income students. Factors fueling reform are not just the economy. There is increased visibility happening because of accountability requirements of adequate yearly progress, No Child Left Behind, and the media has been picking up on the story of dropouts and push-outs. The whole notion of choice that is so basic to many of our cities, and competition, has introduced a new element that is fueling some of what's going on in reform. Let's move to the what.
There are a number of strategies in play. Most urban systems have three of these four in play. There is a focus on adolescent literacy and core math skills. It seems kind of obvious. But it actually is relatively new, even the notion of focus itself. For a while the idea of a good high school was one that had something for everyone. There is a notion now that we focus in on particular things. We have assumed that young people when they get to high school can read complicated text, write essays and move through the complicated curriculum. Now we are hearing about reading and writing across the curriculum. That is one whole strand of reform. Then there is whole school reform and restructuring. This is about taking whole schools and finding a way to create smaller learning environments. Some of it is teaching and inventing it and some comes from national models. At the same time, districts are developing new small schools as a lever for fundamental change. Those are freestanding, like University Park in Worcester, and there are the ones inside large buildings. The fourth strategy is taking large schools and creating three or four small schools in multiplexes. It truly is three separate high schools.

The strategies are directed toward a similar goal. The goal is not getting one or two urban high schools but systems that share features that have been emerging in qualitative and quantitative research. A MassINC study looked at urban schools that were doing better. When they unpacked those schools, they found a set of features that included high standards and high expectations, a culture of personalization, small learning communities, evidence-based practices, and strong community relationships and learning opportunities. Smallness seems to be emerging as a critical factor. Students are saying things like, 'Get to know me, I'm not what you think.' They say 'College was like a dream for me, now it's a goal.' Finally, they say they work harder and are held to high standards but they get help if they need it.
Where is this all heading? We are learning a lot. It is hard work. The first lesson is when you have a building with from 1,200 to 3,000 young people it is bound to be organizationally complex. You have grades and subject matter and special education and bilingual and other initiatives. When you try to structure it, there is kind of a layering on of still another thing instead of achieving greater coherence. How do you do this without making a complex organization even more complex? Alignment between the school and district is another really important thing. Schools need community partnerships and need to know that in the central office there is an alignment and support for reform. Then there is the chicken-egg problem. Is it structure or instructional reforms? Both need to take place. Then there is the issue of what indicators you use to track progress, the difference between lagging indicators and leading or earlier indicators.

There is a lot to feel good about. We just had a team from Boston come to University Park. People want to see these new models. For young people, there are learning options now. You used to go with the school, or maybe there was an alternative school. Reading and writing across the curriculum is a big plus. There is a conversion of very large and unsafe buildings now. In the Bronx you see a bunch of new small schools. It makes it easier to attract a new young teaching force.

The challenges? It is not easy to create reforms at the school and district levels. Much of the work is funded by soft money, lots of foundations stepping up to the plate. We can't sustain this with soft money. There is a kind of tension between the literacy reforms, which are centrally driven, and the desire to create more autonomy for schools. It's a hard balance to find. There is the issue of customization. You can meet particular student needs, but we need to do that without creating a second-class system for some young people. We have to do a better job working with the teacher unions. We need better strategies than most of us have at this point. We have also not done nearly enough around community engagement. It is easy to get far ahead in reform work and forget that you have to keep the community with you.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: Adria alluded to the "Head of the Class" report, which highlighted University Park. The tragic part of this story was that we were only able to find one such school across the state. What needs to happen is to make available to all students the kind of education defined by the principles in the report? There is aggressive work on the ground in Boston, Worcester and all across the Commonwealth. At the Rennie Center, we are working hard with the Legislature and the Department of Education to make this a priority.

