High School Reform in Cleveland, OH

An American Youth Policy Forum Field Trip — December 2-3, 2003

This visit was organized to allow participants to learn about the efforts of a large urban school district that is engaged in converting its comprehensive high schools into small learning communities, creating new small schools, and to learn about other programs that support student achievement and entry into postsecondary education or work.

Background

Cleveland is a city of about half a million people, with the population being 51 percent African American, 42 percent white, and 7 percent Latino. The median household income is $26,000. Public schools are majority African American (70 percent) and overwhelmingly low-income (98.8 percent), with a total enrollment of 73,000 in 2003-2004. Cleveland has a shrinking population with many middle-class residents of all races moving to the suburbs.

Because of the poor performance of the Cleveland Municipal school system in past years (the graduation rate for the school district is 39 percent); the school system was placed under control of the Mayor who appointed a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to oversee the system. The current Mayor, Jane Campbell, and CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, have worked well together and share common goals to improve student achievement, focus on literacy at the elementary school levels, and create small learning communities within the district's large comprehensive high schools.

The school district recently received a $2 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation to help transform the nine large high schools in the district into smaller schools. Within five years, the goal is to have all high school students attending classes in buildings with three or four separate schools, geared toward a particular age range or academic interest. While many districts around the country are experimenting with the creation of small high schools, Cleveland would be the first to make a district-wide transformation with all of its high schools.

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) visited two large comprehensive high schools, Glenville High School and James Ford Rhodes High School, that are undergoing the conversion process to small schools; a new, free-standing small school, Success Tech Academy High School; met with leaders of the reform efforts; visited the Cleveland Scholarship Programs, a non-profit community-based organization designed to help first- generation students attend college; and learned about alternative education programs managed by the Cuyahoga County Workforce Development Board.

Glenville High School

Glenville High School is one of the first schools to receive funding and support from the Gates and KnowledgeWorks Foundations to convert to small schools. Glenville is typical of many inner-city high schools. It has a proud history and was an integral part of the community, but student performance began declining with changing demographics and a slumping economy. In the mid-1990s, school leaders were faced with huge dropout rates, low attendance, high suspension rates, low graduation rates, and an overall lack of learning and achievement. New leadership, coinciding partly with the new leadership at the city and district levels, helped refocus on student achievement and finding ways for each student to succeed.

Glenville started its journey to small schools with a grant from the Small Learning Communities (SLC) program from the U.S. Department of Education in the late 1990s. This grant allowed Glenville to create a ninth grade academy and move to block scheduling, the first steps in its effort to create a more personalized learning experience for youth. Funding from the SLC grant was used for planning and for professional development, in particular to help teachers develop teams, learn new strategies for teaching for longer blocks of time, and meet various learning styles. Glenville also received a Talent Development* grant, which supported the development of the ninth grade academy and a Twilight Academy (a school for students who are unsuccessful in the day program). The grant funds also allowed staff to visit and learn about other small schools, block scheduling, and Talent Development programs in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

After the first year of implementing the ninth grade academies, staff saw the value of keeping the students in smaller groupings, so they formed tenth grade academies the following year. The school did not have funding from the SLC grant to do this, but because they felt it was important to keep the students together in a smaller group, they used existing money differently. Once the ninth and tenth grade academies were in place, school leaders continued to see that the personalized approach was benefiting students. Attendance improved, and the number of suspensions and dropouts declined. Armed with the experience from the ninth and tenth grade academies, school leaders were prepared to move to greater personalization for all students and began exploring the concept of breaking up the large school into small schools. While the SLC grant helped Glenville only with the ninth grade academies, Principal Jacqueline Bell credited it with helping the staff learn about, understand, and support the concepts of smaller, more personalized learning communities.

The grants from the Gates and KnowledgeWorks Foundations will allow Glenville to pursue many more structural and curricular changes than the original SLC grant. The foundation grants not only encourage a complete rethinking of the high school, but also require a community engagement and outreach component, ongoing input from students and parents, continuous improvement, sustained professional development, and data collection and evaluation.

The planning process for the new small schools started in 2002 by getting "buy-in" from teachers, staff, students, and the community. Staff at Glenville indicated the most important step in the process was to get consensus from the various groups to move ahead, and that additional money for the planning was not needed. Once there was agreement to move to small learning communities, four teams were formed, and school year 2003-2004 was set aside for planning. In school year 2004-2005, the Glenville Academic Complex will open with four new schools.

Principal Bell indicated that student input has been critical in the design of the four new small schools, and students helped guide the staff and teachers towards the themes for the new schools. Design teams of teachers, staff, students, and community partners are now in place, and each is focusing on the instructional model as the "heart of the school." One school, the School of Fine and Performing Arts, will use a project and performance-based instructional approach, with discovery and inquiry learning, and will partner with the Glenville Community Development Corporation and the local YMCA. The Glenville Community Development Corporation hopes its partnership with the school will lead to the creation of a performing arts center in a building next to the school that will ultimately provide space for the new small school and serve youth in the community.

