Andrew: Reinventing High School
MetroWest Daily News
July 3, 2005
By Paul Andrew
When Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1980, less than a tenth of the world's manufacturing exports came from developing nations. Labels that read "Made in Taiwan," or any other Asian nation for that matter, indicated a low cost, low quality alternative to a far superior product "Made in the USA."
That was the American advantage. As the United States and other western nations prospered with cutting edge technology in the high skill, high margin, high value economy, economies in Asia and other parts of the world were engaged, we thought, in a race to the bottom, competing in a mass produced, low skill and low margin economy.
How times change.
In 2005, with a third of manufacturing exports originating in developing countries -- a number set to grow to 50 percent by 2025 -- China, India and the rest of Asia account for a third of global trade; no longer the mass producers of inferior, cheap goods, but full-fledged competitors, leading in the new knowledge economy.
With China and India turning out four million college graduates each year, including 300,000 engineering graduates and 100,000 computer scientists, the inexorable rise of the Asian economies will define the economic landscape in the first decades of the 21st century.
In the face of the most far-reaching economic transformation of our lifetimes, policymakers -- indeed, all of us -- must challenge the old assumptions that were perhaps more appropriate in bygone years, to equip future generations of Americans not just to survive in this new world as global villagers, but to innovate, succeed and prosper.
Bill Gates, a man who has demonstrated an ability to succeed in the knowledge economy, has devoted both time and money from the Gates Foundation to addressing this challenge. Today on these pages, he cites figures that show American students lead the world in math and science at 4th grade, fall to the middle of the pack by 8th grade and find themselves at the bottom of the world league by the time they finish high school.
Experts will argue over the efficacy of comparing different nations' approaches to education, but the truth is clear: unless we fundamentally redesign the educational system that is currently tasked with equipping our kids with the skills they need to succeed, we will fail them and the American economy. Failing both now means both will fail in the years ahead.
Efforts to improve education and training at all levels are to be welcomed. Pre-school education, the teaching of basic skills in the early years and adult learning opportunities are all important parts of the puzzle, but the fall off of American students from 8th grade to 12th grade signals that some of the deepest systemic problems exist in our high schools.
"It's unfair to blame high schools for all of this," says Hilary Penington, vice chair and co-founder of Jobs For the Future based in Boston, author of "Fast Track to College" and one of the nation's leading experts in the debate about getting kids ready to succeed in the new economy. "They're doing the best they can, but they're not built for this purpose and that's the fundamental problem. Our high schools are designed for an economy that doesn't exist anymore."
Other nations have instigated widespread reforms. The United Kingdom is to introduce school days that go from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and education which was once only mandatory up to 16 for British kids, will be extended to 18 years old, combined with huge investment in vocational training and public education.
Innovation here in the United States has been slower and less widespread, but there are lessons to be learned from Massachusetts with its charter school experience, Boston's pilot schools and other imaginative efforts to improve the quality and the outcomes of a high school education.
The first principle of reinventing high school to improve academic achievement is that smaller is better. In "Head of the Class: Characteristics of Higher Performing Urban High Schools in Massachusetts," the Center for Education Research and Policy at MassINC identified schools that had achieved outstanding academic results even though they serve the most at risk -- low-income minority students whose full potential has been left untapped for too long. Seven of the top nine schools ranked as higher performing had enrollments of less than 400.
Now it might be unrealistic to think that every public school in the state can achieve the level of personalization that occurs at the Media and Technology Charter School in Boston every day where the principal shakes hands each morning with all 195 students. However, the benefits of stronger relationships between teachers, kids and parents are evident in the results of the MassINC study.
Indeed, the University Park Campus School (UPCS) in Worcester -- the only school ranked by MassINC as truly high-performing and recently recognized by Newsweek as one of America's top high schools -- has only 200 students. In eight years of operation, only one student has dropped out, no student has failed the MCAS test, math and English scores far outstrip the Worcester and statewide averages, and 80 percent go on to a four-year college, including Ivy League schools.
