Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 1: The Call to CharacterCHALLENGES FACING HIGH SCHOOLS:OBSERVATIONS FROM TWO VETERAN REFORMERSWe asked two national leaders in school reform for theirperspectives on the challenges facing high schools. Thefirst has headed a national organization that has promotedhigh school reform for nearly 30 years. He said:Mission statements are easy; they are just words.School design and sustained practice are much,much harder. High schools won’t become better placesunless they are willing to make some hard choices aboutthe basic design and functioning of school—issues suchas student load per teacher.Anonymity is the first curse of the typical American highschool. Too-much-crammed-into-too-little-time-and-spaceis the second curse. “This is the way it is, so don’t rockthe boat” is the third curse.Concerning the first curse: If the student-teacher ratio is120:1, with the 120 shuffled repeatedly throughout theyear, kids realize that few teachers know them well. Studentsconclude from this that knowing each student wellis a low priority for the school. And when a teacher doesnot know a student well, it is easy for that student tocheat, cut corners, and “fake it.” The lesson the studentlearns from anonymity is, “I must not count for muchhere because the school does not know me, and so Ihave to take care of myself.”Do high schools, in practice, attach a high value to creatinga community of character? Consider the cues thata great many do not: what Denise Pope has wisely called“doing school,” students doing what they need to do toget the grades they want but not taking their educationseriously; the rushed, bell-driven quality of school life;teachers’ “this is not my area” partitioning off of theirresponsibilities; the athletics pecking order; the expected“attitude” at games, as depicted in Friday Night Lights;those hostile places called Bathrooms and Locker Rooms;the disrespect shown cafeteria staff and others; the generallack of civility and manners.The character of the adult community is crucial in sellinga community of character to the entire school community.As Deborah Meier reminds us, trust starts with thecommunity of grown-ups.Most schools today worry almost exclusively about tests.Morality and decency are not on the syllabus.The second advocate of school reform was a publicschool teacher for nearly three decades and now travelsthe country working with schools. He commented:Iam struck by how obsessed the country is with testscores and exclusively academic measures of success.It’s not easy to persuade schools that we need to focuson the kind of people we are building for our future.Everywhere I go, people are so deeply distracted by academicpressures that they can, at least at first, hardlyhear me.I have found it useful to lead with stories of schools thatwork with low-income kids that have beaten all the oddsand transformed these students into positive, polite, academicallysuccessful students who typically go to college.There are countless examples of these high schools. Allthese schools work with low-income students; all of themfocus very deeply and holistically on character issues; andall of them send an incredible percentage of their studentson to college.When people hear the statistics of how successful theseschools are in the realm of academics, they are oftenopen to learning about the strategies they use. In everycase, those strategies involve building a school culturethat is an ethical learning community, led by a strongprofessional learning community. We need to shout outthese success stories.Schools that are willing to try to implement change willthen need help with first steps. Should they start withcurriculum? Pedagogy and instruction? The staff culture?The climate of the building? An honor code? Should theymake structural changes so that a teacher doesn’t see140 students a day—a set-up for disaster? We mightbelieve that a good high school has to include all ofthese things joined together, but a school can’t take oneverything at once.When I work with schools, I find it helpful to suggestmultiple entry points. For many schools, there will bemandatory beginning points, such as a climate of physicaland emotional safety for all students and structuresto ensure that the building is clean, attractive, and showcasesstudent achievements. Without those things, it’shard to even begin.Smart & Good High Schools6