Another school, the School of Business and International Affairs, is planning to partner with the Glenville High School Alumni Association and will use project-based learning, externships in the community, an exchange program, and community service to help students learn. The School of Science, Technology and Engineering will incorporate technology into all aspects of the school, and the instructional model will be hands-on and inquiry-based. Local businesses, universities, and a hospital, all within walking distance, will provide students opportunities to learn in the community and use technology in real-life situations. The fourth school, the School of Leadership, Health and Wellness, will be the least theme-oriented, but will have a strong focus on student achievement. Students will have an opportunity to explore careers in the health fields, but instruction will be highly academic as opposed to vocational. Instruction will be inquiry and problem-based, and teachers will use performance-based assessments to determine the competencies of their students. Each design teams has a paid facilitator, who, according to the team members, has helped keep the planning process moving forward and on time.

One design issue the teams have been wrestling with is the issue of vertical versus horizontal integration. The school had successful experiences with the ninth and tenth grade academies (horizontal integration), and felt there was some value to keeping students grouped together by age. However, with the proposal to move to four new schools, vertically integrated across all grades, the ninth and tenth grade academies would be phased out. While these graded academy efforts helped provide personalization and gave the staff experience in creating more individualized supports, the staff agreed that isolating students by grade was not the ideal design and that there is benefit in having students interact across all grade levels. Still, they are interested in seeing how the ninth and tenth graders perform in this new structure.

Another design question the teams are discussing relates to how autonomous the small schools will be. Principal Bell indicated that the four schools will function as individual schools and the budgets, staffing and hiring, record-keeping, calendars, and instructional models will all be separate and distinct. Each school will have its own principal, and in time, Bell's position will be phased out. Students will be discouraged from transferring between them. There will be several shared resources for the schools, including sports facilities, the media lab, and the cafeteria.

While there is freedom to design the instructional model, there is a state-mandated curriculum, and students must past the state high school exit test, the Ohio Graduation Test. As a result, schools will have some common curricula. With regard to staffing, the small schools must abide by the district contract with the teachers union, but according to teachers, staff, and administrators we spoke with, the relationship between the district leadership and the teachers union is excellent. Because of this positive relationship, the teachers union is fully supportive of the high school transformation and is willing to consider and support each school's staffing needs (e.g. longer hours). Glenville Academic Complex will provide outreach to the feeder middle schools so that students will have an opportunity to learn about the four different schools and select the one they would like to attend.

Bell and her staff indicated that ongoing professional development has been a key ingredient to ensure staff support for the changes. The school uses outside experts and has sent staff to visit other schools to learn about new models, but Bell indicated "the best resources are in-house." Teams of teachers are now reviewing student work and sharing information and insights on why students are succeeding or failing and are improving their understanding of how to use assessments, such as the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT), to improve instruction. When staff was asked how they learned about research on small schools, they replied they were "gently guided" to research-based and best practices by Principal Bell and that she constantly shares information with them.

Bell also said they learned a great deal from having the opportunity to visit small schools with block scheduling in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Many staff members also visited John Ford Rhodes High School in Cleveland, which had already switched to block scheduling and ninth grade academies. However, Bell said that teachers were mainly convinced about the need to change by hearing from students about how much better block scheduling and small learning communities are for their learning. The student voice, she said, made a huge difference in getting the teachers to approve the changes.

During a quick tour of Glenville, participants also learned about a number of other programs offered by the school, including various Advanced Placement courses, CISCO academies, a child care center to help neighborhood families with students helping to serve as staff, a Sylvan Center to provide tutoring to students who do not pass the OGT, and a college access program offered by the Cleveland Scholarship Programs.

Success Tech Academy High School

After visiting Glenville, a very traditional, older high school, the AYPF group visited Success Tech Academy High School, a new small school located in a city office building with views of Lake Erie and downtown Cleveland. Success Tech was started two years ago as a non-traditional high school to provide a learning environment in which all students can succeed. The classrooms are open design, technology is ubiquitous and integral, and the environment is relaxed and feels more like a workplace or college than a high school. The school has 160 students in the ninth and tenth grades; when all four grades are phased in in two years, the school will house about 320 students.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided the impetus for the small school with a one-year planning grant. A design team was put in place consisting of representatives from local colleges and universities, parents, business leaders, the principal, and a coach from the Gates Foundation. The design team looked at best practices, reviewed research, and made site visits to other small high schools. The team selected certain principles for the school, such as academic rigor and college preparation, personalization, project-based and service-learning, use of technology as a teaching tool, and youth leadership. Principal Johneita Durant indicated that she and her staff ultimately want the students to become school leaders, with the "adults in the background." We saw evidence of how staff encourages youth leadership when we were greeted by students and briefed on the school by them for several minutes before any adult spoke to our group.

The curriculum is problem-based and infused with technology, and classes are very small (15-1 ratio) and interactive. Each student develops a personalized learning plan with his or her teachers and parents. Students are expected to participate in service-learning or internships in the community, they develop portfolios (soon to be digital portfolios) to demonstrate their learning and show their work at Open Houses twice a year to parents and community partners, peer tutors are available, and sophomores, juniors, and seniors can take classes at local colleges for credit. A ninth grade freshman study skills course is required to help students adjust to the school, and mandatory tutoring is available for any student with a grade of a D or F. The school does not have a sports program but has numerous after-school clubs and activities, such as cheerleading, Model United Nations, a drama club, a newspaper, and a chess team.

Students are grouped into advisories (similar to a home room) of approximately 20-25 students that they remain with for four years. These advisories help students adjust to the rigor of the work and support them in various ways, such as helping to plan for college and careers and for a required senior project. Each advisory is also responsible for carrying out a service project in the community or for the school. In addition to the advisories, students stay with the same teachers for all four years, so there is an opportunity for students to be known well by many adults.

