Education Reform Now

There are approximately 3.2 million young adults that will graduate this year from high school.   About 40% or 1,280,000 of these students will not be able to do college-level work.  And most of those needing remediation are likely to dropout out of college without any degree.

It's a travesty that the once great American comprehensive high school designed to prepare the top third for college and rest for low-skill but well paying jobs has not evolved to meet the challenge to educating for the 21^st Century. 

American high schools worked reasonably well for many when a college degree and the skills attached were not a barrier to living a middle class life.  This is no longer the case. 

And it's not just India, China, Denmark, South Korea that get it, Turkey and a growing list of other countries understand the relationship between education, quality of life and economic development.  

There are far too many American high schools that graduate less than half, and for those that do graduate few are ready for college.   Education Week's latestDiploma Counts reminds has some powerful maps of dropout "epicenters" showing that there are more 40,000 projected not to graduate from LA and New York City Schools.  NYC has recently made progress but still only has a 54.8% graduation rate.  LA is at 40.6%.  Remember this is just a small piece of the elephant.

So how are high schools doing in your city?    How would you find out?  Are test scores and graduation rates enough?  What would kids and families do if they knew how well or poorly their school was doing?

Would a 50% chance, 5% odds or even a 1 in 50 chance of graduating and being prepared for college be good enough to attend the school or for the district to continue to support it?

I recently reviewed the data in my city Denver and found that are at least four big comprehensive high schools within a several miles of my house have fewer than 5% of their high school graduates ready for college.

Denver's North high school had 13 kids ready for college in last years class....Yes I said 13 and that's out of a freshman class of about 412 students (a 3.1% college yield rate). 

Another nearby high school, West had 7 college ready graduates out of starting freshman class of 301 (a 2.3% college ready yield rate).  That's a 1 in 43 chance of success!  

And this is not just a Denver issue, Aurora's Central High in an adjacent Colorado district, only graduated 25 students ready for college.   It's a school that started with around 800 ninth graders and has a staff over 200.  If states collected the data, we could find hundreds, if not a few thousand high schools throughout the country with similar characteristics.

By the way, I'm a huge fan Denver superintendent Tom Boasberg and Aurora's John Barry.  They are both making important changes and starting to get some great results; I'd rank them among the best in the country. 

I will say that these Colorado districts along with many others around the country are doing a fantastic job of increasing AP and other college level classes.   Both districts have seen dramatic increases in college level course taking.

This strategy along with most other high school improvement efforts will no doubt help but is hardly a solution to the fundamental design flaws of these schools.   It's like adding an airbag to a Chevy Corvair (remember Unsafe At Any Speed), helpful if that's the only car available. 

It's time to be honest and take on these big ineffective high schools.  We can no longer afford to educate so few students.  The design doesn't work for today's society. 

The great news is that there is now a small but growing list of highly effective new schools with similar student demographics.  The challenge is in creating enough of them quickly while brave superintendents and school boards phase out the big old failing schools.    

New high school networks like YES College Prep in Houston, Uncommon Schools in NJ /NY, Denver's School of Science and Technology, Chicago'sNoble Street,  Aspire Public Schools throughout California and many others have shown that you can retain most of your students and prepare most to enter college ready regardless of race or poverty.   We've demonstrated that we have the knowledge to design a modern urban high school that works for most kids.

According to the Education Commission of the States, there are only 17 states that collect remediation data and tie it back to the high schools.  I know of no state or district that regularly reports this data to students and families.   In Colorado where you can find this data, it is buried in an appendix in a Colorado Department of Higher Education's annual remediation report. 

Could you imagine what would happen if the US Department of Transportation had data buried in their website that certain cars only had a 5% chance of reaching their destination?  Would you knowingly get into one of these cars?

Let's all push the feds, your state, school district and school to collect and make this data public not just to policy makers but also most importantly to the public.  

An important step in this process will be to clearly define college readiness with a national standard as was done with high school graduation rates a few years ago.  Different states, colleges and universities use different definitions which result in confusion and opportunities to game the system.   

We've made some progress with high school graduation rates and assessment data.  It's now time to make sure we know how many kids go on to college and whether they are prepared to succeed.

Thanks, Van Schoales