“Flying the Plane While We Build It”: A Case Study of an Early College High School

Abstract

In global society, traditional American high school is seen as fragmented, alienating system stalled by an adherence to an outmoded transmission-oriented model of teaching and learning. Thus far, educational reform efforts have fallen short of meeting challenges of an increasingly diverse, technological, and economically-entwined world through innovative development of more thinking-oriented, student-focused learning communities (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Over past two decades, perceived failed promise of comprehensive high school to effectively educate America's youth has generated national interest in high school reform (Goodlad, 1984; Kuo, 2010; Oakes, 1985; Smeardon & Borman, 2009; Wasley, Fine, Gladden, Holland, King, Mosak, & Powell, 2000). One such area of reform is movement to restructure high schools as small learning communities centered around unique curriculum and state-of-the-art teaching (Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001). Financial support from organizations like Annenberg Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and, most notably, Early College High School Initiative (ECHSI) launched by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have helped push small school model from margin to center, and with it, host of empirical studies to examine impact on student academic achievement. Empirical studies examining small learning communities are important in developing comprehensive understanding of effectiveness of early college high school model and in developing policy for improvement and sustainability. Also important to our understanding of ECHSI is qualitative research focusing on one or several small learning communities. Qualitative studies can deepen breadth of quantitative record as they illuminate lived experiences, perspectives, and practices of students and teachers who make up these learning communities. Qualitative approaches provide insight into daily challenges and successes as they are experienced and understood in small school context. The purpose of this paper, then, is to offer on-the-ground insight into student and teacher relationships and challenges at one early college high school. We use Noddings' ethics of care as conceptual framework to explore factors that support and constrain student and teacher development and success within one such small learning community. We conclude with several key issues and implications worthy of further consideration and investigative research of early college high schools. The Value of Small Learning Communities In basic sense, small learning communities are rooted in ethics of care, particularly in terms of focus on close, reciprocal relationships between students and teachers and personalization of school environment. Noddings' (1995a) ethics of care contends that primary educational aim should be to encourage the growth of competent, caring, loving, and (p. 24), not in superficial sense of caring as a warm and fuzzy feeling that makes people kind and lovable (1995b, p. 676), but as morally, ethically, and intellectually defensible act. The argument for small, personalized learning communities as environments that also promote equitable gains in academic achievement is reflected in Coalition of Essential Schools and Carnegie Foundation's work, which focuses on more personalized teaching and learning (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2004; Sizer 1992), Annenberg Foundation's emphasis on reducing students' alienation in schools (Chicago Annenberg Challenge, 1994), and Child Development Project's focus on restructuring schools to promote caring communities (Developmental Studies Center, 1998). According to growing body of research, small learning communities promote more equitable access to academically challenging courses (Berstein, Millsap, Schimmenti, & Page, 2010; Bryk, Lee and Holland, 1993; French, Atkinson, & Rugen, 2007; Gregory & Smith, 1987; Meier, 1995; Werblow & Duesbery, 2009) and more equitable gains in achievement (Darling-Hammond et al. …