Any student from Cleveland is eligible to attend Success Tech Academy, but they must want to attend. Students are interviewed, must write an essay, and sign a behavior contract, and parents must agree to attend one school event per marking period and help with projects, such as service-learning activities or career days. The school does not use grade point averages in selecting students; rather they are looking for students with a good attitude and willingness to do extra work. There is a waiting list of students to attend Success Tech. One hundred percent of the students at Success Tech qualify for free or reduced price school lunch. Because there are no sports, fewer boys than girls attend.

The Gates Foundation is supporting the school by allocating $1,000 per student for the extra costs of technology. This $1,000 will be paid for each student as all four grades are added, but once all four grades are in place, Gates will not provide any additional funds. The school will then receive the same per pupil expenditure as any other Cleveland high school. While the costs of technology will be higher, the school has lower operating costs, as it rents space in a school district office building, has no gym or sports teams, and has fewer administrative and support personnel (for example, the school does not have a full-time nurse, but students can access the school district's health clinic, located in their building). Given the flexibility to refocus their resources, Principal Durant was certain they would be able to manage the extra technology costs with a standard budget. The school also has a wealth of partners that help with tutoring, providing internships for students, participating in advisory meetings, and enhancing the curriculum.

Briefing on Ohio State Board of Education Task Force on High Schools

Following our visit to Success Tech Academy, we met with Joseph Johnson, Special Assistant to the Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Zelman, Ohio Department of Education, regarding the Ohio State Board of Education's Task Force on Quality High Schools for a Lifetime of Opportunities.

Johnson said that Ohio has been moving toward more rigorous curriculum and assessments over the past several years. The existing Ohio Proficiency Test, which is a relatively easy end-of-eighth grade test, is being replaced by the Ohio Graduation Test, which will measure competencies at the end of tenth grade. All students will be required to pass all five sections of the test to graduate, beginning with the Class of 2007. Johnson said this will be a mammoth challenge since only 11 percent of African American students of the Class of 2007 demonstrate proficiency in the five sections (reading, mathematics, social studies, science, and writing). Ohio also has a low high school graduation rate, particularly for children of color. Given these challenges, the Board realized it was time to focus on high schools to close the achievement gap and ensure that students are prepared to pass the new state proficiency tests and, more importantly, for college and the workplace.

The Task Force has 35 members, including five state board members, local superintendents, teachers, business and foundation leaders, and legislative staffers. It will make recommendations on three goals:

• increase the percentage and diversity of students who pass the state proficiency tests;
• increase the percentage and diversity of students who graduate from high school;
• increase the percentage and diversity of students who have options to succeed after high school, e.g. attend post secondary education.

The Task Force is studying how the state can provide direction, encouragement, and incentives to help high schools reach the three goals. The state role, Johnson said, is to proscribe the outcomes and help the local districts, but it will be up to the local districts to determine how they meet the outcomes.

One issue the task force is considering is shortening or lengthening the current twelve years of schooling to accommodate different learners. Johnson said there is "no magic in twelve years" and that educational progress should be based on competency. Another idea the task force is studying is how the transition between middle and high school can be made more efficiently and effectively. Also, the task force is very interested in exploring how greater and earlier access to postsecondary education options, both for advanced students and for more typical students who might be motivated by early postsecondary education experiences, can be created.

The Task Force will also look at high school reform issues such as barriers to and opportunities for success from the student perspective and involve a strong youth voice in their work. The Task Force will release its recommendations in June 2004.

Ohio High School Transformation Initiative

Harold Brown, Program Director, KnowledgeWorks Foundation (KWF), briefed the group on the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI) and the role of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in working with schools and school districts in their efforts to create small schools and improve student achievement.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation was created in 1998 as a charitable foundation through the reorganization of the Student Loan Funding Corporation. With more than $200 million in assets, KWF is one of Ohio's largest philanthropic foundations in education. KWF is working to create partnerships that will produce measurably better educational results throughout the state, and carries out programs of work in the areas of College and Career Access, School Improvement (small high schools and OHSTI), and Communities and School Facilities.

The OHSTI is grounded in the belief that learning is essentially about relationships and making connections among people, places, resources, and ideas. The OHSTI seeks to improve student achievement by establishing the conditions that allow real learning connections to emerge and grow within the state's most challenged urban high schools. Through the OHSTI, KWF, the Gates Foundation, and the Ohio Department of Education will offer assistance to 17 of the 21 large urban districts in Ohio. Grants will support the development of reconfiguring these large high schools to create smaller autonomous schools of approximately 100 students per grade level, or 400 within the learning community. Funding for the initiative will be available to school districts through school year 2006-2007. While the Gates Foundation has generally focused on creating new small schools, KWF wanted to try to convert large high schools, a more daunting challenge. KWF has funded each grantee for one year of planning with coaches, and then it selected the schools for implementation. Implementation grants will provide $765 per student to assist with the conversions. Those that do not get an implementation grant will be provided detailed feedback so they can resubmit. The Cleveland school district is the only district in which all of the high schools will receive conversion grants, and it will also receive support for 6-10 freestanding small high school startups. In addition to the grants KWF provides to school districts, it also provides technical assistance roughly equivalent in monetary value to the grants, which is a major investment on the part of the foundation.

