| |
July/August 2001
Some schools are working harder to challenge and
engage their soon-to-be graduates
By Karen Kelly
Seventeen-year-old Ajah Smith is standing in the middle of the gym
floor at Central Park East Secondary School in Harlem. He nervously passes a
basketball between his hands as he responds to questions from a committee of
two teachers and a student. In the first of his five portfolio presentations
required for graduation, Ajah talks about a science experiment he conducted
that measured the time it took test subjects to react to sounds. He found that
their reaction time slowed when their hearing was obstructed, and he tries to
link that knowledge to the effects of variables such as crowd noise on his
performance during a basketball game. After ten minutes of questioning, the
committee members move to the bleachers to discuss and grade Ajah’s
written report and presentation.
His advisor, Joel Handorff, is impressed. “I thought his oral
presentation was phenomenal,” he says, marking a grade on an assessment
sheet. “I’ve seen him go through a lot of work on this written
report. I was pleased to see he used the science.” Teacher David Feldman
is more critical. “I didn’t think he made very strong connections
between the science and [his basketball experience],” he says, explaining
why he gave the essay a lower grade. Still, all three judges give Ajah perfect
scores for his relaxed and thoughtful presentation. Ajah is pleased with the
committee’s feedback, but his work is far from over. “I still have
presentations to do in math, science, history, and literature,” says Ajah,
who’s hoping to attend college on a basketball scholarship next year.
“I’m trying to do schoolwork, portfolios, and presentations at the
same time. I don’t have any time to slack off.”
As a motivated senior, Ajah may be in the minority. A report released
earlier this year by the National Commission on the High School Senior Year
describes the typical senior year as a lackadaisical “farewell tour of
adolescence and school.” The senior slump is blamed in part on early
college decisions, time-consuming after-school jobs, and lots of partying. (See sidebar, “Attractions and
Distractions.”) In ongoing research, the commission—formed in
June 2000 by the U.S. Department of Education, the Carnegie Corporation, the
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship
Foundation—will continue to explore the reasons why so many high school
seniors need remedial coursework in college, why so few complete
bachelor’s degrees, and how a lack of preparation affects students who go
directly into the work force.
Some of these difficulties are reflected in high school students’ poor academic performance. For instance, on the Third International Mathematics
and Science Study, U.S. students scored above average in math and science in
the 4th grade. In the 8th grade, they remained above average in science but
fell slightly below average in math. But by senior year, U.S. students, even
the most advantaged ones, were among the lowest performers in the 16-nation
survey. A study of seniors in 26 states by the Southern Regional Education
Board in 2000 showed that only 61 percent took a math course in their senior
year and 47 percent took science.
That’s just the beginning of the concerns. Once these students
reach college, they often discover they must take placement exams, relying on
knowledge that’s become rusty during their final year of high school. In
the California State University system, 68 percent of incoming students fail at
least one placement test and are assigned to a remedial class. According to the
Department of Education, 29 percent of first-time college freshmen were
enrolled in remedial courses in 1995, the latest year for which figures are
available. “Kids are totally out to lunch on what they’re facing in
these placement exams,” says Michael Kirst, author of the recently issued
report, “Overcoming the High School Senior Slump: New Education
Policies,” and a professor of education at Stanford University. “They
don’t realize that if they slack off in their senior year, they’ll be
hit with a bunch of standards in college that they’re not going to be able
to meet.”
University administrators suspect that some of that slacking off may be
due to the marked increase in students applying for an early decision at
colleges. According to a 2000 survey of 455 admissions officers by the National
Association of College Admissions Counselors, 58 percent of those that offered
early decision plans saw an increase in early decision applicants in the fall
of 2000. Some of these increases have been substantial—the number of early
decision applicants to Columbia University has more than doubled in the past
ten years. That means there are a lot more seniors who know where they’re
going to college in December, rather than May.
Shaking Up the System
The desire to keep seniors engaged has prompted a growing number of
schools to beef up senior year by adding interdisciplinary study,
career-oriented research projects, and even month-long adventures that focus on
personal growth—all aimed at finding a good balance between independence,
improved learning, and personal accountability.
Challenging convention has been a goal at Central Park East Secondary
School since its inception in 1985. Its Senior Institute also offers a more
college-like schedule, with 90-minute and two-hour classes providing in-depth
coverage of certain subjects. Fifteen-page essays are the norm. The
school’s 330 students begin collecting exemplary work in their major
subjects as early as the 9th grade. By the time they present a portfolio before
the graduation committee, their writing samples have been through multiple
drafts and their theses carefully tested. Central Park East students must
complete 14 portfolios and give presentations in four major subjects, along
with one of their choosing, before they can graduate.
That’s not to say Central Park East students are immune to
senioritis. It struck senior Tahisha Ayala as soon as she was accepted to a
college: “I thought, I don’t have to work anymore, and I almost
failed two classes. But then I realized I needed those credits in order to get
to college.” Her classmate Paul Ortiz says simply, “I just want to
get out of here, and that’s the honest truth.”
When portfolios and presentations fail to motivate, the school’s
support mechanism kicks in. “I think the two big things we offer are small
classes and having teachers know their students well,” says teacher
Shirley Hawkinson, who’s on a first-name basis with the school’s 55
seniors, the majority of whom live in the surrounding low-income neighborhoods.
“We know they will all make it because there are so many props around.
They have an advisor, plus their teachers, plus their college counselor.
It’s the whole Senior Institute that graduates the child.” Those
relationships teach students the diplomatic skills they will need to negotiate
in the adult world, whether on a college campus or on the job.
