Large Comprehensive High School Research Articles

Black Lives Matter: Examining an Urban High School STEAM Academy Supporting African American Students, Families, and Communities using a Healing-Centered Approach

In this study, we used an exploratory sequential mixed methods research design to examine how an urban high school STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) themed academy—with a 98% African American/Black and 100% economically disadvantaged student population—provided wraparound services to demonstrate care for students, families, and the community. We also studied how their school efforts promoted student engagement. In Phase 1, we collected qualitative data to examine the wraparound supports and philosophies that the school stakeholders (N = 39) used to promote a sense of caring as well as community. In Phase 2, we analyzed quantitative survey data from the African American/Black academy students (N = 177) on their levels of engagement (behavioral, cognitive, and emotional) in the school and compared them to African American/Black students at a comprehensive high school (N = 179). Based on a combination of perspectives of school personnel, school stakeholders, and results from the high school survey of student engagement, we found that the wraparound services provided equitable supports for economically disadvantaged students, was instituted using a healing-centered mindset, and enabled the school personnel and stakeholders to adopt a no excuse disposition. Even further, we found that in comparison to students at the large comprehensive high school, the academy students had statistically and practically significantly higher scores on behavioral engagement (p < .001; d = .58), and statistically significantly higher scores on cognitive engagement (p < .01; d = .31). There was no statistically significant difference in emotional engagement (p = .98). Our findings highlight best practices for ensuring equity for African American/Black high schools in the wake of both the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Comparative Analysis of School and Student Characteristics on Bullying in Urban Career Academies and a Large Comprehensive High School

ABSTRACT In this study, we examined the relationship between school type and students’ victimization and observations of bullying in their schools. We compared student perceptions (N = 1,283) of bullying in three urban career academies with different school configurations (e.g., magnet and school-within-a-school) and a large, urban comprehensive high school. We found that compared to their counterparts in the large comprehensive high school, students in two of the career academies – operated as magnet schools – were significantly less likely to experience bullying as a victim or to observe it in their respective schools. However, compared to students in the comprehensive high school, there were no significant differences in bullying among students in the career academy operated under a school-within-a-school model. It is plausible that students in career academies that operate as magnet schools are significantly less likely to become victims and observe bullying.

Institutional Ambiguity and De Facto Tracking in STEM

Background/ContextMany schools no longer track classes to increase access to courses at all levels, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. However, informal processes can “de facto” track students, placing them at the same level across subjects. Research shows that de facto tracking is prevalent in STEM, especially between mathematics and science course placements. Less is known about the relationship between mathematics and engineering—the focus of this study.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyMathematics placement is likely to shape participation in engineering given its position under the STEM umbrella. Yet, de facto tracking does not occur all the time. This may depend on the categorization of courses as “academic” or “vocational,” but there is little research about this aspect of course-to-student matching. Therefore, we investigate an unexpected case of equitable participation where mathematics placement does not de facto track students in engineering. We ask: How do institutional and organizational factors shape the absence of de facto tracking?Research DesignWe used qualitative data drawn from a two-year mixed-methods study in a public high school district with one large comprehensive high school. The school is in the lower third of per pupil spending in the state of Massachusetts, yet has significant engineering-related course offerings. Located near Boston, it serves an economically and racially diverse student body of ∼1,800 students. For this article, we analyzed 998 hours of observations during and after school, in engineering-related elective courses and extracurricular activities, and interviews with 29 students, 31 teachers, six guidance counselors, two district administrators, and the principal.Findings/ResultsWe find competing vocational and academic logics equally frame engineering, which we call “institutional ambiguity.” This dual framing is present at the institutional level and is supported at the school level by three organizational factors: 1) courses and activities that occur in both vocational and academic spaces, 2) teachers who link vocational and academic fields, and 3) an organizational commitment to support the integration of vocational activities.Conclusions/RecommendationsOverall, this article contributes to educational and organizational research by identifying the institutional factors and organizational processes that shape the categorization of courses and student-to-course matching. Our research reveals the conditions under which schools and the actors within them have greater agency, where ambiguity in the broader environment allows for contestation and renegotiation of status hierarchies. We argue that by leveraging ambiguity, schools may avoid contributing to inequity in STEM.

