I N N O V A T O R
News about high school innovation
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Nov. 7, 2008
Welcome to INNOVATOR, a bimonthly report on high school change in North Carolina from the North Carolina New Schools Project. INNOVATOR informs practitioners, policy makers, and friends of public education about high school innovation in North Carolina as well as success stories and research from across the nation.
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In This Issue
Many innovative high schools make ABCs gains
New rules require common reporting of graduation rates
Educational attainment stalls among young adults
East Wake Health Science student aims high in US contest
North Carolina school innovation on display Nov. 18
ABCs results improve for many innovative high schools

Yesterday, the State Board of Education and the Department of Public Instruction released ABC End-of-Course test performance for all North Carolina schools, including 85 of 86 innovative high schools that enrolled students during the 2007-08 school year (Cherokee High School, which is operated by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, is not included in the state's accountability system).  The 85 schools were in their first, second or third year of high school innovation supported by the North Carolina New Schools Project.  

While the schools continue to work to ensure that all students graduate ready for college, careers and life, their results show progress toward high performance across the state:

·    Four in 10 (41 percent) of innovative high schools met expectations for academic growth projected by the state, and one in six (17 percent) exceeded growth expectations.

·    Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) of innovative high schools outperformed the traditional high school against which they are compared for performance on a number of indicators.  NCNSP identified each comparison traditional high school based on demographics and previous ABCs performance.

·    Nearly one-third (32 percent) of innovative high schools had a performance composite of 80 percent or greater, compared to just 5 percent of the comparison traditional high schools and 13 percent of all traditional 9-12 high schools statewide.

·    Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of the 57 innovative high schools that were open in 2006-07 improved their performance composite in 2007-08 (compared to 77 percent for comparison high schools).  More than one-third (35 percent) of innovative high schools increased their performance composite by at least five percentage points.

Preliminary analysis of the results shows that these break-the-mold high schools continue to work through the growing pains of innovation and deep change in teaching and learning. They're also continuing to adjust to more demanding standards on state math exams which were first introduced in the 2006-07 year. 

As part of its Integrated System of School Support Services (IS4), NCNSP this year is offering more schools the opportunity for "school quality reviews" undertaken by Cambridge Education, a globally recognized authority.  The intensive reviews offer schools insight into specific strategies for raising performance.  NCNSP also is tailoring its coaching support to fit specific schools' needs.
 
Feds demand better monitoring, reporting of graduation rates

It's hardly news that too many students across the United States fail to finish high school.  By one recent estimate, 7,000 students quit school each day. Yet the true magnitude of the nation's dropout problem is often obscured by faulty or inconsistent ways that schools keep track of students. Accountability, too, is often left poorly defined.

A change in the rules under the federal No Child Left Behind law is intended to sharpen the focus on high school completion by mandating a uniform approach nationally to reporting graduation rates. In issuing the new regulations last week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told the Associated Press that the changes in the law will make high schools more accountable not only for test performance but also graduation.

North Carolina high schools have already started tracking and reporting so-called "cohort" graduation rates by following each student from the time of 9th grade enrollment through graduation. The state adopted the same methodology, recommended by the National Governors Association in 2005, that is now mirrored in the new rules under No Child Left Behind. North Carolina has reported a cohort graduation rate for the class of 2006, 2007 and 2008.

But other changes in the law will also put additional pressure on high schools in North Carolina and nationally to ensure that minorities and other historically underserved students are showing improved graduation results. Currently, high schools in North Carolina must show only a modest gain from one year to the next in their overall graduation rates. But beginning in 2012, minority and other student subgroups must also meet the same goals for improved graduation rates, just as they must do for the passing rates of subgroups on math and reading tests. North Carolina's high schools -- and the state as a whole -- are already reporting graduation rates for minorities and other subgroups, one of the new requirements under No Child Left Behind.

Yet, even as North Carolina and other states are more accurately tracking and reporting graduation performance, a recent report from The Education Trust urges states to set more aggressive goals to improve that performance and ensure that more students complete high school.
 