Brown said the effort is fundamentally about "redoing high schools" and that without the focus on changing relationships between people within the schools, you can end up with large high schools that look like small schools but that do not possess the qualities of effective small learning environments. Small schools set the conditions for change, which include strong school leaders, well-prepared teachers, data collection and analysis, and communities working together. KWF also has developed "non-negotiable attributes" that grantees must adopt as they start their reforms. (During our school visits, we heard about the non-negotiable attributes from the school leaders who joked about the strict requirements, but in realty they are extremely supportive of the framework for change they provide.) A brief list of the KWF non-negotiable attributes includes:

• Autonomy of the school with regard to curriculum, budget, leadership, and staffing;
• Distributed leadership;
• Open access and choice for students;
• Release time for school leaders, including teachers;
• Professional development linking teaching to student achievement;
• System of central office support;
• Standards-based, rigorous, relevant curriculum;
• Non-traditional schedule;
• Benchmarks for student performance;
• Authentic assessment; and
• Community engagement.

As KWF works with the schools on their reform efforts, Brown said that there are a number of cross-cutting focus areas that continue to emerge. These include the alignment of curriculum with rigorous standards; the literacy needs of adolescents; support for college access; service learning opportunities; school facilities (particularly as schools move to smaller groupings of students); and relationships in the building. KWF is providing various types of technical assistance to the school districts. The foundation helps districts develop stakeholder advisory groups to provide input on the conversion process; offers a leadership institute three to four times a year; has created a small schools leadership network; provides school change coaches (22 experts from around the country who are on call) to the schools; matches up veteran principals and superintendents as mentors for the school leaders at the conversion schools; and identifies "centers of strength" within the community upon which the school and district can draw. KWF also sees itself at a statewide center of strength, in that it is constantly introducing teachers and school leaders to research and strategies to improve student achievement.

Brown indicated that KWF is investing $2 million to evaluate their efforts to convert large high schools to small ones, and that good evaluative data on the reform activities should help sustain the efforts if they show that the interventions resulted in improved student outcomes. In evaluating their progress, data will be collected on the whole school initially, and after several years, evaluation data will be collected on each individual small school.

In closing, Brown described some of the challenges the foundation faces as it works to reform high schools. First, he said "this work requires us to think and work beyond our comfort zones, and KWF recognizes that and tries to help people deal with the change process." He also said that schools and districts have to deal with labor-management issues. Lastly, he said that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) sets up a steep accountability system that will be a challenge to meet, particularly given the continuing pervasive gaps in student readiness and achievement and the lack of qualified teachers in many subjects and at many schools. Brown did indicate, however, that the OHSTI would be an allowable intervention for a low-performing school under NCLB and that funding could be used to support the move to small schools and more personalized learning.

Cleveland Municipal School District

The AYPF group also received a briefing on high school reform efforts from Kathleen Freilino, the Assistant Chief for Secondary Education, Cleveland Municipal School District (CMSD). Freilino is a former principal of James Ford Rhodes High School (our next visit) and was an early supporter of block scheduling, small learning communities, and focusing on adolescent literacy. Freilino said that when block scheduling and ninth grade academies were introduced at James Ford Rhodes High School, they saw positive results and wanted to share that information with other schools. At Rhodes High School, Freilino also developed an accelerated program for over-age ninth grade students, to allow them to gain two years in one year and summer. As a result, five of the nine comprehensive high schools in Cleveland are now on block scheduling, and most have ninth grade academies or pursue other reform strategies.

Freilino said that Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the CEO of the CMSD, originally focused her efforts on improving reading and literacy in elementary schools and fixing the middle schools, which is where many children begin to fall behind and lose interest in school. She is now turning her attention to high schools and one of the major themes of the reform will be focused on adolescent and content literacy. With funding from the Stupksi Foundation, CMSD will be able to provide more professional development to teachers on content literacy. The district also wants to expand the Advanced Placement (AP) program to provide access for all students and begin working with eighth graders on pre-AP classes as well as instituting the AVID program to increase college preparation, access, and success.

Freilino said that there is strong support throughout the district and from the teachers union for moving forward with high school reform. The teachers union and the district have a memorandum of understanding in support of the KWF initiative and the conversion process. The principals of the schools have monthly meetings with the teachers union to share concerns and discuss strategies.

The hardest thing, Freilino said, was to change beliefs and attitudes that all kids can do more rigorous work. When she Principal at Rhodes High School, she moved students who had 2.0 grade point averages, were cutting class, and at-risk of dropping out into honors math and English classes, despite great skepticism. The students improved their behavior and performance dramatically. This helped demonstrate to teachers and other school leaders that students who had been "written off" could do rigorous work if challenged.

Freilino shared that the district is struggling with how best to design and structure the leadership component for small schools. The district would like to have completely autonomous small school leaders, but it is unclear whether the small schools need a whole building leader or campus manager, and if so, how to structure these relationships. With support from the Cleveland Education Foundation, the district is bringing the principals of the nine conversion schools together to discuss leadership issues and to study ways to develop new leaders and structure new relationships. One approach the district will most likely pursue is to have some of the more senior current principals become mentors or advisors to work with schools that are just being the conversion process. This will allow current principals to work with the school district in a new leadership position.

