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I N N O V A T O R |
News about high school innovation
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Oct. 26, 2009
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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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Stanly ECHS helps students sharpen college, career goals
Many college freshmen are undecided about the major they plan to pursue, let alone the career they envision for themselves. At Stanly Early College High School, students are learning how to think carefully about those big questions as young as 14 or 15 years old.
The school, one of 69 early college high schools now open in North Carolina, is helping prepare its students for college, careers and life through innovative approaches to teaching and learning. And one of those innovations capitalizes on the school's needs by creating an opportunity designed to help students make well-considered decisions.
Students who attend early college high schools in North Carolina and elsewhere are nothing if not on a fast track. They graduate in four or five years not just with a high school diploma, but also with an associate's degree or as much as two years of transferrable college credit. But compressing what would typically be six years of education into four or five also leaves little time for false starts or wrong turns. Making the right decision is crucial.
That's because students must decide during their sophomore year which "degree pathway" they plan to pursue: associate's of arts, associate's of science or at some schools, such as Stanly, an applied credential. As a practical matter, a student who changes pathways in midstream might simply fall short of the courses required for a specific degree.
But from a broader perspective, the need to make a good choice is also proving to be a powerful learning opportunity at Stanly early college, where school counselor Joyce Hansen has developed a semester-long seminar that helps students know themselves so they can think clearly and intelligently about what career field might suit them best.
Too often, Hansen said, students make decisions on impulse or are simply following the lead of their friends, rather than on a process of careful consideration based on a balancing of various options and factors.
"Especially as young teenagers, they haven't made big decisions," Hansen said. "It's often because their parents told them or they're following their friends."
Hansen's seminar at Stanly ECHS, called Informed Decision Making, helps shift more responsibility to the students -- an overarching goal for all innovative high schools -- while equipping them with the tools to make good choices. The weekly, 90-minute classes focus on helping students understand their personal identity, their interests and their abilities, and as a culminating activity, students develop and present the process they followed to chose their degree pathway.
"At some point, they'll have to ask themselves who they are," Hansen said. "We're trying to teach them to be more independent. ... And when students choose a career, it needs to be a good fit with their value system."
Wilber Ruiz, 17 and a senior, said the decision-making seminar helped him shift his thinking from a career in architecture to one in science, possibly marine biology.
"It helps you look at decisions in different ways," Wilber said. "You need to consider a lot of factors. We discovered a lot about ourselves."
Even as Hansen wants students to choose a focus, she said she discourages them from aiming too narrowly at one specific career. " 'A lot of careers may not even exist, or you might change your mind,' " she said she tells students. "For students to pin their hopes on one thing, what do you do if you fall short, you don't get into Duke. It's not important at this level to be so focused." What is important, however, is having a good sense of direction, she said.
"In a traditional setting, when you look at kids who are dropping out of school, they're doing that without making an informed decision," Hansen said. "They lack a focus or a goal. For a lot of those kids, this kind of approach could help kids stay in school and make better choices. When kids have confidence in themselves, in the context of a career field, you get them excited about moving forward."
John Balls, principal of Stanly ECHS, said that a program born out of the school's necessity to help students meet the requirements of the community college's degree pathways is yielding greater benefits for students. Balls also believes the decision-making curriculum that Hansen developed could benefit not only other early college or other innovative high schools but traditional high schools as well.
"This really is a game changer," Balls said. "It sets us apart. There's no other traditional school that does this kind of thing. But it
does have applicability to traditional schools. Somehow we have to leverage
what we have here to others. This thing can be very powerful."
Stanly's homegrown decision-making seminar is beginning to get attention elsewhere. The North Carolina Association of School Administrators gave it a merit award for innovative programs in 2008, and an NCNSP-sponsored "webinar" teleconference earlier this fall about the program sparked interest among other innovative high schools in the statte. Hansen will deliver a presentation about it to the North Carolina School Counselors Association in Greensboro on Nov. 6.
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NC early colleges toured by U.S. Dept. of Education officials
Two of North Carolina's innovative high schools were in the spotlight during a recent visit by several key leaders from the U.S. Department of Education and Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based education organization that leads the national early college high school initiative.
Sampson and Cross Creek early college high schools were the focus of the Oct. 19 visit, which included classroom observations as well as conversations with students, teachers and principals Linda Jewel-Carr, at Sampson ECHS, and Mindy Vickers, at Cross Creek ECHS.
The visitors were interested in learning about early college high schools as an effective educational innovation, said Fay Agar, who directs the North Carolina Early College High School Initiative for the N.C. New Schools Project. In addition, she said, the visitors were interested in how the approach might be used on a broader scale and to look at North Carolina as a model, perhaps.