The report, Counting on Graduation, from the Washington-based advocacy organization questions the annual growth targets set by North Carolina. To meet yearly growth expectations, high schools in the state can make a gain of just 0.1 percent from one year to the next in the graduation rate.  Given the current graduation rate hovering at 70 percent, North Carolina could meet its growth target for a century before reaching its graduation rate target of 80 percent, the Education Trust noted.

North Carolina's growth goal isn't the most questionable, though.  High schools in Delaware, New Mexico and South Carolina have met their state's annual growth targets by just standing still. 

In contrast, the report cites Tennessee, which has tailored annual gains for each high school, based on a final statewide graduation rate goal of 89.5 percent by 2014. Schools that are farther from that target face a steeper climb than those that are nearer the goal. In 2007, the report says, 77  percent of Tennessee's schools met their annual, incremental target rate.
Report: Young adults less educated than earlier generations

One consequence of stagnant high school graduation rates is reflected in a new report that found the current generation of young adults has reached only the same level of college attainment as adults who are aged 30 and older.

The report, released by the American Council on Education, says that the percentage of adults  between the ages of 25 and 29 in 2006 with at least an associate's degree was the same as older adults -- about 35 percent. That lack of educational advancement from one generation to the next may be the first since World War II, if not earlier.

Even as white and Asian American young adults did make gains over older adults, losses by growing minorities such as Hispanics has resulted in a generation that overall has fallen behind in its educational achievement, according to the report, Minorities in Higher Education 2008 Twenty-third Status Report. Among Hispanics and American Indians, young adults have even less education than the generation that preceded them. While 18 percent of older Hispanics have earned at least an associate's degree, 16 percent of younger adults have done so; and while 21 percent of older American Indians have at least a two-year degree, among younger adults, 18 percent have at least that credential.

Educational attainment among black young adults is unchanged from the preceding generation at 24 percent. But the gap is widening at the other end of the spectrum. The percentage of Asian American young adults with at least an associate's degree has increased to 66 percent from 54 percent of older adults; among white young adults, 41 percent have at least a two-year degree, compared to 37 percent of older adults.

Molly Corbett Broad, the former president of the University of North Carolina system who is now president of the American Council on Education, said during a teleconference last month that the report should be raising alarms across the country, according to Inside Higher Education.

"We are at a tipping point in our nation's history," Broad said. "One of the core tenets of the American dream is the hope that younger generations, who've had greater opportunities for educational advancement than their parents and grandparents, will be better off than the generations before them, yet this report shows that aspiration is at serious risk."
East Wake student named semifinalist in Siemens competition

For Giovanni Leon, East Wake's School of Health Science has given him his first exposure to classes in medical science and has helped stoke his ambition to be a surgeon.

The innovative high school can also take a bit of the credit for the 17-year-old's foray into serious scientific research that landed him on the list of a dozen semifinalists from North Carolina for the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. All but three of the semifinalists are students at the North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham.

"The teachers here are willing to help me with anything," said Giovanni, a senior who is a member of the first full class which will graduate in the spring from the School of Health Science, which opened in 2005.

At the urging of his chemistry teacher last year, Giovanni applied for a summer internship called Project SEED, which offers talented, disadvantaged high school students research opportunities in chemistry at Duke University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. Giovanni ended up entering the research project he undertook at NC State -- related to mosquito-borne viruses -- for the Siemens competition.

Giovanni said he's been invited back to continue his research next summer. Meanwhile, he's getting ready to apply for college.  So far, that list includes UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, Wake Forest and Harvard.
North Carolina school innovation on public display Nov. 18

Innovation will be the word of the day Nov. 18, when schools across North Carolina will open their doors to show how they're changing teaching and learning to keep pace with a changing world.

The North Carolina School Innovation Day will feature schools at all levels, including a number of high schools that are partners with the North Carolina New Schools Project. All participating schools will be open to the public between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The event is being organized by the Department of Public Instruction in cooperation with local school districts.

To learn more and to find participating schools, visit the DPI website.

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INNOVATOR is produced by the North Carolina New Schools Project, an initiative of the Office of the Governor and the Education Cabinet with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other businesses and foundations. For story suggestions or to opt out of receiving this e-mail report, please send an e-mail to innovator@newschoolsproject.org or call Todd Silberman at (919) 277-3760.