The role of the district office in the change process is also a challenge, according to Freilino. The district has relatively few staff, yet it has more to do in terms of involving the community, families, and students in the change process. Freilino said it is critical for the district to develop a trusting relationship with parents and the community (it is also one of the KWF non-negotiable attributes), but it has been difficult in certain neighborhoods. Freilino related a story about the transition at East High School, which had very poor student performance and outcomes and extremely low expectations for students. The first step the district undertook was to install a new leadership team and stronger security team, causing some teachers to leave, which may have been a good thing in the long run, noted Freilino. The new school leaders wanted to focus on making the curriculum more rigorous and academic, but they ran into opposition from the community members and parents, who wanted a vocational focus for the schools, as they considered it the best "training" for their children. Faced with this standoff, the district used a process known as the Appreciative Inquiry Process (a way of communicating about difficult change) and worked with community leaders to help them see the potential of what a more academically rigorous program would mean. Despite a great deal of ongoing outreach to the community, it has taken about a year for the community and parents to feel comfortable with the proposed changes, which has delayed some progress. A community center of strength, the Federation for Community Planning, is also helping to reach out to the community in support of the district's planned reforms.

Freilino said that the current high school leaders are being provided many opportunities to learn about reform efforts through faculty exchanges and monthly meetings. The district leaders constantly talk about the change strategies, so there is a great deal of informal sharing of information between the district, principals, and school leaders.

One other planned change for the high schools will be to offer a senior seminar, although not all of them are prepared to do so yet. Students will design a project which must include a service learning, job-shadow, or internship component, and present it to a team of adults at school for approval. The district is also helping to create partnerships with businesses for student internships, because all seniors will be required to serve an internship in the community.

In response to a question, Freilino said the impact of NCLB has yet to be felt by many teachers. Because the new state proficiency tests will be moved to the tenth grade level, many high school teachers have not yet realized the pressure on them to transform their practice to know what each student needs to be successful. Data on every class has been made available to schools and teachers, but in many cases, teachers do not know how to interpret the data or change their teaching as a result of that data. This is a major challenge for the district, concluded Freilino.

James Ford Rhodes High School

James Ford Rhodes High School was built in the 1930s and is a traditional-looking high school, in some disrepair. There are 1,763 students with 676 freshman; 486 sophomores; 333 juniors; and 268 seniors. As a neighborhood school, the student body represents the demographics of the community: 60 percent White; 21 percent African American; 17 percent Hispanic, and one percent Asian and multi-racial each. One hundred percent of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch. In addition to being a neighborhood school that draws about 1,000 students locally, about 700 students from the rest of the city attend Rhodes to participate in one of the special programs at the school.

Rhodes was the first comprehensive high school in Cleveland to being reform efforts and switch to a block schedule, as a way to combat problems with attendance, class participation, and low student performance. The culture of the school was one that allowed students to fail on a regular and persistent basis, and little was done to help students succeed. For example, in the mid 1990s, if students were late in the morning, they were locked out of their first period class and directed to sit in the gym, obviously with no learning occurring. Many ninth graders were 17 and 18 years old, students who had repeatedly been kept back because of low skill levels. Of a class of 600 ninth graders in the mid 1990s, only 88 went on to graduate.

When a new principal, Kathleen Freilino, was brought into the school in 1996-97, she prompted the staff to ask, what do we need to do to help students succeed? This caused the adults in the school to inspect everything about the school and determine where the weaknesses were, what was irrelevant to success that could be jettisoned, and what staff needed to help students succeed. At the same time, the district instituted a requirement for each school to develop, with staff input, an academic achievement plan.

In 1997-98, following the change in leadership and with a staff-approved academic achievement plan in place, the ninth grade academy was implemented for 100 students with four teachers; a critical friends group for teachers was formed; more intensive and focused professional development was provided to teachers; and staff began discussing moving to small learning communities.

School year 1998-99 brought more changes with the creation of several small learning environments. The Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences (FAMS), which uses an elective curriculum developed by Ford Motor Company and offers a paid apprenticeship for five weeks during the summer at a Ford-affiliated manufacturing firm, was instituted with an enrollment of about 100 students. A Naval Junior ROTC program, which enrolls about 150 students, a re-entry program for former dropouts and students behind grade level, and a teacher education academy were also implemented. Concurrently, the academic rigor of the ninth grade academy was increased, and more honors and AP classes were added. More frequent and intensive professional development was offered to teachers, organized site visits to schools that had already instituted some of the changes were organized for staff, and critical friends groups among teachers focused on improving instruction were established. Rhodes High School also was a recipient of a federal Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) grant at that time, which helped support the ninth grade academies and programs for at-risk students. Finally, the staff began serious consideration of moving from horizontal teams (each grade) to vertical teams (grades 9-12).

By 1999-2000, the school implemented a new four-by-four block schedule (students complete four full credits during the first half of the year, and then take four more courses in the second half of the year). A freshman core curriculum was implemented, a twilight school was implemented, and professional development was provided in partnership with the Talent Development program at Johns Hopkins University and Cleveland State University (CSU). The school district also developed a program, Masters in Urban Secondary Teaching, MUST, with CSU to help prepare new teachers for urban schools. The program offers summer classes, places the prospective teacher in a classroom for a school year to watch and learn, then begin teaching, and ultimately take over the classroom under the guidance of an experienced teacher. The school now has about 20 MUST interns a year along with CSU professors who come into classrooms to provide extensive assessment of instruction.

