3/16/04 -- "You can't reform high schools. You have to reinvent them," says Richard Owen, associate superintendent for high school improvement in Sacramento, Calif.
That idea sums up the guiding principle of the Carnegie Corporation's $60 million, five-year Schools for a New Society initiative.
In 2001, the Carnegie Corporation committed $40 million to "transform the high school experience" in more than 100 schools in seven cities: Boston; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Houston; Providence, R.I.; Sacramento and San Diego, Calif.; and Worcester, Mass.
Houston received $12 million from Carnegie, and each of the other districts received $8 million. The cities also were required to provide matching funds on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed another $25 million to the initiative, and some participating districts were able to leverage additional funds from the Gates Foundation.
The idea is to have school district officials work with community partners -- such as local education foundations, university centers, or nonprofit organizations -- to implement systemic reform, says Constancia Warren, senior program officer and director of Carnegie's high school initiatives.
Each district is charged with coming up with its own solution to improve high school education, although Carnegie calls for them to follow several broad principles, such as a rigorous course of study, an effort to engage the community, and a working relationship with community partners.
Although some of the districts are breaking up large high schools into smaller learning communities, Warren says, "the initiative is not just about small schools."
Systemic reform
The changes must occur on a districtwide basis, Warren says, because that is essential for widespread reform.
The reforms won't work if the district's standard operating system is not changed, she says. "Districts matter if high school reform is going to be successful and sustained."
Representatives from three districts that are involved in the Carnegie initiative spoke about their experience at a panel discussion sponsored by the American Youth Policy Forum in February.
The Providence, R.I., school district worked with the Rhode Island Children's Crusade for Higher Education to create smaller learning communities and develop a system for four-year individualized learning plans for every student.
Other elements include the development of a more rigorous, standards-based curriculum; the creation of a districtwide student government; data-driven decision making; site-based management; and improved professional development.
The Sacramento (Calif.) Unified School District, with its partner, Linking Education and Economic Development (LEED), came up with a plan to create small, caring personalized learning communities; support student-centered teaching and learning; promote collective responsibility for student achievement; and form school-home-community alliances.
Each of Sacramento's seven comprehensive high schools has been reconfigured to house small learning communities with 300 to 500 students each. Another six small charter schools are set to open over the next four years.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., the district worked with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Public Education Fund to form a broad-based high school reform planning process.
That effort resulted in a plan to overhaul the district's 16 high schools. Key elements included eliminating low-level courses, increasing the number of lower-income and minority students taking rigorous courses, creating small learning communities, and providing professional development for principals to lead and manage instructional reform.
Community engagement
Chattanooga Superintendent Jesse Register says one of the most successful strategies his district used was forming a "genuine partnership" with the foundation. Also important was the use of data-driven decision making and strategies to encourage extensive involvement of students, parents, teachers, and community members in setting a vision for high school reform.
Other strategies that contributed to the district's success were two key board decisions: the use of a single type of diploma for every student and the development of several academies within existing high schools. These schools-within-a-school focus on a particular theme, such as health sciences, that include students of all ability levels.
The district solicited input from business and community leaders in designing these academies, Register says. For example, an architect, building contractor, and engineer helped develop a geometry course for the Construction Academy at East Ridge High School.
To Dan Challener, president of the Public Education Foundation in Chattanooga, community engagement must be more than merely "transmitting information."
"Too often, students are left out of the process," Challener says. Chattanooga worked to engage students by conducting a survey of high school students and having them discuss the results in class.
Cheri Dedmon, principal of East Ridge High School, says the school system also reached out to engage parents. One successful strategy was to invite parents to student performances. That brought in parents who had never come to school before.
To find out what the public wants from its schools, the Providence school system held study circles with parents and students, and Superintendent Melody Johnson holds monthly "living room chats" with 10 to 20 parents and regularly meets with church leaders.
A study circle consists of about 10 people -- youths and adults -- of different backgrounds, who meet for several weeks. Three themes emerged from these discussions, says Rhode Island Children's Crusade President Mary Sylvia Harrison: High-quality teaching matters, the school culture has to recognize diversity, and there was great concern about what students are learning and how they are taught.
As part of a youth development initiative, the district set up a democratically elected districtwide student government to make recommendations to the mayor and superintendent on school reform issues. These students participate in leadership training, learn public speaking and community organizing skills, and learn how to assess the needs of their fellow students.
Major obstacles
In Providence, a restrictive collective bargaining system was a huge obstacle, Johnson says. The teachers contract calls for a short school day and states that teachers are not required to attend professional development or prepare lesson plans.
According to Johnson, "teachers actually welcomed some structure and guidance."
Before the Carnegie initiative, every school was on its own, she says. Now, the district has academic standards.
"An English I class should be comparable at all schools," Johnson says. The standards spell out outcomes. For example, students must know how to write a persuasive essay. So while teachers don't have to do lesson plans, they do have to make sure students can meet the outcomes.
"Nothing happens unless teachers buy in," Johnson says.
Another obstacle to widescale reform is the lack of equity in resources, Register says. Chattanooga is working to end the practice of assigning the least-qualified teachers to inner-city schools by building up the prestige of working in urban schools.
"We no longer need to have places for bad teachers to hide," he says.
Challener notes that the "national dialogue about schools is so negative, educators feel they are being attacked."
And Deanna Hanson, chief executive officer of LEED-Sacramento, adds that school financing systems still reward economies of scale, so there's a disincentive to create small schools. "That has to change," she says.
Structural change
In Sacramento, teachers didn't know how to translate the standards into lessons, Owen says, so the district created a professional development program called "unpacking the standards."
The district also got rid of the inconsistency in the way administrators related to teachers, Owen says. "Now teachers don't view administrators as spies, but rather as coaches."
And, he says, it's hard to counter the feeling among teachers that the current reform is not just another fad.
Dedmon, the principal in Chattanooga, also agreed that implementing broad reforms requires an attitude shift among teachers.
Teachers were initially trained to present the content and leave it up to students to learn it. That's not enough anymore, Dedmon says. "Teachers have to make sure kids are learning. That's a big change. Teachers are now anxious."
She says administrators now visit classrooms to see if teachers are actually using the strategies they've been taught.
In the past, when tests were given in the spring, teachers didn't get results from the state education department until the fall, and by then, they had different students, Dedmon says. Now, both Dedmon and Cheryl Gomes, principal of Classical High School in Providence, say teachers can get test results directly from the school much faster.
Gomes says that, because students must pass a test to get into her school, teachers are more resistant to change. She is working on identifying teachers who are "pockets of excellence" and will use them as "change agents."
Teams of teachers at Classical High, called "lead teams," attend professional development sessions and bring back what they've learned to the other teachers at their schools.
Gomes says the reforms "should be organized around a sense of urgency." The first step should be changing the structure of the district and the contract language.
"It all boils down to developing leadership capacity and changing attitudes and culture," says Register of Chattanooga. "This is a long-term effort."