From Comprehensive High Schools to Small Learning Communities: accomplishments and challenges

This article describes progress made in organizing US high schools into small learning communities, a practice spurred by the recognition that many of America's large comprehensive high schools had become impersonal and alienating. Small learning community reforms show a pattern of sustained growth over the last four decades but also frequently fail to achieve instructional improvements. The challenge in making instructional improvements is to pursue sound instructional strategies which small scale uniquely positions teachers to carry out, and to make shifts in district policy and practice which currently pose barriers to adopting such strategies. The Journey of Redesigning US High Schools As a long-term student of high school reform and a former leader of a new small school, we are happy to report that the practice of organizing US high schools into smaller units shows a pattern of sustained growth and consolidation over the last four decades. This is a striking achievement in the world of education reform where even well-designed reforms come and go at a rapid pace. We discern three stages in the evolution of small learning community practice.

Conceptualizing Special Education Services in Small Learning Communities

The ills of urban schools are well documented. The challenges of recruiting and retaining quality teachers, student mobility, poor conditions of school facilitates, and lack of parent involvement are only a few of the issues related to urban schools. Large comprehensive high schools are a staple of many urban school districts. This model of educating a large number of students in one school has come into question. The reduction in size of schools, especially large comprehensive high schools is now the focus of many school reform efforts. Lost in this discussion is the consideration of special education services and how special education services can be effectively integrated into any small school or small learning community restructuring efforts. A possible model of how special education services can be integrated into high schools restructured into small learning communities is presented, including considerations of benefits for students with and without disabilities.

Youth as a Bridge Between Home and School

This article analyzes efforts to increase parent involvement and student voice among Mexican American families who are low income at a large comprehensive high school. Although the parent-involvement effort ultimately failed, the students developed their own initiatives to help support Latino youth and their families, including the development of a bilingual tutoring program and a translation program for families needing to communicate with the school. The experiences in this article suggest that, rather than focusing solely on parent-involvement strategies, schools also increase student voice as a way to bridge the gap between families and the school and to improve student outcomes.

An Extreme Degree of Difficulty: The Educational Demographics of Urban Neighborhood High Schools

Despite the growth of a variety of alternatives to the neighborhood high school, most students in big-city school systems still attend large comprehensive high schools that serve a particular residential area. The authors contend that the extreme concentration of educational need at these schools is often overlooked by policymakers, school reform programs, and even district personnel. To illustrate the challenges facing neighborhood high schools, this article examines key academic characteristics of 9th-graders in Philadelphia during the 1999-2000 school year. The authors find that a large percentage of 9th graders at neighborhood high schools have been 9th graders for 2 or more years. Many of the 1st-time 9th graders either are over-age, are 2 or more years below grade level in reading and math, or had weak attendance in 8th grade. These data suggest that large and sustained investments of human and financial capital are desperately needed in the many neighborhood schools that serve primarily, and often almost exclusively, students with multiple risk factors for academic failure.

Equity and Effectiveness: Challenge and Promise in a Tale of Two Schools and a Partnership

This article addresses the question of what is entailed in enhancing teacher quality and student achievement through university-school partnership. It compares two different secondary schools working in partnership with Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. University Park Campus School (UPCS) is a small, neighborhood-based school that spans grades 7–12 and serves 215 students. South High School is a large comprehensive high school, with grades 9–12, and 1500 students. UPCS has attained an exceptional level of effectiveness, as reflected in student achievement; all students have passed the statewide test on their first try, with most scoring in the top two performance categories (“proficient” and “advanced”), and qualified for postsecondary education. In contrast, South High, committed to a major restructuring initiative, marks improvement more slowly and incrementally. While scale looms large as a factor in explaining the effectiveness of each school (an instrumental factor), the story of the differences between the two schools is more complex. The comparison focuses on the most salient dimensions in an effort to understand critical cultural dimensions of effectiveness.

High School Size, Organization, and Content: What Matters for Student Success?