Focus on Careers
Educators at Eastern Technical High School in Baltimore, Maryland, also
view the senior year as a time for students to demonstrate the knowledge
they’ve accumulated over the past four years. But the focus here is
significantly different—Eastern Tech’s 1,324 students are enrolled in
one of ten career majors, and much of their senior year is spent developing a
career portfolio as well as creating a product based on research in their
chosen field. “So much of what we do in schools is fragmented,” says
principal Bob Kemmery, who designed the public school’s senior-year
program in 1992. “This allows them to see the connection between academics
and the world of work and then pull it all together.”
When Kemmery first arrived at Eastern Tech, he found a community where
academic excellence wasn’t the norm. A 1995 study revealed that 50 percent
of his students’ parents had not earned high school diplomas and that most
lived in low-income households. Many seniors lacked any academic motivation.
“We had a bunch of teenagers focused on party time, and we were operating
in control mode,” says Kemmery. “Instead of ‘you can’t do
this or that,’ we should have been nurturing them.”
Today, Kemmery says, senioritis is rare among the school’s 305
12th graders. While fewer than one percent of his students met the entrance
requirements for the University of Maryland system in 1991, 87 percent meet
them today. Kemmery attributes this change to a complete overhaul of the
school’s curriculum, a move that increased academic rigor in traditional
subjects and added majors in career-oriented areas like health, information
technology, communications/multimedia, and construction technology. Not only do
students graduate with working portfolios, which they test out in mock job
interviews, but they must present the results of their independent research
projects to teachers and their peers.
Students are also invited to compete for $3,000 in prizes with a
presentation to professional judges. “We had one student in the
construction trades who questioned the effectiveness of heat pumps in temperate
climates,” recalls Harry Cook, the chair of the English department and a
member of the National Commission on the High School Senior Year. “He
built a model, fired it up, and showed what it could and could not do in this
climate. Everyone was extremely impressed with his presentation, but also with
the fact that this kid was really excited about what he had
accomplished.”
A Taste of Graduate School
Riverdale Country School, a private school in New York City, takes yet
another approach to prepping seniors for life after high school. Its Integrated
Liberal Studies Course takes a page right out of a college-level syllabus. In
fact, teacher Bill Palka and his colleagues borrowed ideas from Columbia
University’s core curriculum to create a class that would turn the senior
year into an overview of Western literature, philosophy, science, history, and
art. “The students write five papers in which they have to make
cross-disciplinary insights between the subjects, like philosophy and
art,” says Palka, who relates physics to Impressionism in his course on
the history of science. “By their fourth or fifth paper, they’re
thinking like graduate students.”
The school’s mostly college-bound 120 seniors read Aristotle,
Nietzsche, and Darwin—all of whom they can expect to encounter in
undergraduate work. They also keep graded journals about their reading and face
an oral exam at the end of the year. Riverdale graduate and Harvard College
student Anna Card Gay says the course prepared her for college assignments in
which she has to choose her own topic and find her own resources: “As
painful as writing those papers was, it really changed the way I thought. I
became more philosophical and analytical.”
Personal Exploration
As educators work to strengthen educational programs for seniors, they
need to remember that students are going through a time of profound transition,
says Frank Sachs, senior program coordinator at the private Blake School in
Minneapolis. For that reason, senior year needs to emphasize the opportunity
for individual decisionmaking and exploration as much as it does
accountability.
Blake seniors who maintain good grades and attendance are allowed to
design individualized study for the last quarter. Some use the opportunity for
exotic adventures. One student volunteered at a Russian orphanage. Another
became a glassblower’s apprentice, while a classmate helped Greenpeace
track leatherback turtles in the Caribbean. All are required to keep daily
journals, have weekly conferences with their advisors, and produce written and
visual summaries of their experiences. They also receive evaluations from
outside supervisors, which are factored into their final grades. When the
students return to school, they present their projects at a senior program
sharing night, or as Sachs calls it, “the first class reunion.”
The experiences prepare students to be independent learners not just in
college but for life. “They take complete control of their own
education,” says Sachs. “After years of having others set deadlines
and give assignments, seniors now do it for themselves.”
Karen Kelly, a frequent contributor to the Harvard Education
Letter, writes from Ottawa, Ontario.
For Further Information
D. Bensman. “Learning to Think Well: Central Park East Secondary
School Graduates Reflect on Their High School and College Experiences.” New York: The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and
Teaching, 1995. www.tc.columbia.edu/~ncrest
Central Park East Secondary School, 1573 Madison Ave., New York, NY
10029; 212-860-8935; fax: 212-860-5933.
www.csd4.k12.ny.us/cpess
L. Darling-Hammond and J. Ancess. “Graduation by Portfolio at
Central Park East Secondary School.” New York: National Center for
Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching, 1994. www.tc.columbia.edu/~ncrest
Eastern Technical High School, 1100 Mace Ave., Baltimore, MD 21221;
410-887-0190; fax: 410-887-0424.
www.towson.edu/coe/pdsn/eastern.html
M.W. Kirst. “Overcoming the High School Senior Slump: New
Education Policies.” Washington, DC: Institute for Educational Leadership
and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 2001. www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct1000/voices1000-kirst.shtml
G.I. Maeroff, P.M. Callan, and M.D. Usdan. The Learning Connection:
New Partnerships Between Schools and Colleges. New York: Teachers College
Press, 2000. www.tcpress.org
National Commission on the High School Senior Year. “The Lost
Opportunity of the Senior Year: Finding a Better Way.” Washington, DC:
National Commission on the High School Senior Year, January 2001. www.commissiononthesenioryear.org
National Commission on the High School Senior Year, 400 Maryland Ave.,
SW, Room 4W307, Washington, DC 20202; 202-260-7405; fax: 202-205-6688.
www.commissiononthesenioryear.org
Riverdale Country School, 5250 Fieldston Rd., Bronx, NY 10471;
718-549-8810; fax: 718-519-2795. www.riverdale.edu
|
|
