Traditional High School Research Articles

Integrating Transformation Geometry into Traditional High School Geometry

The grades 9-12 section of NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics defines transformation geometry as “the geometric counterpart of functions” (1989, 161). Further, the Standards document recognizes the importance of this topic to the high school mathematics curriculum by listing it among the “topics to receive increased attention” (p. 126). Also included on this list is the integration of geometry “across topics.”

Alternative Curriculum and Assessment at an Alternative High School

Academic decathlons and continuing education high schools seem an unlikely mixture, but not for students at Alta Vista High School, a continuing education school in Southern California for teenagers who have had difficulty in traditional high schools. The students made an impressive showing in the academic decathlon sponsored by the Orange County Department of Education. In keeping with the esprit de corps of the academic decathlon, teachers at Alta Vista High School created the Environmental Studies Academic Pentathlon (ESAP) for its students.

New York City's Wealth of Historically Black Independent Schools

New York City hosts a wealth of historically Black independent schools serving African American children. Foster (1991) lists 63 such schools throughout the state of New York, 55 in New York City alone. Over the past four years, the Toussaint Institute, a nonprofit research and consulting organization, has reached out to historically Black independent schools in New York City. Since 1988 its scholarship division, the Toussaint Institute Fund (TIF), has placed 12 students, all of them African American males, into 8 such schools, where these youngsters have experienced achievement and success as Toussaint Scholars. TIF's approach has been to (1) identify and collect descriptive data on the historically Black independent schools in New York City; (2) place into such schools children who have had histories of problems in public schools and monitor their progress; and (3) assist the schools in making themselves available as local and national resources. The present article offers a preliminary report on this ongoing work and describes our findings in each of these areas. Over the past few years increasing discussion has focused on the role of private schools in efforts to reform the American educational system. This is a result of studies indicating that private schools, particularly inner-city Catholic high schools, are organized in ways that more effectively serve disadvantaged students than do traditional public high schools (Chubb & Moe, 1991; Coleman, 1985; Hill, Foster, & Gendler, 1990). The Institute for Independent Education (1991) estimated that there are 300 independent neighborhood schools serving children of color nationwide. The increased interest in inner-city private schools has taken many perspectives. In some cases, urban private schools are viewed as alternative placements for children who do not perform well in public schools. In the context of discussions about free-market or 11choice educational initiatives, these private schools are considered by some to be valuable catalysts for improving public schools. Lastly, these schools are viewed as laboratories in which nonbureaucratic models can be studied for possible replication in public schools. In many ways New York City's independent inner-city schools are part of a continuous drive on the part of local communities to control

Moral Reasoning in Behaviorally Disordered Adolescents from Alternative and Traditional High Schools

Very few studies have examined moral reasoning in students identified as having behavioral disorders and enrolled in a special education setting. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to the impact of alternative education programs designed for behaviorally disordered youth on moral reasoning development. This research examined the moral reasoning of behaviorally disordered adolescents enrolled in alternative and traditional high school settings. The results indicate that behaviorally disordered high school students enrolled in either an alternative or traditional school setting are significantly lower in moral reasoning compared to their non-behaviorally disordered peers. The moral reasoning of the behaviorally disordered students enrolled in an alternative setting is similar to that of like students enrolled in a traditional school setting. The correlation between time (months) spent in the alternative setting and moral reasoning is positive, but not significant.

A qualitative study of middle school students' perceptions of factors facilitating the learning of science: Grounded theory and existing theory

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore middle school students' perceptions of what factors facilitated their learning of science. Florida's Educational Reform Act of 1983 funded programs providing the state's precollege students with summer learning opportunities in science. mathematics, and computers. The programs were intended to encourage the development of creative approaches to the teaching of these disciplines. Under this program, between 50 and 60 high‐achieving middle school students were in residence on the University of South Florida campus for 12 consecutive days of study in the World of Water (WOW) program. There were two sessions per summer involving a total of 572 participants. Eighi specially trained teachers were in residence with the students. Between 50 and 70 experts from the university, government. business, and industry interacted with the students each year in an innovative science/technology/society (STS) program. An assignment toward the close of the program asked students to reflect on their experiences in residence at the university and write an essay comparing learning in the WOW program to learning in their schools. Those essays were the base for this study. This was a qualitative study using a discursive approach to emergent design to generate grounded theory. Document review, participant observation, and open‐ended interviews were used to gather and triangulate data in five phases. Some of the factors that middle school students perceived as helpful to learning science were (a) experiencing the situations about which they were learning; (b) having live presentations by professional experts; (c) doing hands‐on activities: (d) being active learners; (e) using inductive reasoning to generate new knowledge; (f) exploring transdisciplinary approaches to problem solving; (g) having adult mentors; (h) interacting with peers and adults; (i) establishing networks; (j) having close personal friends who shared their interest in learning; (k) trusting the individuals in their learning environment, including adults and students; and (1) experiencing a sense of self‐reliance. The preceding information was used to generate a series of hypotheses which were woven into a theoretical model. This model suggests that middle school science teacher education would be enhanced by helping prospective and in‐service teachers develop and implement strategies that build trust, provide immersion in learning, and use inductive reasoning. This model is currently being used as the theoretical base to convert a traditional junior high school in the South to a middle school.

