How California is trying to reshape high school

from Carolyn JonesCalMatters

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There is no gum stuck to the floor at CART High near Fresno. The saffron yellow walls are not marred by graffiti. Carrying laptops, students calmly prepare in spacious, light-filled hallways for classes like biotechnology and digital marketing. No fighting, no shouting, no bells. No one even lowers the class.

It’s hard to believe that CART High is a public high school. But in the future, it could be a model for every high school in California.

“We can see from the data that the big, old-fashioned factory model of high school — where students run from class to class with a locker as their only stable point of contact — is failing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the State Board of Education. “We need to rethink the whole idea of ​​what high school can be, and right now we have an opportunity to do that.”

The state agency California Collaborative for Educational Excellence launched a pilot program to redesign the high school and middle school. Groups of districts already working to avoid the factory model applied for grants, and the winners will meet, brainstorm, work on challenges and share their experiences across the country, with the hope of inspiring other districts to create innovative high school opportunities. The money will come from $10 million recently allocated in the state budget, as well as from state programs promoting career development and high school dual enrollment.

The idea is to move beyond the traditional high school — with its rigid 50-minute classes and one-on-one classes — and replace it with a new type of school that offers work experience, academics tailored to student interests, stronger personal connections with staff, and multidisciplinary courses that connect directly to career and community needs.

“It must be a joy to go to school every day,” Darling-Hammond said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

Countless schools in California use elements of this idea, with schools within schools that offer career academies or other specialized programs. But very few high schools are dedicated entirely to this.

How high school came about

Public high schools have only been around for about a century in the US. Education for younger children has been around for hundreds of years, but the idea of ​​a school for teenagers only appeared in the early 20th century. The early high schools were based somewhat on a factory model of efficiency, with learning measured in Carnegie units—120 hours spent over a year studying a particular subject. Published by the Carnegie Endowment at the time, in an effort to standardize education, the measure was still used in nearly all high schools and colleges.

But Advances in Adolescent Neuroscience showed that teenagers learn more in a flexible environment with lots of hands-on projects and teamwork. Instead of sitting quietly at desks and listening to a teacher, students are more likely to be engaged if they are allowed some autonomy to pursue topics of interest with their peers.

Alternative schools — typically schools for students who don’t succeed in traditional schools — have been experimenting with this approach for decades. To the state best alternative schools aim not only to help students graduate, but also to match them with internships, teach them practical life skills and take care of their emotional well-being. They often have flexible schedules and small class sizes, with teachers getting to know students and their families personally.

There is a lot of evidence that traditional high schools may be outdated. In the most recent state student surveyalmost half of 11th graders said school was “really boring.” Almost 25% of 11th graders were chronically absent last year.

Academically, the numbers were just as dismal. Only 30 percent of California’s 11th graders performed at or above grade level in math last year, with some student groups doing much worse. Although the graduation rate is 87%, less than half of these students have completed college or career preparation.

“The data speaks for itself,” said Ruslin Ali, head of the XQ Institute, which advocates for high school reform and former head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights under President Barack Obama. “There are young people today who have graduated from high school but cannot calculate the tip of a split bill, grasp the main idea in an authored publication. The case for change is unmistakable.”

Transcripts and units

There are several obstacles to transforming high schools across the country to look like CART. One is higher education. The University of California and California State University require high school students to take a series of classes known as AGs to qualify for admission. Proponents of the high school redesign say those requirements are too strict and high schools need some flexibility in creating new classes that are more interesting to students and more connected to life outside the classroom. They also say that the traditional letter grades that colleges rely on to admit students are too restrictive and that colleges should consider a new kind of transcript that more accurately reflects students’ abilities.

Another obstacle is the Carnegie unit, which is an integral part of how high schools and colleges are structured. Even the Carnegie Foundation was lobbying for changearguing that schools should measure students’ progress based on what they know, not how much time they spent in the classroom. But so far, colleges have shown little interest in eliminating the Carnegie unit.

Child C School

CART High, which stands for Center for Advanced Research and Technology, opened about 25 years ago in a renovated water pump facility in Clovis. A joint initiative between Clovis Unified and Fresno Unified, the idea was to reach students who were struggling in school and give them some work experience that could also boost the local economy. It wasn’t quite an alternative school, but it wasn’t an honors program either.

“We weren’t looking for the best students. We were looking for the disengaged kids,” said Stacey Bynum, CART’s dean of curriculum and instruction, who has been with the school since its inception. “Child C will excel here.”

CART is open to 11th and 12th grade students from both districts, with students selected by lottery. Last year, over 2,200 students applied and 1,000 were accepted. Nearly 80% of CART enrollees are low-income.

Students spend half their day at their regular high school taking classes in math, foreign language, art and more, and half their day at CART, where they choose an area of ​​focus. Options include law and politics, business, forensics, and psychology, among other topics.

The classes, which the school calls labs, are three hours long and are taught by a trio of teachers who weave in literature and other academic subjects that are relevant to the subject. In biotech, for example, students read The Andromeda Strain and The Martian and write their own sci-fi stories based on concepts they learn in class. In law classes, students read Othello or Hamlet, then put the characters through a mock trial.

“We work really hard to get the kids to see the bigger picture of why they’re learning what they’re learning,” said English teacher Emily Satern. “We want them to have that ‘aha!’ moment.”

Attendance is nearly 100 percent and discipline problems are almost unheard of, Principal Rick Watson said. More than 90% of students scored at least “proficient” on the English portion of the Smarter Balanced test. Students take the math part at the other high school.

When he’s not running the school, Watson makes the rounds. Education officials from around the world often visit in hopes of replicating the CART model. Numerous CART-inspired schools have opened in California.

“You have middle school kids all over the place that are falling through the cracks,” Watson said. “Comprehensive high schools are not working for some B, C, D students. The students have potential but are disconnected. They are desperate for a different model of education.”

Madeline Quiroga, who is in the biotechnology class, said she got mediocre grades in her regular high school, but all A’s in CART.

“At my other school they just throw stuff at you and never explain it. Here they actually teach us,” she said. “And these are all things that we actually want to know, so they stick in your brain. Like when I hear someone talk about CRISPR (gene-editing technology), it’s like, ‘Oh, I know something about that.’

Audrey Riede, a Year 11 student in the law class, said she was so inspired that she wanted to become a lawyer.

“CART is so much better than normal school,” she said. “Teachers aren’t just trying to get you to pass, they really want to make you think. It’s just a completely different environment.”

The state will announce the winning pilot proposals in November.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.