As a concrete first step state and local lawmakers should be encouraging the transition of large schools to smaller, more personalized school units and relaxing the planning restrictions that dictate high school buildings must fit the traditional mass education style.
A second principle we can learn from the best schools in the state is that formal links between a high school and a college not only improve the students' academic performance by giving them access to tutoring and resources, but also enhance an awareness of the culture of college--what it'll take to succeed after high school.
Hilary Pennington believes that students who are doing well in high school should be encouraged to begin some form of college education before they leave high school.
"The senior year of high school is often a waste," says Pennington. "Students have passed their MCAS and applied to colleges, so we should be challenging them to take more advanced courses, maybe even for college level credit that can prepare them for what lies ahead."
All the high performing schools in the MassINC study have partnerships with local colleges, and Clark University not only serves as a "campus" for UCPS in Worcester, it also offers free four-year tuition to UCPS graduates who meet admission requirements.
Learning doesn't just happen in class. So as a third tenet of reinventing high school, we need to be encouraging not just better formal education, but better informal learning opportunities.
Pennington highlights community schools that are open at night as examples of this out of school experience that can serve not just kids but a whole community. The most immediate change we should make, however, is to extend school learning time and perhaps even extend the school year.
"There's no real rationale for the structure of the current school day or the schedule of 180 school days," says Chris Gabrieli, Chairman of Mass 2020 and one of the state's leading advocates for an increased amount of structured learning time.
Gabrieli points to the help an extended learning day would provide for parents struggling to balance work and family life, and the social problems that could be prevented by giving kids a viable alternative to hanging out looking for trouble in the afternoon.
But extended learning is more than just a defensive measure; it improves academic performance by giving pupils access to informal types of learning that improve valuable soft skills -- such as teamwork and analytical problem solving -- and by providing structured homework help.
At the Media and Technology Charter School (MATCH) 10th graders receive 1500 hours of learning time per year. Compare that to the 900-plus hours that most students receive and you'll see why their performance outstrips other schools. MATCH takes this informal learning so seriously, the school built a special dorm to accommodate 45 full-time tutors funded through Americorps. This is innovation in action.
Finally, as Bill Gates points out, high school students benefit from more rigorous challenges at all levels, from the best kids to those who find work most difficult.
"We need to be challenging students by setting high standards and high expectations that they'll meet them," says Jorge Miranda, a former public school teacher who now teaches math at the MATCH School. "Not all students can reach the highest standards immediately, but they're better for trying and they recognize that's the standard they have to get to."
This rigor applies to the way the school operates out of class as well as in class. MATCH has ten "non-negotiables" that involve holding students immediately accountable for seemingly small things such as untucked shirts or turning up a few minutes late for class. All around, expectations are high.
"We have a 'sweat the small stuff' mentality," says Miranda. "By setting and playing by clear rules at that level, we avoid things escalating to the big problems like guns and violence."
We in MetroWest might feel that these schools are responding solely to the achievement gap that exists between kids from urban settings and the rest of the state. In part that's true. But innovations in many urban areas are going far beyond just closing the achievement gap. They are teaching kids in new ways, preparing them to succeed in college and beyond, not simply getting them through the system and into a four-year college based on the old system of lectures, tests and drills. The graduates emerging from MATCH and UCPS are more rounded and equipped kids than many being turned out even by the best public schools in our region.
We need policymakers, parents and communities to embrace and enact innovative approaches in our public schools or else in two decades time, schools in urban areas will be doing a better job of equipping kids than those in the suburbs of MetroWest.
Innovation requires vision. It requires that labor unions, businesses, parents, education leaders and politicians grasp the immense opportunity offered to us. If we don't we'll be failing kids. If we do, we'll be creating a workforce and an economy that will succeed, prosper and make us proud to be the innovators who empowered and equipped an entire generation of Americans to realize their potential and be the best they can be.
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