High School Size, Organization, and Content:What Matters for Student Success? Linda Darling-Hammond, Peter Ross, and Michael Milliken In recent years, the large comprehensive high school has been a subject of growing critique by researchers and reformers. "Factory model" schools have been criticized for their impersonal structures, fragmented curricula, segregated and unequal program options, and inability to respond effectively to student needs.1 Some studies have found that, other things equal, smaller schools appear to produce higher achievement, lower dropout rates, lower rates of violence and vandalism, more positive feelings about self and school, and more participation in school activities. These outcomes appear more pronounced for students who are traditionally lower achieving.2 In addition, the belief that large schools are necessarily more cost-effective has been challenged by studies finding equivalent operating costs and lower costs per graduate in smaller schools.3 However, there are competing findings about the effects of smaller schools for different groups of students and about the effects of school size and organizational features in diverse contexts. This review examines these findings across a wide range of studies over the last thirty years. We conclude that the influences of size appear to be mediated by other features of school organizations that are sometimes, but not always, associated with size, making the relationship between school size and many desired outcomes an indirect one. These other features are associated with aspects of school design, including how adults and students are organized to work together, the nature of the curriculum, [End Page 163] and how access to knowledge is organized. Smaller schools may provide the opportunity for important educational conditions such as stronger relationships, greater student involvement, and greater academic press, but they do not, by themselves, guarantee that those conditions will exist. Furthermore, the processes used to create smaller schools or units within large schools have been highly varied, including many different models (for example, schools within a school with varying degrees of autonomy, house plans, mini-schools, learning communities, clusters, magnets, and charters within larger schools or as stand-alone schools) that have been launched under widely differing conditions. We would expect—and research has confirmed—variable levels of success among school restructuring efforts launched with different designs, varying amounts of planning time and resources, and varying levels of staff experience and quality, as well as under different political conditions, collective bargaining agreements, and other factors. Finally, there are questions about what "smaller" means and about what school size may be optimum, since comparative studies have examined different size ranges. For example, research looking at data from different systems in different eras has resulted in recommended maximum high school enrollments ranging from 500 to 1,000.4 Some analysts suggest that optimum size varies with the socioeconomic status of the community, with 1,000 probably the upper limit for schools serving affluent students and substantially smaller sizes for schools serving low-income students.5 Our review of the available evidence suggests that, in addition to student backgrounds, important variables influencing high school outcomes for different groups of students include organizational structures that create more coherence and "communal" orientation, reduce curriculum differentiation, increase instructional authenticity and rigor, and enhance personalization (that is, the extent to which students are well known by adults). While we have found no research support for the large urban comprehensive schools serving several thousand students that still exist in many cities, many questions remain about what kinds of organizations should replace these gargantuan institutions. We believe that interpreting competing findings in ways that can guide productive decisionmaking requires a much more nuanced analysis of the interacting elements of relative school size, student body composition, organizational design, curriculum content, and instructional features than is typically undertaken. As Bickel and Howley note, "Seldom have policymakers or researchers asked 'Better for whom?' or 'Better for what?' or 'Better under what conditions?'"6 In what follows, we seek to address these questions. [End Page 164] Research on School Size Much of the research on school size is quantitative and correlational, using state administrative data or large national data sets such as the High School and Beyond Study and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS...

Toward the School as Sanctuary Concept in Multicultural Urban Education: Implications for Small High School Reform

This article describes the school as sanctuary concept through the voices of students enrolled in a small urban high school that curricularly privileges the linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical realities of its communities. Moreover, this particular school was founded by students and teachers over 30 years ago as a direct response to pedagogically and psychologically colonizing large comprehensive high schools in a major urban school district. According to students, a school becomes a sanctuary when there are four essential components in place. These sanctuary-like attributes include multiple definitions of caring relations between students and their teachers, the importance of a familial-like school environment, the necessity of psychologically and physically safe school spaces, and allowing students a forum in which they are encouraged to affirm their racial/ethnic pride. Implications for forwarding this concept within a larger discourse around urban school reform are discussed.

Personalizing a Large Comprehensive High School

Although bringing a personalized learning environment to a small school is challenging in its own right, it is much easier than personalizing the environment of a large school. This article describes the interventions used in one suburban school with over 3,700 students to move the learning environment toward a more personalized climate. The multi-prnged strategies used are discussed, as are the results of a repeat-measure climate evaluation. During the researchers'years of involvement with the school, the climate was clearly moved toward personalization.

The Elusive Goal of School Spirit in the Comprehensive High School: A Case History, 1916-1941

Scholars and practitioners have recently asked whether large comprehensive high schools contribute to student alienation. At the same time, some school administrators have stressed the importance of school spirit to create a powerful sense of community and as a way to mitigate feelings of student detachment and anonymity. This paper considers a historical case from 1916-1941 at Ithaca High School, in Ithaca New York, to see how students and administrators defined school spirit. Using an underutilized artifact—school newspapers—it uncovers the social dynamics within the school. Select students writing in the school newspaper articulated three dimensions of school spirit: participation, loyalty, and pride. Their views reflected those of the administration. Frequent complaints about the perceived absence of school spirit, however, indicate that not all students at I.H.S. embraced this seemingly elusive ideal. This paper suggests that the ideal of school spirit never came to full fruition at I.H.S., because its very definition was undemocratic and static. It concludes that in order for current and future attempts to establish and nurture school spirit in comprehensive high schools to succeed, they must include all members, and that its definition must be open to revision.

