Can Policy Keep Pace with the Changing Practice in Our High Schools?

A Forum — April 5, 2002

Overview of the Problem

In the discussion of high school reform, it has been emphasized that the lack of challenging curricula and higher expectations has resulted in the poor performance of students. Such contentions have obscured the fact that many high school students are already behind academically, as well as disengaged and alienated before they get to high school. Therefore, simply raising high school standards and achievement levels will not be enough to combat student disengagement and low achievement levels. More varied reforms and policies that move away from traditional solutions will have to be put into place to engage and raise student achievement levels.

U.S. High School Policy

There is no single piece of legislation that addresses reforming high schools or that distributes large amounts of funding to high schools. However, The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act funds secondary and post-secondary vocational education programs and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides very limited funding to high schools to mainly help with remediation in basic skills.

Forum Summary

Forum presenters, Adria Steinberg, Program Director of Jobs for the Future's "From the Margins to the Mainstream" initiative, Tim Knowles, Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning of the Boston Public Schools, and Michael Cohen, a Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute Program on Education in a Changing Society, presented a discussion on reforming high schools through a combination of innovative policy approaches, varied pedagogical frameworks, and setting high academic standards for students.

Adria Steinberg led the discussion by remarking that there is an increasing recognition that the high school years are important ones. High school is one of the last universal institutions for all, she said. Although high schools have remained unchanged in the past years, they are expected to meet the increased demands of a constantly changing society, i.e., they are required to incorporate diversity issues and to shift away from preparing only a certain amount of students to almost all students for postsecondary education. Despite the fact that few students leaving high school earn postsecondary credentials, 95% of high school students report that they want to go to college and 84% report that they want to earn a degree. Students are realizing that if they "get more ed [education], they earn more bread." However, the realities of students earning a higher education degree are quite the contrary. Steinberg reported that "for every 10 students who start high school, 8 students will get a diploma. Of these 8 students, 6 students will enroll in a postsecondary institution. At the end of 2 years, for these 6 students, 2 or more students will leave college without a degree or certificate. Of the remaining students who continue, only 2 to 3 will have a degree within 10 years of graduation." The reasons for these alarming statistics, according to Steinberg, "are the lack of preparation at the high school level for students to continue successfully at the postsecondary level."

Tim Knowles continued the discussion addressing the high school reform movement in Boston. He identified six important factors for reforming Boston Public Schools to scale: 1) intentional focus on literacy and mathematics; 2) use of student work and data to drive instruction; 3) target professional development programs; 4) a focus on best teaching practices; 5) alignment of resources, people, time and money; and 6) family and community engagement in meaningful and helpful ways. Knowles cited engaging family and community as very important to preventing student and family members from feeling alienated and disconnected from schools and teachers. Some of the ways this can be accomplished, Knowles suggested, are "breaking all schools into small learning communities, providing intensive instructional coaching in every school, and starting new small high schools where schools have power over hiring, firing, funding, governance, curriculum and use of time."

Michael Cohen concluded the panel discussion emphasizing how to make wide scale policy changes within a short timeframe. One way, he suggested, is to support the creation of multiple pathways to provide different learning experiences for youth. You cannot simply create one school improvement plan, he elaborated, and assume all students will achieve. He suggests the following as ways to change state and local policy for high schools: 1) accelerate help to low performing high schools; 2) provide effective, ongoing professional development to help current staff gain new knowledge and skills; 3) provide incentives for creating small high schools and small learning communities; and 4) stimulate the creation of new school models and pathways for youth e.g., students can take high school courses while concurrently getting college credits toward an associate degree.

Forum Discussion

The majority of the discussion between the panelists and the audience focused on integrating families into the reform movement, addressing the impact of adult literacy on children's reading ability, and getting more teachers involved in the reform movement. A U.S. Department of Education representative raised the issue that only one to two percent of federal education funding is directed to high schools. With such minimal educational funding allocated to high schools, the representative asked, "What should be the focus areas of this funding?" The panelists responded that there should be close alignment between assessments and curriculum, secondary education should also be aligned with postsecondary education, and funding should support innovative and experimental reform approaches. Lastly, an audience participant suggested that the high school reform movement needs a champion on Capitol Hill, and work should be undertaken to identify those champions.

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