High Schools for Equity
Policy Supports for Student Learning in Communities of Color
High Schools for Equity documents the practices and outcomes of five urban high schools in California that do an extraordinary job of preparing their students for success in higher education, productive careers, and a fulfilling life. The schools, which are non-selective in their admissions and serve populations that are predominantly low-income students of color, include both district-run and charteroperated schools in California’s largest cities. They are Animo Inglewood Charter High School in Los Angeles; June Jordan School for Equity and Leadership High School, both in San Francisco; New Tech High School in Sacramento; and Construction Tech Academy in San Diego.
These schools are, in many respects, anomalies in the current landscape of secondary education: In addition to graduating their students at higher rates than the state average, all of them send more than 80% of their students to higher education, exhibiting college-going rates more than twice thestate averages for the students they serve. Equally important, these schools offer an educational experience that engages students in intellectually stimulating, socially and practically relevant, and personalized learning that empowers them to contribute to their communities and to learn throughout their lives. These students take ownership of their education and develop a stake in their own learning that enables them to negotiate obstacles and take charge of their lives.
This report, based on intensive case studies of the five schools, details the practices that support student success, the design features of the schools that enable these practices, and the policies that both support and, sometimes, obstruct their ability to accomplish their goals. It develops recommendations for the kinds of policy reinforcements and changes needed to develop and maintain schools like these on a much broader scale, so that they become the norm rather than the exception for students of color.
The California Context
While California has become a “majority minority” state, inequality in educational opportunities and outcomes has increased. The large achievement gap reflected in disparate test scores, graduation rates, and college-going rates for African American and Latino students in comparison to their white and Asian peers has not decreased significantly in more than a decade. Recent statistics suggest that, among those who enter the 9th grade, only 56% of African American students and 55% of Latino students now graduate with a high school diploma four years later, and only 12 to14% graduate having met the requirements to attend a state university. These proportions are even lower in most urban districts. And an increasing share of young African American and Latino men are populating the state’s growing prison system, rather than its higher education system. Because of these trends, projections indicate that by 2025, California’s citizens are likely to be less well-educated on average than they are today, although the demand for highly skilled workers will continue to increase.
These outcomes are predicted by the post- Proposition 13 decline in educational spending in California for two decades after 1979, which also exacerbated resource inequality. By 2000, California ranked first in the nation in the number of pupils it served, but 38th in expenditures per student, 48th in K-12 expenditures as a share of personal income, and 50th in the ratio of students per teacher. By 2006, the spending ratio between the highest-spending and lowestspending school districts was more than 3:1 (from just over $6,000 per pupil to as much as $20,000 per pupil), with schools serving the highest concentrations of students of color spending noticeably less than those serving predominantly white students.
California also employs a greater number of under-qualified teachers than any other state in the country, and these teachers are primarily assigned to teach low-income students of color in segregated schools. Changing the conditions for these students requires not only documenting the common practices of “break-the-mold” schools that succeed against the odds, but also envisioning a set of policies that can enable most schools to serve all of their students — including students of color — much more effectively.
Common Design Features
After reviewing an extensive body of data on more than 360 California high schools in a multi-stage selection process, we narrowed the sample to five urban, public high schools that have no selective admissions requirements, serve primarily students of color and low-income students, graduate students of color at higher rates than the state average, and send most of their students to college. The schools were selected because, as a group, they provide geographic diversity and illustrate very distinctive school models in terms of educational approach and governance. Two are district schools, two are independent charter schools, and one charter is part of a district and its teachers are part of the district teachers’ union. Two of the schools — Construction Tech Academy and New Tech High — focus especially on preparing students for college and careers. Although we did not limit our search by school size, all the schools in the study are small, ranging from about 300 to 500 students, and all have been started within the last 10 years.
Although the schools in this study are distinctive and are located in varied urban communities, they have a number of design features in common. These design features, which are mutually reinforcing, aim to create personalized schools which offer rigorous and relevant instruction that is supported by professional collaboration and learning. These design features rely on multiple changes in school structures, belief systems, and pedagogical practices.
Personalization
Personalization is created in all five schools through small learning environments, continuous, long-term relationships between adults and students, and advisory systems that assign a single adult to work closely with a small group of students, usually for multiple years. Advisors facilitate and organize counseling, academic supports and family connections. In order to provide personalization, these schools devote more resources to teaching than non-teaching staff, thus enabling smaller class sizes and reduced pupil loads for teachers. They also reorganize time so that teachers have fewer groups of students for longer blocks of time. By knowing students well, teachers are more able to tailor instruction to students’ needs and to build on their experiences. Teachers also work in teams that share the same students, and they share responsibility for their students’ progress and well-being.
Rigorous and Relevant Instruction
Each of the five schools has designed a rigorous, coherent instructional program that provides access to college preparatory curriculum as well as career preparation through internships, coursework, and other connections to the world outside of school. The schools strive to create authentic learning experiences reinforced by performance assessments that ask students to exhibittheir skills in major projects and investigations. Each school fills gaps in students’ academic skills by providing previously underserved students with additional supports and teaching them in ways that are wellscaffolded, culturally relevant, and adapted to their learning needs. The schools also provide students with connections to their communities and futures through strong outreach to parents, curriculum about students’ communities and cultures, and partnerships with local community groups, industries, and higher education.
Professional Learning and Collaboration
All schools in this study demonstrate an unwavering commitment to student learning by making it the consistent focus of their professional learning time. Part of this commitment includes allocating considerable time for teachers to work collaboratively on their practice through summer retreats, regular professional development time built into the school year, and joint planning time each week. Without the time for ongoing inquiry and refinement of practice, these schools would be unable to meet the needs of their students. The schools involve faculty in determining and enacting shared goals and engaging in democratic decision-making close to the classroom. They frequently involve parents and students as well.
Policy Recommendations
These schools and those in other studies documents that schools can be designed to serve low-income students of color well. However, to create such exemplary schools on a much wider scale, a policy environment must be constructed that is not hostile but instead provides them with support. In this research, we identified four policy areas that have major influences on the ability of high schools to construct the practices that enable low-income students of color to succeed: human capital, curriculum and assessment, funding, and postsecondary education policies. Our recommendations suggest that, to develop systematically high schools that can succeed with all students, California should:
1. Support teacher recruitment and development that enables teachers to develop the skills needed for adaptive, culturally responsive teaching attentive to the needs of the whole adolescent — and enables schools to recruit teachers who have the expertise and commitments needed to succeed in distinctive schools serving students of color well;
2. Support professional learning opportunities for principals to develop the skills of instructional leadership and organizational change;
3. Support a more forward-looking curriculum for high school education by rethinking the content and nature of A-G requirements and creating state and local assessment system focused on higher order thinking and performance skills;
4. Design funding so that funds flow to schools on the basis of student needs, so that safe, well-designed facilities are readily available, and so that — beyond targeted resources for special needs students — schools have the flexibility to fund strategic innovations that support student success.
5. Invest in higher education quality and access so that students who have worked hard and earned a place in college have the opportunity to pursue their dreams and contribute to the welfare of all.
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