Leading Small: Eight Lessons for Leaders in Transforming Large Comprehensive High Schools

Simply carving up a large comprehensive high school into several smaller schools does not guarantee improvement. But Mr. Copland and Ms. Boatright find that key lessons garnered from numerous small-school conversions can guide school leaders through the cultural changes that must accompany the structural ones if small schools are to fulfill their potential. IN RARE contemplative moment, Steven Gering is scratching his head and thinking. Over the past 18 months, assistant principal Gering has been leading the effort to reshape massive suburban Mountlake Terrace High School into a collection of autonomous small schools, and his frenetic schedule has left him with little reflective time. The school now perches on the precipice of change. It is late July, and in a few short weeks Terrace's nearly 1,900 students will split into five new ninth- through 12th-grade schools of no more than 400 students, each with its own unique mission, goals, course offerings, faculty, and schedule. Gering and his colleagues continue to work out the remaining details for the transformation, including not-insignificant final decisions about exactly how each of the new small schools will be led. Pondering the question of leadership, Gering notes, We've changed our view of teacher leadership and administration. Small schools just take more leaders than large schools, more people to step up and provide the knowledge and skills we need at any particular moment. You've heard how it's important to have teachers as generalists in small schools. Well, we also need leaders as generalists. For school administrators and teachers, the process of change begun by Mountlake Terrace -- just one of numerous comprehensive high school conversion projects across the U.S. -- raises some fundamental questions for those seeking to create and lead a different kind of secondary school experience for America's young people. How should leadership in a small high school differ from leadership in a large one? What unique leadership opportunities do small schools offer? And what new challenges or old di-lemmas remain? Moreover, what leadership lessons can those who seek to transform large comprehensive high schools derive from the knowledge base that is emerging on small schools? What is certain, to Gering and others like him, is that leadership must adapt if the current movement to downsize high schools is ever to matter much. If educators can learn anything from more than two decades' worth of efforts to restructure schools, it is that structural changes alone are not enough to improve schools for the students who attend them or the professionals who work in them.1 Without key shifts in the emphasis and disposition of leadership, the new small schools that emerge from the transformed large schools run the risk of winding up simply as smaller versions of their former giant selves. Transforming the Behemoth Gering and his colleagues at Mountlake Terrace High School are among many secondary educators currently seeking to transform large comprehensive high schools into collections of smaller learning communities, a movement gaining momentum nationwide. Significant investments made in this reform strategy suggest that educators and policy makers place considerable stock in smaller learning communities as a way to improve schooling for students and teachers. Along with grants from the U.S. Department of Education totaling well over $145 million annually, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiatives have so far funneled some $375 million toward this end.2 Why are so many large high schools downsizing? progression of studies beginning in the late 1980s and continuing to date strongly suggests that small schools are more productive and effective than large ones. Reviews of research summarize the findings of such studies and the advantages of small schools for students.3 As one researcher summed it up, A large body of research in the affective and social realms overwhelmingly affirms the superiority of small schools. …