Personality Growth of Female Early College Entrants: A Controlled, Prospective Study

Many educators fear that early college entrance may be too stressful for young adolescents and therefore deleterious to healthy personality development. Advocates of acceleration point out the absence of research support for such concerns. In fact, the available evidence is not conclusive because previous studies: (a) often fail to use standard, well-validated personality measures; and/or (b) do not examine student adjustment both before and after a period of acceleration. The present study examined the adjustment of 33 female accelerants by administering the California Psychological Inventory at the beginning and end of their first academic year in a residential early college entrance program. Accelerants evidenced a surprisingly consistent pattern of healthy personality growth over the course of the year. Similar growth was not observed in a control group of capable nonacceferants attending traditional high schools.

Perceived Competence and Parent-Adolescent Communication in High Ability Adolescent Females

Adolescent females have been largely ignored in previous research on high ability youth, despite the social pressures and family conflicts they may experience as a result of their efforts to achieve commensurate with their high abilities. The present study investigates the self-concepts (perceived competence) and quality of parent-adolescent communication in 60 high ability adolescent females, including 42 who left home to enroll in an early college entrance program and 18 who attended more traditional high school programs. Results indicate that the quality of parent-adolescent communication for these young women: (1) varies widely with both mothers and fathers; and (2) is consistently associated with perceived competence in both academic and non-academic areas. As a group, the young women have above-average academic and overall perceived competence, but IQ is negatively correlated with perceived competence in non-academic areas.

Validity of a new evaluative scale to aid admissions decisions

This study purported to validate a rating scale constructed to measure the effectiveness of non-traditional variables for predicting academic success in colleges. Nontraditional predictor variables included in the rating scale were: academic accomplishments other than high school GPA or rank, leadership qualities in high school, athletic success, persistence characteristics in pursuing extracurricular activities, high school honors, qualities of written personal statements in admissions application forms and the strength of references. Rating scale scores were added to the traditional High School Rank (HSR) and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores in multiple regression and discriminant analyses in order to examine their effectiveness in increasing predictive accuracy and in classifying successful and unsuccessful students. Predicted criteria variables for academic success used in this study were exploratory nontraditional variables such as Perceived Success and demonstrated Leadership Abilities in college in addition to traditional College GPA. The results suggested that rating scores raised predictive effectiveness significantly over and above the predictivity achieved by the use of combined SA T and HSR alone. Perceived Success and college Leadership measure, however, were ineffective as predicted discriminant criteria in this study.

The Principal in the Year 2000: A Teacher's Wish

he public school system in America is in midst of a managerial revolution. Americans have begun to agree that classic corporate hierarchy model, developed in early twentieth century and dominant in theory and practice for postwar period, is no longer most efficient organizational structure for public schools. The traditional high school organization, a tightly integrated hierarchy with a clear functional division of labor, was designed to produce several basic, standardized products: honors graduates destined for professional careers, academically oriented students prepared for twoand four-year colleges, and vocationally trained students ready to begin work after graduation or upon completion of brief sojourns in trade schools. The principal was seen as a heroic captain of a ship. The position called for authoritarian leadership; life was lonely at top . But those with the right stuff would get job done by seeing to it that students, teachers, and parents behaved properly. Through example and firm control principal ensured that nothing interfered with accomplishment of directives from superintendent's office. Educational reformers currently advocate changes that, by year 2000, will create a much more flexible organizational structure, capable of graduating a much wider variety of students, of innovating more quickly and easily, and of smoothly adjusting distribution of staff and resources to take advantage of educational research and shifting societal needs. We have begun to see decentralization of power and responsibility, blurring of old organizational and professional divisions through team management, creation of new forms of collaboration between teachers, students, and administrators (symbolized by implementation of town meeting for-

Soundoff: Teach Geometry before Second-Year Algebra

For years we have debated whether geometry should come before or after second-year algebra in the traditional high school program. Teachers and students at my high school, with the support of the Mathematics Education Trust, have completed a threeyear study of this issue. I have good reason to claim that the traditional first-year algebra, geometry, second-year algebra sequence is better than the first-year algebra, secondyear algebra, geometry sequence.

Remote Site Instruction in Physics: A Test of the Effectiveness of a New Teaching Technology

This study tested the effectiveness of a remote site instructional system utilizing audio-graphic teleconferencing technology. The subject matter taught was high school level physics. The test site was Bountiful High School in Bountiful, Utah. The study consisted of a treatment-control group comparison in which the treatment group (9 males and 2 females) received the remotely delivered instruction and the control group (14 males and 3 females) received traditional high school physics instruction. The dependent variable was performance on physics tests that were administered periodically during the intervention period. A two-step hierarchical multiple regression was used to analyze the data. During the first step, the experimental and control groups were equated for pre-existing differences in student ability. During the second step, the two groups were tested for differences in performance due to the experimental manipulation. No significant differences in performance were found. The results lead us to believe that audio-graphic teleconferencing is an effective medium for delivering remote instruction.

