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Best Schools
Share Path to Success
Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times, November 30, 2005
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http://www.bridges4kids.org.
High schools
that succeed in boosting achievement of disadvantaged students
engage in many of the same practices, including assigning the
best teachers to the neediest classes, according to two reports
released Wednesday.
The Education Trust, which focuses on ways to close the
achievement gap between low-income minority students and others,
spent the last academic year scrutinizing schools around the
country to find out what the better ones were doing to make a
difference.
Its first report, "Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground," identified
four so-called high-impact schools — Los Altos High in Hacienda
Heights and three North Carolina schools — and compared them
with demographically similar campuses that were making only
average strides with their struggling students.
High-impact schools, while not the strongest performers in all
areas, have been able to make better-than-expected gains with
their students, including large numbers of minority and
low-income youths, researchers said.
The second report, "The Power to Change," examined the practices
at three high-performing schools in Massachusetts, New York and
Washington state.
Kati Haycock, Education Trust director, said at a Washington,
D.C., news conference that the study's goal was to identify
methods that other schools could use to improve their programs
and boost achievement.
"We know that there are far too few high schools that are
helping all children succeed, regardless of their skin color or
neighborhood," Haycock said. "But this research shows us that
real improvement can occur."
High-impact schools tend to differ from typical — or so-called
average impact — high schools in several important ways,
researchers found.
They interviewed faculty, observed classrooms and read student
transcripts and school handbooks.
Among the elements that made these schools successful, according
to the report:
• Principals are more likely to match talented teachers with
students who need them most, instead of following a more common
practice of assigning department heads and other experienced
teachers to advanced or honors classes.
• Support for new teachers tends to be more thorough and
includes such techniques as providing model lesson plans and
teaming a beginner with an experienced colleague.
• Early intervention programs — often mandatory — are used to
help students before they fail and become discouraged; requiring
summer school or after-school tutoring is common.
• Academic support services for struggling students keep them in
current-grade-level classes while they are catching up; in more
typical schools, such students are put into remedial classes,
reducing their chances of meeting rigorous graduation
requirements on time.
• The focus is on preparing students for life beyond high
school, not just on getting students to graduation day; academic
expectations are high — often including a college-prep
curriculum for all students — and consistently communicated to
parents and students.
Researchers found that the average-impact schools often focus on
behavior rules in their student handbooks.
High-impact schools, however, are more likely to emphasize
academic programs and expectations in handbooks and in other
communications to parents.
The more successful schools emphasize reading for at-risk
students and use test data to monitor student progress and
adjust teaching methods.
They also try to place struggling students in the smallest
classes and ensure that teachers, counselors and others have
time to plan together.
At Los Altos High, in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School
District, incoming ninth-graders who are behind in math or
English are enrolled in summer school.
Principal William F. Roberts IV said any resistant parents are
strongly counseled about the program's benefits. If they refuse,
their children receive extra tutoring during the school year.
Los Altos has lengthened the school day and matched its
strongest teachers with students who need them most, but Roberts
said the school still "has a long way to go. We're on a real
journey. Challenging the status quo is a difficult thing."
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