Fulfilling the Promise of Small High Schools

Small high schools offer the kinds of environments we need if we are to try out some of our newer ideas in school redesign, Mr. Myatt argues. States and districts should pay attention to what these new institutions are making possible. SMALL HIGH SCHOOLS are big news, and rightfully so. They are showing us new ways to provide the social and emotional structures needed to support high achievement. Moreover, if we are open to learning from them, they can help us think differently about curriculum, assessment, and standard setting and can contribute much to the renewal of the teaching profession. Whether it's creating small neighborhood schools, scaling up successful national models, or implementing the small learning community conversion strategy to help our large comprehensive high schools become kinder and gentler places, the small high school movement offers a welcome window on the future of secondary education. For decades, the American high school has remained insulated from new ideas and reasoned changes by a thicket of extraordinarily interlocked statutes, regulations, college admissions policies, and contractual agreements, as well as by our society's own myths and revisionist memories. There is growing consensus, however, that many of the new, highly functional small schools are more trust- and community-oriented, with staff members who are freer and more likely to carve out new working relationships, design new systems, and set different priorities. This agreement to co-construct new schools from within offers unprecedented opportunities for the long-overdue redesign of our high schools. Initiatives such as those funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are banking on this premise. The planners of small schools have also begun to change the conversation from per pupil to per graduate. Small high schools cost a bit more up front, but there is no shortage of data and experience showing that funding a completed education is much more cost-effective than dealing with the poverty, unwanted pregnancies, crime, and unemployment that too often accompany life on the margins. The pressure on inner-city schools to address social inequities remains enormous, but few large high schools, in their planning and priority setting, have shown the ability to respond to the real needs of students and families. Featuring small houses, well-developed advisory programs, the looping of students and teachers over several years, and proven community engagement strategies, small high schools can reduce the frequency of negative behaviors both in and beyond school by creating intimacy and deep relationships with students. These are nimble institutions, committed to and capable of providing the care and concern that today's students and families require. Small, responsive schools are, quite simply, more likely to keep students until they finish the coursework required for a diploma and to help them leave high school with authentic skills and realistic plans for the future. Beyond the growing public awareness of the Columbine effect of alienation and unhealthy social stratification in many large schools, there is abundant evidence that small high schools are better at creating and sustaining the healthy intellectual and social climates needed for the richest kinds of teaching and learning. Small school size is consistently linked to positive outcomes in school climate, test scores, college attendance, and postsecondary employment. Qualitative studies of smaller schools have observed a genuine sense of belonging for both students and teachers, higher expectations for student engagement, and fewer distractions within the learning environment. These are precisely the conditions under which teachers can help students take greater responsibility for their own learning and establish both the culture and tools of inquiry-based instruction. Small high schools, tied strongly to their neighborhood institutions, are becoming deft at inviting community business and higher education partners into the schools on a regular basis to help teachers and students tune their work and to assist in developing performance rubrics that align with workplace and college standards. …

A Principal's Dilemmas: Theory and Reality of School Redesign

After spending many years directing professional development programs, Ms. Evans decided to return to the trenches. As a principal trying to lead a large urban high school through substantial change, she learned that even the soundest theories do not always translate smoothly into real-world practice. SMALL SCHOOLS are big. Reformers have long contended -- and growing evidence confirms -- that smaller is better: for instruction, for relationships and community, and for behavior management. Students in small schools are more likely to be known well by faculty members, to be academically challenged, to take intellectual risks, and to engage in authentic learning. New York, Chicago, and Boston are among the cities that have experimented with the creation of new, small schools - - not to mention charter schools, which are almost invariably small. The question isn't whether small schools make a difference, but how to implement them. Dividing a large comprehensive high school into several small schools -- each coexisting productively, side-by-side -- is particularly difficult. Here, as with so many facets of school reform, there is a great divide between the world of university-based theorists, thinkers, and advocates, and the real world of actual school life. Bridging the divide is a challenge I experienced myself when I crossed over to become the principal of a large urban high school and broke it into five small schools. After having taught high school for 17 years, I had spent 15 years at Brown University, much of it directing professional development for the Coalition of Essential Schools and then the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. At Brown, I worked with schools across the country and had constant contact with teachers and principals. I was learning continuously. I had wonderful colleagues. I could consult in a school and then walk away. People appreciated my work, and they told me so. At the same time, I was increasingly jealous of the teachers and principals whose schools I visited. I missed the relationships with adolescents that had been so important to me during my years of teaching. I missed the community of a school. Our work at Brown -- creating critical friends in schools and developing protocols to help teachers look at student work and their own practice -- had some core assumptions about teaching and learning, about leadership, about teacher/teacher and teacher/student/parent relationships, and about the whole process of change. I wanted to test these assumptions for myself. I wondered, Could I help make some of this work in a school? What would it feel like? Would I have the smarts and stamina and sensitivity? Would I run away screaming? And so, after two years of wondering, I took the plunge. The Story In August 1999, I became principal of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). It had 2,000 students and a tremendous achievement gap. As many in the school community acknowledged, it was really two schools: one for the minority poor and the other for the middle-class whites. All members of the school community said that they wanted big change. The school committee, the superintendent, and the teachers said that they wanted change now. The faculty members had studied change for years. They had created teacher, student, parent, and community committees to investigate options and had compiled a large book of proposed initiatives. But they had adopted none. They were ready for some leadership to help make it happen. This is what the faculty members and school administrators told me when I met with some 40 of them before I agreed to take the job. I asked them to describe the strengths and weaknesses of CRLS. Among the former, they cited the school's diversity (it offered something for everyone), its many external partnerships, its standing in the community, its good facilities, and its high per-pupil expenditure. A good list. But the weaknesses they cited were also significant: unequal access to resources across the five houses, a large achievement gap between the strongest and weakest students, institutional racism, clashes of conflicting philosophies between faculty members, much skepticism and cynicism among some groups of teachers, a general lack of accountability, a recent history of divided and unfocused leadership, and a pattern of too much talk and not enough action about school improvement. …