Sway Students in the Foreign Language Classroom

ABSTRACT A sway student in the foreign language classroom is a student who is not only capable of displaying linguistic knowledge, but also knows when and how to interact appropriately with the teacher. This study examines how six sway students affected the organization of interaction and language development in a traditional high school Spanish class. *The data indicate that the teacher selectively organized interaction around sway students at key points in the development of a lesson as well as when non‐sway students made errors. The overall effect of sway students was that they allowed the teacher to progress effectively through the lesson, with the result of increased amounts of comprehensible input for the entire class.

Soundoff: An Integrated Approach for Secondary School Mathematics

In 1972, after many years of concern and dissatisfaction with the traditional three-year high school mathematics program of geometry sandwiched between algebra (Math 9) and algebra-trigonometry (Math 11), the Bureau of Mathematics of the New York State Education Department decided to investigate a possible alternative approach. In June of that year, an ad hoc committee of the state's mathematics educators developed an outline for a three-year curriculum aimed at bringing together the various branches of mathematics previously treated as independent, year-long courses. Most of the traditional content was retained, although not necessarily at the same grade level; in addition, probability, statistics, logic, and transformation geometry were included in a three-year comprehensive program.

The Value of Their Lives

Because so much of the traditional high school literature program stresses the male experience through masculine eyes, because, as Marilyn French says, there is so much that . . books don't say about women, and because I've heard so many young women devalue their own life perceptions, I have developed a course called Women in Literature. Its purposes are to acquaint students with the many fine women writers who have deepened our heritage, to encourage students to explore one writer in depth, to give them an opportunity to write about their own lives, experiences, and feelings, to provide a forum for the exchange of those ideas and feelings, and to help students know the worth of their own existence.

Understanding Understanding

Several experimental studies are reviewed, the results of which suggest that students often fail to acquire an understanding of some of the concepts, relationships, principles, and processes that are fundamental to traditional high school course material. Questions of what it means to understand something and of how to assess understanding are considered.

Tips on Planning the Middle Level School

Here's some advice from one principal who has successfully introduced middle level concepts to a traditional junior high school.

Giving Geometry Students An Added Edge In Constructions

Several recent articles in this journal and in other NCTM publications indicate a continuing interest in alternatives to the straightedge-and-compass constructions of traditional high school geometry (see Bibliography). A description of various construction tools and techniques may be found in the literature (Eves 1963; Yates 1949), and the history of the topic from the time of the Greeks to the present is a fascinating one. Of the simple construction instruments, one of the least well known is the ruler with two parallel straightedges (a parallel ruler). In 1890, Adler (1906) showed that all the ruler-and-compass constructions can be done using only a ruler with two edges at a fixed angle; the parallel ruler is the special case with angle zero. There does not seem to be a treatment of constructions with the parallel ruler that is at once reasonably complete and accessible to high school geometry students. Most discussions make use of terminology and theorems beyond that usually covered at the high school level, and, further, much of even this material, such as Yates’s Geometrical Tools, is now out of print—surely an undeserved fate for so delightful a book.

A New Angle For Constructing Pentagons

The traditional high school geometry class can be enhanced by the addition of appropriate problem-solving activities. One such problem, the construction of a pentagon, can be divided into three worth-while tasks.

New Projects

The claim is often made that one can learn BASIC in a few hours or that a two-week programming supplement to an existing course can meet all the needs of the high school student with respect to computer programming. Although computer “literacy” can be part of any mathematics program through simple restructuring or such modest curricular additions as those cited above, many high school students have interests and capabilities that demand more depth than this. In fact, as society becomes more knowledgeable about the role and function of the computer and as freshmen college students find increasing use of the computer in their introductory courses, high schools are faced with a mandate to provide courses that offer a depth of knowledge in programming that exceeds the traditional high school computer courses. In its seven years of operation Briarcrest High School, an independent school in Memphis, Tennessee, has developed a computer curriculum that provides instruction beyond the introductory level.

A Simple, Inexpensive Restraining Device for Small Animals

Traditional high school biology courses are being revised. In recent years, students have begun to explore exciting areas that relate to their everyday lives. Among the fields explored are animal and plant physiology as related to microorganisms and their effects (Paulinus 1960; Shankel and Arnold 1968; Peterson 1973). Experiments on these interactions are being added to the biology curriculum. High school students seem especially interested in projects that in volve working with microorganisms and studying their relationships to humans and animals. Many students are doing research projects, which often require a great deal of effort (Speece 1975), on this topic for state and regional science fairs. In many schools expensive equipment and supplies for experiments in microbiology are not available. We discovered a need for a restraining device for small laboratory animals for use in microbiology investigations. Restraining devices of all types can be purchased-from simple plastic tubes to sophisticated restrainers with latches and other features. Such devices range in price from $6.50 and up per restrainer. Even when restraining devices are available, both high school and college students have difficulty using them. The beginning student has problems placing animals into restrainers, and the animals often become very agitated. In addition, with 24 students per section in a laboratory, it becomes hard to justify the expense involved in buying a restrainer for each student so that s/he can be actively involved in an experiment rather than just watching.