New Century High Schools Initiative
A Forum — October 27, 2006
Background
New Visions for Public Schools is an education reform organization dedicated to improving the quality of education children receive in New York City public schools. In 2001, New Visions launched the New Century High Schools Initiative (NCHSI) in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, the United Federation of Teachers, and the Council of Supervisors and Administrators. A $70 million investment was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Open Society Institute. The goal was to create new high quality small schools as the Department of Education phased out large, failing high schools. In the past five years, the city has opened 184 small and 83 are New Century High Schools.
The goal of the New Century High Schools Initiative is to provide New York City students with the vital skills, knowledge, and opportunities necessary for their success in college and careers. Key benchmarks for all NCHSI schools are on-time student graduation rate of at least 80% and an average attendance rate of at least 92%.
For the past four years, Policy Studies Associates (PSA) has been evaluating NCHSI. The PSA evaluation shows that these schools are attaining strong results with students from traditionally underserved communities.
New Century High Schools: A Work in Progress
Robert L. Hughes, President New Visions for Public Schools, said NCHSI is creating a different type of school that builds on the assets of students. NCHSI has three goals:
- Create and sustain innovative small schools around research-based principles,
- Mobilize a wide range of community partners and assets, and
- Spur systemic reform.
Although New Visions has been creating schools since 1981, Hughes said they were “little postage stamps of change without systemic change.” The new strategy called for creating a critical mass of small schools that could ultimately change the bureaucracy surrounding those schools. NCHSI also announced performance goals: an on-time student graduation rate of at least 80% and an average school attendance rate of at least 92%. “This creates a demand for substantial change,” said Hughes. “You’re not going to get to the moon unless you announce that you are going to the moon.”
Each NCHS is required to have a lead community partner to mobilize new assets on behalf of students, bring expertise, and a sense of urgency to the day-to-day operation of the schools. These partners include the Brooklyn Botanical Garden to provide science instruction, the New York Yankees, who are involved with a high school focused on sports careers, and Make the Road by Walking, a community empowerment and welfare rights advocacy group.. Over 225 community organizations throughout New York City are partnering in NCHS.
New Century High Schools are created through a competitive grant process. Any group of educators can apply to create a school through the Request for Proposal process. NCHSI also works with organizations to help them build capacity to start a school. New Century Schools opened with approximately 100 ninth graders and add a class each year.
The Record So Far
Elizabeth Reisner, Policy Studies Associates, discussed PSA’s evaluation of the first three years of NCHSI. Using surveys, observations, interviews, and agency data, PSA looked at the Ten Principles of Effective High Schools as outlined by New Visions: clear focus/high expectations, rigorous instruction, personalized learning environment, instructional leadership, school-based professional development, meaningful assessment, partnerships, parent/caregiver engagement, student voice, and integration of technology. The central question posed by PSA was whether or not New Century High Schools promote students’ academic success compared with a matched group of students in non-NCHSI schools in New York City. Reisner noted that relative to these comparison groups, NCHS students are more likely to be female, African-American or Hispanic, and poor. They are also less likely to be proficient in reading or math.
PSA concluded that NCHS schools were small, safe, and focused on instruction and youth development. The small size and availability of academic supports contributed significantly to student learning. Other promising results showed that students are more likely to attend school, earn credits for graduation, and be promoted to the next grade.
On the negative side, suspension rates of NCHS students were higher than the comparison group. NCHS staff reported that their schools are crowded and must compete for resources with other schools. In some cases, students were assigned to NCHSI schools they did not want to attend.
Reisner said that NCHS students outperformed carefully matched comparison students, especially in terms of their likelihood of graduating. “The schools look good,” concluded Reisner, “but their success is fragile.” Continued success depends on strengthening the instructional core, effective principal leadership, promoting youth development, and providing learning supports along with extended learning opportunities.
Ronald Chaluisan, Vice President, Programs, New Visions for Public Schools, discussed New Visions’ own evaluation of its students, especially the need to identify students who are not on track to graduate early enough to make a difference. New Visions determined that students who had accumulated 11 credits in their freshman year had an 80% chance of graduating on time. After intense negotiations with public school officials, New Visions was able to obtain data for individual students, while maintaining student anonymity, in addition to aggregate data. New Visions is constantly working with individual schools to make sure they offer enough classes at the right times so students can accumulate the necessary credits to graduate. “You must focus on every student,” said Chaluisan. “Otherwise, we would only know if there is a problem at the end,” when it is too late to take action.