Why Are You Doing This?: Acknowledging and Transcending Threat in a Critical Inquiry Classroom

This teacher research study explores a range of ways that threat can exist and be transcended in a critical inquiry classroom by examining vignettes taken from one intensive inquiry project conducted in an urban English classroom situated in a small learning community (SLC) that was part of a large comprehensive high school.

But What If …

Ms. Anderson remembers Louis, the ninth-grader she failed during her first year of teaching, and she addresses the issue of what kind of leadership would have kept Louis from being educationally shortchanged. LOUIS sat in the first row, third seat. He was a year or two older than the other 25 students in my ninth-grade English class in a large comprehensive high school in Chicago. Louis came from the poorer, African American community across the busy street that divided his neighborhood from the blue-collar Italian neighborhood. It was 1970, and the students sat in rows organized alphabetically by their surnames. The class was well behaved. was a first-year teacher, and had four other classes of 26 students each and a homeroom of 28, for a total of 158 students that saw daily. Louis was a very shy boy of average height with caramel-colored skin. He was neat, clean, quiet, and accommodating. His deep brown eyes didn't look up much, at least not when the teacher's gaze turned in his direction. It was as if meeting the teacher's eyes would have allowed access into the vulnerable young man trying to find a path to connection and expression. He came to class every on time and with his books. He had perfect attendance, and he always did his it seemed as if Louis hadn't heard the assignments or hadn't understood them. When he brought in his scrawled papers, they were rarely written in sentences; his spelling was atrocious; it was hard to identify the ideas in his papers, which were scattered and vague. On a typical might have been able to give him five minutes of undivided attention and another 15 minutes after class several times a week. He responded to my suggestions well. I understand, he would say. I can do this. I'll do his work didn't get better. At the end of the year, had to give him a grade, and Louis did not fulfill the standard for a ninth-grade student at that time. Despite all his effort and mine, had to tell him a few weeks before school ended in June that he wouldn't pass my course; would have to refer him for testing and remedial help. But I'm here every day, he said, tears welling in his eyes. I do all my assignments. don't know whether Louis, in so many ways an exemplary student, ever graduated from high school. He failed my class, but failed him. Over my 30 years as a teacher, counselor, assistant principal, principal, and professional development director, have regularly asked myself, What would have helped that first-year teacher help Louis? What would have given Louis more of a chance to succeed in my class, in high school, in higher education, and in his chosen vocation? What kind of professional development would have made a difference for me and for Louis? What kind of leadership could have helped me make certain that students such as Louis would not be shortchanged? These questions are not just about teachers and what they need. They are also about the roles and capacity of principals and assistant principals and of the people who work in district and regional education offices. These administrators are the people who can change the system's expectations for teachers in the classroom and can support teachers and help them acquire the skills they need to meet those expectations. Yet these administrators can't work miracles. In fact, they often feel the same lack of support that teachers do. What has to change in order to enable our system of schooling to give Louis what he needs? am a director at the Chicago Academy for School Leadership (CASL), a position that allows me to give others what needed myself in order to help Louis and his classmates perform at higher levels in the classroom. These are things that believe can help all of us who work in urban school systems to do our jobs better. believe that when practitioners support practitioners, students benefit. A Culture of Collegial Support After a session with Louis during which had explained to him what needed to improve in his work and how he might make those changes, he nodded and promised to bring in a new version the next day. …

The Talented and Gifted programme at centennial regional high school

This presentation describes in some detail the gifted programme that has been in place for five years at a large comprehensive high school near Montreal. As a “school within a school” the TaG (talented and gifted) programme serves approximately 7% of the student body of 1700 students. Special classes, facilities, and opportunities highlight the benefits of belonging to the programme. A core group of teachers dedicate considerable extra time to the pursuits that interest these curious and intellectually astute students.