"They spent time with students, questioned students on a variety of topics, met with teachers and principals and made a few quick classroom observations," Agar said. "They were especially interested in student perceptions of how the school was different and in the leadership necessary to bring about this kind of change.
"We focused a lot on leadership -- how you train people and take to scale the kind of leaders that they saw in the two schools," Agar said. "A big focus was on how the principal is the key to improved outcomes and higher functioning schools."
Visiting the schools from the U.S. Department of Education was a three-person team that included Greg Darneider, a former official with the Chicago Public Schools focusing on college access who now serves as advisor to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on similar issues; Angelica Annino, an assistant to Duncan; and Kwasi Asare, who works in the department's Office of Innovation and Improvement.
From Jobs for the Future, they were joined by Nancy Hoffman, vice president for high school through college, and Jass Stewart, the organization's vice president for communications.
In follow-up notes to Jewell-Carr and Vickers, Hoffman said the two schools made a strong impression.
"I've
gone home envious of what North Carolina is achieving and the commitment you
all have to finding and supporting first generation young people," Hoffman said. "I think our
visitors also went home deeply impressed by the high standards of your school,
the care given to the young people, and the undeniable results."
Hoffman also said she was impressed by the students themselves, some of whom had set out initially to finish their schooling with an associate's degree but now plan to go on to a four-year college or university to earn a bachelor's degree.
"At least in early college high school, once these kids get a hold of success," she said, "they're confident that more education is better, and so they all want to go on."
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3 innovative high schools honored for perfect graduation rate
Three innovative high schools were honored earlier this month by state Superintendent June Atkinson for achieving a 100 percent graduation rate with the class of 2009.
The three schools were among seven statewide that were singled out for having graduated an entire class that lost no students as dropouts since they started as 9th graders. The innovative schools, all partners of the N.C. New Schools Project, were Anson County Early College High School, The Early/Middle College High School at GTCC (Guilford Technical Community College) and Newton-Conover Health Science High School.
For the last two years, Atkinson has held the recognition ceremony to underscore the importance of high school graduation and to highlight schools with strong results.
"North Carolina must redouble its efforts to keep students in school and on track for high school graduation," Atkinson said during the Oct. 12 event. "A high school diploma is a basic accomplishment for anyone entering the workforce and an essential stepping stone to a community college or university. The schools and districts we have honored today show us that public schools can have high graduation rates, and when they do, students are the winners."
In all, 17 schools and a dozen districts were recognized. The districts with the 10 best graduation rates (three districts tied for 10th place) were honored, with four-year graduation rates ranging from 81.4 percent to 90.2 percent. Ten other high schools were singled out for having the highest graduation rate by their cohort size, in five categories ranging from 100-199 students to 500 students or larger.
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Atkins Pre-Engineering teacher receives national award
Leslie Snyder Eaves, a teacher at Atkins School of Pre-Engineering in Winston-Salem/Forsyth, is one of 10 teachers nationally to be recognized for their efforts to promote and teach pre-engineering courses and to interest students in STEM-related careers.
Eaves, who has taught at the Atkins school since it opened in 2005, has won a "Building the Future Award," given by The Society of Manufacturing Engineers Education Foundation and 3M for excellence in science, technology, engineering and math education based on Project Lead the Way, a curriculum and approach shared by 3,000 schools across the country.
Eaves and the winners from nine other states each will receive $1,000, and interactive whiteboards will be donated to each instructor's classroom. The awards will be presented Nov. 12 in Austin, Texas, during Project Lead the Way's national symposium.
Selection criteria for the award focuses on teachers' use of the pre-engineering curriculum, which includes hands-on activities, field trips and group projects. Candidates are also judged on the quality of their instructional practice, their ability to inspire and motivate students and their professional leadership.
Eaves, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering from the University of South Carolina, told the award committee that her background in research has allowed her to add more depth to her pre-engineering classes.
Among the comments she sought from former students for her award submission was this one:
"Instead of sitting at the front of the classroom lecturing, you let us work hands on. Also you aren't behind our backs watching everything we do, you give us freedom to work at our pace but with a deadline, which means we always know what to expect and get things done whether we want to or not. The freedom you give us in the classroom motivates us to do our work."
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Sizer, leading pioneer of high school innovation, dies at 77
Theodore R. Sizer, whose vision for more personal, democratic and engaging high schools helped inspire reform efforts nationwide, died Oct. 21 of colon cancer. Read this remembrance from George Wood at The Forum for Education and Democracy and obituaries from The New York Times and Education Week.
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Become a fan of NCNSP on Facebook; join the discussion
North Carolina New Schools Project now has its own Facebook page.
If you are a Facebook user already, become a fan today and contribute to the
conversation. If not, you can follow the page without joining Facebook,
but you won't be able to post your comments or content. Either way, please take a look here. Back to top
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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.
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