Reforming Secondary Education

Abstract

LET'S START the school year positively by saying something nice about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. It is one of the best conversation starters that public education has ever had. Despite (or maybe because of) its numerous flaws, people across the country -- and not just educators -- are talking as never before about schools, the quality of teaching, expectations, and accountability. The problem is that this law, like most federal involvement in education, focuses on specific strategies. Consequently, the conversations we are having about education and about changing NCLB zero in on small pieces of the whole public education enterprise. How do we more fairly fit disabled children and those with limited ability in English into the testing system? What about schools that barely miss academic targets in only one subgroup? Is there a way for special education teachers who instruct across the curriculum to meet the high- quality teacher requirements without getting certified in each subject? Where are we going to get the capacity for gathering all the data we'll need? Nitpicking, one might say, but unfortunately this is the level of conversation that NCLB fosters. Missing from this opportunity to engage the public in thinking and talking about the public schools are broader and deeper issues that go beyond the law. In the rush to form an agenda for changing NCLB, the conversations are ignoring fundamental questions, such as, What makes a good school? How does a highly qualified teacher differ from others? What price do schools pay for minimizing the influence of communities? And what really engages students in learning? Over the next few months, this column will try to interject into the conversations some attention to values and issues that, in the long run, will do a lot more to determine success under NCLB than will merely revising its technical details. The most current among the ideas that are being left behind is a better understanding about student motivation, especially among high school students. As Marilyn Crawford and Eleanor Dougherty, the authors of Updraft/Downdraft (Scarecrow Press, 2003), point out, high schools offer a lot of incentives to students who already buy into the system and have a clear idea about what they want to do with their lives. Advanced courses, college counseling, better teachers, and a social support system all let these students float easily to the top. Students without the skills and the family and support network to take advantage of such incentives are on a constant downdraft, subjected to remedial and punitive attention that keeps them down. Schools do not have an incentive system for them. Some contend that more challenging and rigorous courses would create incentives for the vast majority of drifting students. Certainly, the most important discovery of the High Schools That Work network throughout the South and several other states is that vocational students who take a standard college-prep core curriculum do better academically than others in the vocational track. High school graduates with sounder academic backgrounds also fare better in terms of income several years after entering the work force, according to researchers at Cornell University. Many groups now consider that a college-ready curriculum in high schools should be the norm for all students. A second tactic for engaging these students puts more emphasis on personalized environments, such as those achieved by the small schools movement, and the building of stronger student/teacher relationships, such as those promoted by the Tripod Project. The two approaches became running themes at a recent series of conferences and meetings on high school reform. The National High School Alliance summarized the calls for high school reform in an interesting report, Crisis or Possibility? Conversations About the American High School. The need for reform was taken as a given. …