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: This is kind of a centipede moment. The philosopher asked the centipede how she moved. She thought about it and she never moved again. I represent a lot of people in this room. This is a team effort. I like the Olympic approach of interlocking circles. These circles are constantly moving. Key change areas include professional culture and learning; small learning communities; curriculum, teaching and assessment; youth development, and family and community. Many of you have been inside an urban high school. Some of you have gone through a corporate merger or put in a new operating system or driven on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country or learned a new language in a foreign culture. Woodrow Wilson once said changing curriculum is akin to moving a cemetery. I apologize for the jargon. In terms of professional culture, we have literacy coaches in all subject areas. They work with math and science and English and art teachers. We are ganging up on the kids in terms of literacy.

We have school-based professional development. Drive-by development does not work. Teachers are taught to be critical friends of one another. This is what doctors do. We have to provide common planning time. The Japanese teachers spend half a day in common planning. Data-based decision making - we all went through graduate training that was woefully neglectful of the use of data. Nothing works better than having teachers visit other schools. It's a very productive staff development. We have summer institutes working with Clark University.

There is the idea of having a thematic focus and distinctive community known as a smaller learning community. It is the ocean liner versus the lifeboat. You can't hide on the lifeboat. The American high school has done what we wanted it to do in being organized to reflect factories.

Now we have a society that does not have those kinds of factories anymore. We have collaboration now and people work in teams. Knowing students well. There are individualized learning plans, advisory periods and looping so you have the same coach for two or three years. How do you get multi-year teaching? The whole issue of having a bar where everyone knows your name, but can you say that about a high school? Within Worcester, we have all sizes, shapes and forms. We have 21 learning communities, 17 at high school and four at Sullivan Middle School.

Critical to the effort is the issue around curriculum and assessment. The goals are student-engaged instruction and rigor, relevance and relationships. There are things like book chats and literacy circles, interdisciplinary instruction and project-based learning. Focused literacy instruction for at-risk students - when the state took the money away we still provided the support. We have more technology-based learning and we have the ninth grade transition. We have the new AVID program that prepares kids in the middle for more rigorous programs.

The other circle is the family. It is critical to have the family fervor of kindergarten at the high school level. Parents of kindergartners are all over the kids and as you go through the years the fervor dies. We have advisory councils with parents involved. We need business involvement, with health, construction, and engineering and financial services themes. The Worcester Education Partnership has supported many activities. Youth development is very important. Our research is focused on what students say. We are following 150 students. Students are actually the researchers. We have advisory periods where students can just talk about life and their issues. We have reorganized student support services to have more of a wraparound.

What are our measurable outcomes? Higher attendance and graduation rates, increased college placement. What are the lessons we are learning? We are flying the plane while we try to build it. There is the stand-alone small school and the conversion of large high schools. Mutual benefits are very high for all groups - students, faculty and parents. All of this work is much harder to do when you cut your budget for the last four years. People say why don't you replicate University Park? Well we closed four schools. It is going to take more than five years. The education reform act is in its eleventh year.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: A long centipede, but a good centipede. The cultural challenge has been mentioned. What do we think a real high school looks like? What are the challenges inside the schools and working with unions? How do we overcome them? And this business of including the community, anything you could say on that topic?

DRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Jim's metaphor of the life raft versus the ocean liner is a good one. The culture in the large schools - teacher cohere with other like-minded teachers. People create their own smaller environments because that's survival. The problem is these are not intentional from the institution's point of view. You have these old allegiances and a culture of mutual protection. This is trying to interrupt a lot of that in a way. It's painful. When you ask teachers who have spent 15 or 20 years and are getting situated in a room with decent heat, and now we say everyone move, now we're doing small schools. Everything gets interrupted. It is rebuilding relationships. I am amazed by how good-natured people have been about this.

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: What we have done in Worcester is focused on the goals. It means better attendance and concrete benchmarks independent of the school department. There is a lot of common ground. We are firm on where we are going. The schools were very frustrated and now they are happy with parents coming in who never came before. We are in the need-to-do world and a lot of the nice-to-do work is not being done.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: What is going on in Boston now, Adria?

ADRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: All four of the strategies I talked about are in play. Up to the year 2000 there were ten comprehensive high schools. That was the universe of high schools. Now we have seven comprehensive high schools, ten pilot schools, one new small international school and two education complexes. In 2005 we will have only five comprehensive schools and all will be divided. So that's the picture right now. It is complex but we have gone from more large schools to now a portfolio of some large and some small, some pilot and some alternative. It is a very different picture than five or six years ago.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: There is the balance between autonomy and being part of a system. Where do those two forces meet? How much autonomy is needed to make effective small learning communities? Larger facilities are thought to be more efficient, with concentrations of talents and expertise. Are we creating certain kinds of inefficiencies?

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: We don't have the resources to be inefficient. Our principals control supply and professional development money. The principals want control over staffing. The reform act did not deliver that. The answer is it is all worked out in collective bargaining as opposed to being directed by the state. You need the cooperation of the teachers union. The other issues flow from the design of the small learning community. We are really constrained by the funding now. The other thing you don't want in downsized times is to toss a budget and say, 'You figure out who gets laid off.' That's because you are trying to build a community.

STEPHEN ADAMS, PIONEER INSTITUTE: Adria said we have been having these conversations for 42 years. You always see lots of cool stuff. Where are we seeing changes in other parts of the country that might be a model here?

ADRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: There are these seven Carnegie districts and districts with heavy investments of Gates dollars. It is tempting to think this time it is different - I think this is my last wave of reform - but I do believe the amount of change that is starting to happen now, the central office piece of it is really just beginning to take hold. That piece is going to need help from the reengineering gurus. It is going to take what it took at AT&T to make this work at the central office level. We do have commitment to make this happen. They are trying this in New York. What if the mayor loses though? The whole thing could change.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: There are distinctive factors to the moment like the increasing accountability pressure. It just had not existed before. It keeps putting into the faces of the policy makers the achievement gaps. And there is more external competition.

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: We don't have this problem at our central office. We just get it all together in a phone booth. We have only 17 and a half people on the city payroll. We have gone through and reengineered. We have had retirements. We are the lowest in central office administration. The accountability systems are very Enron-like and have to be changed. They are not giving the public the true picture of what is going on in schools. We are comparing different kids against different kids all the time. The country is really being sold a bill of goods and we have to fix it.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I want more information about community advisory councils. What would they look like?

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: Each small learning community will have a council of parents, students, business reps, a higher education rep. It's to give advice to the small learning community leader. There will be a mini snapshot of the community. These do not take the place of the mandated school councils, which are mandated by the state and have formal elections. They have to be there by statute, which we hope will change. We will have 17 small SLC advisory councils that will start in the fall. We need some training of course but are in the rollout phase.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: University Park is non-selective. Students' names go into a lottery. There is the issue of self-selection. Parents or guardians have to decide to put their students names in. Are there any models where students are randomly assigned to schools like these?

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: It's a great question. You want people to choose. We have been doing that in American high schools for years because you are anonymously assigned to something. We are trying to overcome that.

ADRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Evidence shows that as students move to schools that are different, more and more people are taking advantage of the choice mechanism. There is an increase in people making choices.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: What are the arguments you would use with parents about changes in small learning environments?

ADRIA STEINBERG, JOBS FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Even in schools doing fairly well, there is one smaller population that is not doing as well. There is a kind of obsolescence to the model of a high school. People can know that we can rethink this. We have a retiring teaching force, a huge number of retirements. We need to attract another teaching force. We need to do that with a different model of school. Students in teaching colleges are not interested in teaching in these comprehensive schools.

PAUL REVILLE, RENNIE CENTER: Those are policy arguments. What about arguments that go to folks in the building for whom these changes might be threatening?

JAMES CARADONIO, WORCESTER SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT: I wouldn't make arguments. We need to find a common ground. I don't assume that everyone is happy. We can't assume bad faith on people's part. People respond to the system they are in. What are the outcomes you want? This is just not an urban thing. Gates let out 1,300 grants. Many are in suburban schools. Let's listen to the teachers. What would make your ideal school better? I think you will find many of the same things. The nomenclature might be a little different. There is that concept of real school. You have to convince people you are not experimenting with their children. You have to have the show-me. Start with people and what they are interested in.