In 2000-2001, the school implemented a sophomore academy and the High Tech Program, a math-based program, which links with area colleges to provide higher level math. An interactive math and video interaction tutorial for Algebra 1 and 2 is provided by the Cleveland Community College (CCC). Students can also take courses at CCC for college credit without having to pay, although because of budget problems, CCC may have to charge in the future. The high school's calculus class is electronically connected to CSU, and 17 students earned college credit for math classes taken online. For students that do not plan to study math as a major in college, the High Tech Program allows them to complete all their college math credits while in high school, if they desire.

In 2001-2002, the staff and administrators decided to discontinue the sophomore academy and move to smaller, themed schools. Further reforms included a version of a "daytime" twilight academy to help students make up credits during the day, an extended day program, and the addition of a CISCO academy. Classes and curriculum were sequenced school-wide for greater alignment and to help better prepare students for upper level work.

With school year 2002-2003, planning started for the transition to three small schools within the building which will be implemented in school year 2004-2005. When the school breaks into small schools, there will be three separate entrances, one for each school, which will create a very different feel to the large school.

The current Principal, Wayne Marok, said that the journey from the large high school to one that is focused on student learning and greater personalization has been about finding ways of "shaping the school to fit the student." Every year has brought additional programs and approaches to help meet the needs of every student.

For example, Marok said that teachers found that many students needed alternatives to the regular day classes for various reasons. While the school provided a twilight academy with individualized learning and small classes for students who were disruptive and low-achieving, they decided to expand it to any student who needed help outside the regular classroom structure. This includes students who transfer in from other school districts and are on grade level but need to make up credits because of the transfer. Teachers volunteer to teach a class at the twilight (or daytime) academy, or they can be a full-time twilight teacher and teach only three classes. The twilight academy is structured to allow students flexibility to take one, two, or three classes, and if they want to take more credits, they can take a block class from the regular schedule. The twilight academy has 266 graduates and is hoping to reach 300 by the end of the year.

A gateway program designed for ninth graders who are off-track and low in credits was also implemented. It focuses on basic skills and offers no electives. In partnership with Johns Hopkins University, the gateway program provides double-dosing of English and math, world history, and science. This, said Marok, is another example of how we have adjusted to meet the needs of our students. However, Marok continued that there is a cultural difference between the educational approach of the twilight school which is very individualized and flexible and the regular day classes, which are more standard. Also, because the twilight classes are so small and individualized, many students and teachers wonder why they cannot have the same advantage in regular classes and why more resources are targeted (in terms of teacher to student ratio) to the twilight/daytime academies. Another intervention, the Sylvan Learning Lab (Sylvan is in every high school in Cleveland), offers remediation for math and English. In this elective program, there is a ratio of four students to every teacher, which also raises the question of how resources are being distributed.

The school also made a number of other changes to its schedule and course requirements to meet student needs. Classes run from 7:50 AM - 1:55 PM, with breakfast served before classes and lunch served from 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM. This approach helped resolve problems with the master schedule and while this seems hard on teens, they are allowed to eat snacks during class as long as they are neat, and students do not mind. The school also made the decision to move physical education to the 11th and 12th grades, when students have already completed most of their basic curriculum, and they are not as self-conscious about their bodies as ninth graders. This has improved attendance in physical education classes and morale among students.

Marok said that the district provides various helpful supports to the school. The district was able to secure a waiver from the state so that all students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch can take AP exams for free. CMSD is now trying to institute a standard curriculum at every school for ninth grade because of the student mobility rate of 12 percent. The common curriculum framework would cover English, math, social studies, and science. The district also selects the textbooks for the schools, and there is a "standards notebook" for all grades and classes. The district also maintains a standards-based report card for each school.

Marok indicated that many of the changes have resulted in an improved reputation for the school, as well as improved indicators for students. Currently the school has a waitlist of 1,300 students for the FAMS and ROTC programs, and selections are made based on grade point average and attendance requirements. Attendance rates have increased from 76 percent in 1999-2000 to 87 percent in 2000-2001 to 95 percent in 2001-2002. The failure rate has decreased similarly from 38 percent in 1998-1999 to 13 percent in 2001-2002. Marok indicated that Rhodes High School is the only comprehensive high school in Ohio that is a school of promise, which means they have closed the achievement gap.

One challenge for the school will be the implementation of the new Ohio Graduation Test, required of all 10th grade students. To help prepare students for the test, the school conducts evaluation of skills early in the ninth grade and provides guided instruction and ongoing tutoring. Students are also taught a physics course in 9th grade that, while not at the same level as 11th grade physics, prepares students to pass the Ohio Graduation Test.

Cleveland Scholarship Programs

Cleveland Scholarship Programs (CSP) got its start when several generous benefactors offered to pay for college for needy students, but they could not find enough needy students who were prepared to do college work. As a result, CSP was founded in 1967 to provide information and advising programs to help prepare first generation and needy students for college while in high school. CSP began by placing two part-time college and financial aid advisors in five Cleveland high schools. Today, CSP serves 50 Cleveland public (urban and suburban) and parochial high schools with the aid of 18 college advisors.