Chaluisan presented extensive data on the cohort of students in the Class of 2007 who are not on track to graduate and described targeted and student-specific strategies to address both credit accumulation and success on Regents exams (state administered tests required for high school graduation in New York State). “We engage the schools,” said Chaluisan, “to assess the impact of school programs and make sense of the data.” If a program or practice works in one school, “we want to capture it so it doesn’t live in the head of one teacher. We must perpetuate innovation and manage knowledge.”
Hughes added that the hallmark of the NCHSI is its collaborative nature. Everyone feels a responsibility for the success of the project. “We have taken on tough issues and tackled them together.”
Policy Implications
Hughes said school leadership is critical and he does not believe the federal No Child Left Behind legislation adequately addresses the importance of school leadership. “We need to pay attention to how we prepare principals and embed that preparation in the real life of schools,” said Hughes. He said that principals often arrive on the scene without the skill sets needed to be effective.
Hughes also believes governors should articulate a national graduation goal. He says the 80% goal has been an extraordinarily powerful way to force people to set priorities about what’s happening in their school. In addition, Hughes said that what happens in schools must be transparent; “we need to hold schools accountable.” He added that a strong civic commitment to the goals of an NCHSI-style program can spur legislators to maintain or increase funding.
There are also issues related to postsecondary options. Regents test scores that are high enough to allow a student to graduate may not be high enough for college admission. Chaluisan says New Visions is working with community colleges to create new courses that build on student mastery and also focus on areas of need. Hughes says there are also plans to follow students post-graduation to determine their outcomes.
Presenter Bios
Robert L. Hughes, President, was appointed President of New Visions in June 2000. A lawyer, Mr. Hughes formerly served as Deputy Director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of parent organizations, community school boards, concerned citizens and advocacy groups that seeks to reform New York State's education finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. Mr. Hughes recently served as Co-Counsel in the nationally-watched Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York constitutional challenge. Prior to joining Campaign for Fiscal Equity in 1993, Mr. Hughes was Deputy Director for Advocates for Children, a leading non-profit agency long active in securing quality and equal public education services for New York City's most impoverished and vulnerable families. Mr. Hughes received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his law degree from Stanford Law School. Mr. Hughes' articles on public education have appeared in the Record of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Connecticut Law Review, the Journal of Law and Education and the Yale Journal of Law and Policy.
Ronald Chaluisan joined New Visions in 2002 as Director of Small Schools to oversee the New Century High Schools Initiative, a comprehensive school creation process, and to design a wide range of supports for existing small schools throughout New York City. In January 2004, Mr. Chaluisan assumed the position of Vice President of Programs, broadening his responsibilities to include the development, implementation, and assessment of programs in the divisions of Teaching and Learning, Leadership Development, and Secondary Schools. Mr. Chaluisan brings to New Visions 15 years of experience in the New York City public schools; most recently, from 1994 to 2002, Mr. Chaluisan served as the co-founder and principal of The New York City Museum School, a New Visions small school collaboration between Community School District 2 and the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Children's Museum of Manhattan, and the South Street Seaport Museum.
Elizabeth Reisner conducts research on approaches to improving the achievement and other developmental outcomes of children and youth. She is principal investigator of evaluations of Out of School Time Programs for Youth in New York City, the New Century High Schools Initiative that is establishing small high schools in New York City, New Jersey After 3, and the Citizen Schools program of after-school services in Boston. Ms. Reisner serves as co-principal investigator of the Study of Promising After-School Programs, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California at Irvine. In earlier work she directed the evaluation of efforts to promote educational continuity and improvement for poor and minority students across elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schooling, and she evaluated programs supported by major federal education funding authorities. Ms. Reisner holds an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Resources
PowerPoint Overview of New Visions
PowerPoint presentation on Policy Studies Associates Evaluation
PowerPoint on New Century High Schools
This brief summarizes an American Youth Policy Forum that took place on October 27, 2006 on Capitol Hill, reported by Karen Leggett.
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policy leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels.
AYPF’s events and policy reports are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Carnegie Corporation of New York, GE Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Charles S. Mott Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, and others.