It's on everyone's lips: the NEXT BIG THING in education reform is a serious focus on high school. That's what the President wants to do, what the Gates Foundation wants to do, what a vast array of think tanks and education groups want to do. "Redesigning the American high school" is this year's focus for the National Governors Association, which will co-host a "National Education Summit on High Schools" in February. A week back, the Education Department held its own high-school "leadership summit." This tide is rising fast.
Much, in fact, has already happened. The feds held at least two earlier conferences. (They produced some interesting papers; click here and here.) Worthy outfits like Jobs for the Future have also gathered in the multitudes and batted ideas around. (Some of these can be found in Double the Numbers.) Gates has been plugging away for several years, especially with its "small schools" strategy. We at Fordham joined with Achieve and the Education Trust in the American Diploma Project. Even the Aspen Institute has made this a recent focus of its high-altitude meditations.
To date, however, the results are slim. Much of American high-school education remains sorely afflicted, both by sky-high drop-out rates and by weak academic achievement among those who stick it out. (Check out the latest PISA results—discussed below—for further confirmation and expect more bleak news in coming days from TIMSS.) It's past time for concerted attention to these problems and nothing we've done yet has made a big difference.
But no consensus has even emerged on what changes are needed. So let's begin by sorting out the options. As I deconstruct a cornucopia of ideas for high-school reform, they group themselves into six broad themes. (Mind you, many projects and programs mix and match them like post-modern pizza chefs.)
1. Strategy: Extend standards-based reform to high schools by holding them to account for their students' achievement, completion rates, etc. A number of states have begun to do this and the President has proposed, in effect, to bring high schools more fully under the umbrella of No Child Left Behind.
Problem definition: Schools aren't accomplishing all that they could because they haven't been accountable for their results.
Theory of action: Get the standards and assessments right, then hold schools (and districts, states, etc.) responsible for their performance, forcefully intervening (and perhaps allowing school choice) in the event of failure.
2. Strategy: Establish high-stakes graduation tests that students must pass to earn their diplomas. This, too, is a results-based accountability system, but it bears down primarily on the kids rather than the institutions. Join "tough" with "love" via positive inducements to succeed in high school, such as state-funded college scholarships for those with B or better averages.
Problem definition: Students aren't working hard enough, taking the right courses, or learning enough because it doesn't "count." Today, all they must do is go through the motions and rack up the course credits.
Theory of action: Incentivize them with a judicious mixture of carrots and sticks.
3. Strategy: Prevent drop-outs and maximize completions by making the high-school experience more appealing: individualize it, eradicate boredom, let students move at their own pace, etc. This is the thrust of Ohio's new task force report on "High-Quality High Schools," of the President's proposed $200 million "Performance Plan" fund, and of private-sector programs such as Amer-I-Can. Also create new education options for "out of school youth" and drop-out recovery programs for those who have fallen off the turnip truck.
Problem definition: Too many kids are turning off, tuning out, and dropping out. If they don't stick around, there's no way they'll learn.
Theory of action: There are two, really, but closely related. One says that if young people like school more (and, presumably, succeed at it), they'll hang in there. The other says that well-conceived specialty schools and programs can re-engage young people who have had it with formal education of the conventional sort.
4. Strategy: Devise new institutional forms for secondary education: "Early college" high schools, small high schools, schools-within-schools, charter schools, "KIPP" high schools, virtual high schools. Much has been said and done on this front, and the innovations take many shapes, as do the choice schemes whereby young people and their parents can access the version that works best for them.
Problem definition: The circa-1950s, one-size-fits-all, "comprehensive high school" is dysfunctional and off-putting for many, besides being an inefficient, out-moded vehicle for teaching them what they need to learn.
Theory of action: Create new options for delivering and receiving secondary education, using technology, modern organizational theory, out-sourcing and the like, then give young people choices.
5. Strategy: Beef up the curriculum. Make "AP" courses ubiquitous and propagate the International Baccalaureate. Strengthen state academic standards. Re-do the textbooks. Team up with colleges in K-16 programs. Make college-prep the "default" curriculum. Blend higher ed's expectations with those of "modern" jobs, á la the American Diploma Project, and work backward through the K-12 grades.
Problem definition: They're not learning because the courses are easy, boring, pointless and ill matched to the real world's demands.
Theory of action: Stretch their minds, make it worthwhile and they will learn it.
6. Strategy: Get practical. Focus on "Tech Prep" programs, ventures that join high schools to community colleges, work-study, schedules that blend school with jobs, voluntarism and community service, and kindred ways of tapping into the "affective," pecuniary, and social sides of young people.
Problem definition: Academic work and intellectual activity are no way to the adolescent heart.
Theory of action: Realize that what animates teen-agers is reality, not theory; things with tangible rewards and sleeves-rolled-up engagement, not textbooks.
One could slice these six strategies differently, one might even turn them into seven or eight, but you get the point. Observe how disparate they are, arising from divergent conceptions of the main problem and warring assumptions about what needs to change and how to go about it. Recall the blind men and the elephant. Each thought he was dealing with a different beast, depending on which portion of the creature he was touching. High school reform in America is not the work of blind folks, but today it resembles a cafeteria of radically different schemes based on dissimilar theories and rival diagnoses.
To put the best face on it, we're in a period of experimentation, mixing and matching, combining and refining, arguing and trying. Perhaps we're wise to pursue all these strategies and their permutations on grounds that one size truly doesn't fit all and that we don't yet know what, in the end, will work best for whom. But let us also recognize that this is a formula for much confusion—and new tensions if, for example, Washington moves to clamp a single policy regimen upon all of it.
How to make one's way through all this? Perhaps the summiteers will sort it out. Meanwhile, your thoughts are cordially invited.
"Demanding more of our high schools," by Mark Warner, Education Week, November 17, 2004 (registration required)
"Bush's%20school%20agenda%20will%20get%20a%202nd%20term," By Erik W. Robelen and Michelle R. Davis, Education Week, November 17, 2004
"Educators in California set their sights on improving high schools," By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, November 3, 2004
"High scores on Mass. tests will lead to help with tuition," By David J. Hoff, Education Week, November 3, 2004