President and CEO Maria Boss said that CSP addresses four barriers students face in accessing college: preparedness, affordability, matriculation, and retention. To help students prepare for college, CSP emphasizes core curriculum and postsecondary choices beginning in the first grade. Early awareness continues in grades one through eight. CSP works in ten middle schools, as they have found a higher promotion and attendance rate for middle school students who participate in CSP activities for an entire year. CSP is also working to change the middle school curriculum to be in line with their goals of ensuring that all 8th graders take pre-Algebra classes and that sixth graders are taking the appropriate curriculum that will allow them to do higher level work in middle school.

CSP administers a Talent Search program that identifies prospective college students in early grades, as well as a Gear-Up program that allows CSP to work with all of the students at Wilbur Wright Middle School. CSP's GEAR-UP program flags middle school students for the high school counselors so they know which students have participated in the program, so that counselors can keep those students on track and help with transition issues.

With regard to affordability, CSP advisors help students and families apply for financial assistance, and they disbursed nearly $2.7 million of their own "last dollar scholarships." For every scholarship dollar that CSP awards, they leverage another $12 in student aid. CSP helps students matriculate by funding an advisor for each high school to assist with all aspects of college enrollment, such as researching institutions, applying for admission, securing financial aid, and encouraging parental involvement in the college planning process. As a retention strategy, CSP advisors meet with their scholarship recipients at least once a year and provide a toll-free hotline that students can call whenever they need help. Another strategy is for CSP students who are already in college to mentor incoming CSP students.

Boss said that 86 percent of CSP students stay in college and that 82 percent of CSP students return to northeast Ohio. Based on the success in Cleveland, CSP helped to start the Ohio College Access Network to help other communities create programs for college access and success and improve outcomes for students around the state.

Boss also mentioned that the state is becoming more involved in helping students succeed in college. A proposal before the state legislature called Ohio Earn and Learn targeted to help needy students access college. Students will have the full cost of college guaranteed, if they take and complete the core curriculum and take the SAT or ACT. Ohio's new higher education performance data system will allow the state to track employment and educational outcomes of individual students, and this data system will also cover K-12 system by using ID numbers to track students.

CSP also makes its resource center available to the general public, and students from as far away as Columbus and Cincinnati come use it. The center is also used by adults who have been laid off their job, who are welfare clients, or who are looking for a better education or career. Both youth and adults can meet with an advisor and get help completing applications.

Boss also said that the CSP recently decided to focus on the workforce development needs of Cleveland as part of their mission. The percentage of adults age 25 and over who have a bachelor's degree or higher is only 11 percent in the City of Cleveland, compared to 21 percent for the state of Ohio and 24 percent for the U.S. CSP said their goal is to help bring college students back to Cleveland after they graduate so they can contribute to the workforce. CSP also embraces and is working with two-year and certificate degree programs, not just four-year programs, as the needs of the local economy require individuals with skills and training from those programs as well.

Boss described a number of challenges that CSP faces. They include ensuring that the core curriculum that prepares students for college is available in every high school for every student; getting parents to be supportive of having their children attend postsecondary education; developing a national student data system that can track students across state borders and provide information on outcomes for evaluation; and funding.

Cuyahoga County Department of Workforce Development

Diane Chancellor, Program Administrator, Cuyahoga County Department of Workforce Development (CCDWD), provided a very brief overview of youth programs managed by the CCDWD, followed by descriptions by some of the youth program providers. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) provides Cleveland $1.2 million for youth programs, but the agency does not get any state or local funds for these programs. They serve about 350 students, both in-school and out-of-school youth. There is some difficulty in working with the school system to find out which students are truant or have dropped out, said Chancellor, which is a problem given the city's dropout rate of 68 percent. She explained that there is some reluctance by the schools to acknowledge when a student leaves, because schools lose the per pupil expenditure if the students are dropped from their rolls.

One of the youth providers, Cuyahoga East Vocational Education Consortium (CEVEC), is supported by 16 area school districts to provide vocational training for disabled students. CEVEC students learn job-related skills and then practice them at community "group sites." Employers allow small groups of students, supervised by CEVEC staff, to get training and practice skills in their business, without pay. CEVEC offers job placement services that include intensive, one-on-one training by job trainers working side-by-side with the student until they can work independently. Students can develop job skills in hospitality and facility care services, warehousing and inventory, cleaning and maintenance, horticulture, and mail room services. All 225 CEVEC students have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), specifying the most realistic outcome as work. Most youth come to the center for half a day for work, with most training in the community provided by approximately 25 businesses. The program graduates about 90 percent of their students, and most are employed. Ohio Rehabilitation Services, County Department of Mental Retardation, and CCDWD provide funding to hire social workers, six job coordinators/coaches, and a coordinator who follows up on exit plans. Funds are also used for regional transit authority passes.

Sylvan Learning Centers Collaborative with Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries and Berea Children's Home provide a one-stop collaborative to deliver youth services that include direct educational and job related services with emphasis on serving youth from the juvenile justice system. Through their "Making the Connection" program, the three partners serve between 60-70 percent juvenile offenders. Occupational skills provided include nursing assistant training and A+ Certification, with a strong focus on academic advancement and GED preparation through the Sylvan Learning system. Work experience and job placement services are also provided. Drug, alcohol, and guidance counseling are provided through Berea Children's Home. Staff from the three organizations are cross-trained on how to assess and serve youth. Weekly meetings between the partners are held to review what services are needed by new recruits and who can provide them. The program has an eighty-eight percent pass rate on the GED.

Max Hayes Vocational High School, managed by the Office of Adult and Continuing Education, Cleveland Municipal School District, is targeted at 19-21 year old out-of-school youth. They offer five, nine, or 18 week programs with GED preparation and testing, employment support, work experience, and job placement, and an extension high school in several occupational areas including nursing assistants, clerical, computer technology, welding, electrical, construction, carpentry, auto body repair, auto mechanic service technology, A+ certification computer repair, and child care. The program also teaches employability skills and provides very individualized assistance with job search. Once students have found a job, the program follows up with students by helping them get additional training and education. The program relies on multiple funding streams, including funding from the housing authority, vocational rehabilitation, WIA, and mental retardation funds.

Themes and Selected Observations from Participants

It is clear that strong and consistent leadership from both the Mayor's and the CEO's office has been important in sending signals throughout the school system about the need for change. The district has also been flexible in allowing schools to try various interventions, and then supportive of sharing effective strategies. The district has invested in strong leadership at the school level and is now investing in developing a corps of individuals to serve as leaders of the new small schools. Also, former principals of the large schools will become mentors and advisors to the new small school leaders, so as not to lose their experience and expertise.

The evolutionary nature of the change at Glenville and Rhodes High Schools was interesting to observe. Each school started with small changes, supported by federal grants, and continued to grow and expand their reform strategies as the staff and teachers become more familiar and comfortable with the changes, and when they were able to see positive impacts on students. By evolving small changes into grander ones, the schools were able to maintain support from their various constituencies, including the teacher unions, who are now very engaged in the reform efforts. While this evolutionary process takes a long time, it may be an effective strategy for enrolling larger numbers of individuals in the types of changes needed.

There was a great deal of discussion about how the change from the state's current proficiency test to its new NCLB-approved high-stakes graduation test (Ohio Graduation Test) will impact the innovations such as the ones planned for Glenville and Rhodes. It is not at all clear how well career academies, as opposed to freshman/sophomore looping which is already in place, will impact students' ability to pass the more difficult Ohio Graduation Test. However, planners seem confident the switch to small schools will help students pass the OGT.

The KnowledgeWorks Foundation plays a very important role in the reform effort. As an intermediary, KWF helps to challenge schools and leaders, engage the community, provide technical assistance, and evaluate the progress of reform. Most schools or school districts are not designed to handle these complex tasks, so an outside presence is critical. The technical assistance that KWF provides appears to be an absolutely essential part of the change process in Cleveland, particularly the focus on the non-negotiable elements.

Involving youth in a regular and meaningful way in school reform remains quite a challenge for teachers, principals, administrators, and policymakers. Cities like Cleveland that are going through educational reform processes not only need groups like the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, they also need regular input and support from groups that know about youth involvement with meaningful youth roles and how change occurs. This is very hard work and not something that educators know about or are trained in, yet the youth development framework provides important resources in making schools more engaging and meaningful for youth.

Lastly, the schools used an interesting combination of both school-based and outside expertise in their reform efforts. Both schools indicated they found great value to visiting schools in other cities that had already changed to block scheduling or introduced small schools, and school leaders were clear they rely on research to make many decisions. But at both schools, there was evidence of relying on school-based experiments and the judgment, experience, and expertise of teachers and principals. Building the capacity in the current teaching force is a large part of successful reform strategy; the Cleveland experience shows multiple ways for that to occur.

* The Talent Development High School With Career Academies is a comprehensive reform model for large high schools that face serious problems with student attendance, discipline, achievement scores, and dropout rates. The Talent Development High School with Career Academies was initiated in 1994 through a partnership of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR) and Patterson High School in Baltimore and has now expanded to high schools in 11 states across the country.

Contact Information

Ms. Jacqueline Bell
Principal
Glenville High School
650 East 113th Street
Cleveland, Ohio 44108
Tel. 216-268-6000
bellja@cmsdnet.net

Maria Boss
President and CEO
Cleveland Scholarship Programs
BP Tower, Suite 3820
200 Public Square
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-241-5587
mboss@cspohio.org

Harold Brown
Program Director
Knowledge Works Foundation
One West Fourth Street
Suite 200
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Tel. 513-929-1106
brownh@kwfdn.org

Diane Chancellor
Program Administrator, Youth Programs
Cuyahoga County Workforce Development Board
1275 Ontario
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-698-2385
cncdc@www.cuyahoga.oh.us

Johnnie Durant
Principal
Success Tech Academy High School
1440 Lakeside
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-523-8463
jdurant5@apk.net
durantjo@cmsdnet.net

Kathleen Freilino
Deputy Chief of Secondary Education
Cleveland Municipal School District
1380 East Sixth Street
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-574-8500
freilino@cmsdnet.net

Joe Johnson
Special Assistant to the Superintendent of Public Instruction
Ohio Department of Education
25 South Front Street, 7th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-4183
Tel. 614-466-7578
Cell. 614-832-5701
joseph.johnson@ode.state.oh.us

Patricia Lonergan
Manager of Early Awareness
Cleveland Scholarship Programs
BP Tower, Suite 3820
200 Public Square
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-241-5587
plonergan@cspohio.org

Wayne Marok
Principal
James Ford Rhodes High School
5100 Biddulph Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44114
Tel. 216-351-6285
Cell. 216-701-4790
marokwa@cmsdnet.net

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