Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 3: The Ethical Learning CommunityELC Principle 1:Develop shared purpose and identity.Make excellence and ethics the cornerstone ofyour mission, identity, and sense of community.5 PROMISING PRACTICESFOR DEVELOPING SHARED PURPOSE1. Build a unified school culture around excellenceand ethics by promoting high expectations forlearning and behavior.2. Create a touchstone and/or motto that expressesthe school’s commitment to excellence and ethics.3. Develop an honor code.4. Develop school traditions that express and strengthenthe school’s shared purpose and identity.5. Make a character compact with parents.Much has been written about the importance of developinga strong sense of community in a school. Creatingsuch a community, one that fosters personal relationshipsamong students and between students and staff, has beena major rationale for breaking up large high schools into“small learning communities.” The research (see box atright) on small learning communities and on “family andschool connectedness” reminds us that positive relationshipsare vital for teens—both for protecting them againstrisk behaviors and for promoting their academic achievement.But we would argue that community is much morepowerful when it is based not simply on social bonds buton a shared sense of worthy purpose, such as the commitmentto excellence and ethics.ELC 1: Develop Shared Purpose.Promising Practice 1:1.1ELCBuild a unified school culturearound excellence and ethics bypromoting high expectations forlearning and behavior.In his monograph “Building a New Structure for SchoolLeadership,” Richard Elmore argues that a great manyschools suffer from “loose coupling.” 5 When there is loosecoupling among faculty, for example, people do theirown thing. Shadow a high school student for a day andyou might find teachers who have highly variable expectationsregarding performance character and moral characterin their students. One teacher, for example, mightstress the importance of integrity; another might nevermention it; another might explicitly and publicly violateit. (For example, one teacher boasted to his students thatAschool is defined primarily by its sense of purpose.William Damon has argued that purpose is the pathwayto identity 2 —true for an organization just as it is for aperson. Moreover, a noble purpose is the path to fulfillment;as Helen Keller pointed out, “Happiness is notattained through self-gratification but through fidelity toa worthy purpose.” Therefore the first step in becomingan ethical learning community is to develop a sharedsense of purpose around the goals of excellence andethics—performance character and moral character.Community is more powerful whenit is based on shared purpose.THE POWER OF CONNECTEDNESS1. Personalization of the learning environment throughsmall learning communities (SLC’s). Research hasfound that students in small learning communities(e.g., “academies” or “houses” within the larger school)(1) tend to achieve at higher levels, both on standardizedtests and other measures, with poor and minoritystudents showing the greatest achievement benefits;(2) experience a greater sense of attachment to theirschool and are less likely to feel anonymous; (3) areless likely to engage in negative social behaviors, fromclassroom disruption to violent assault; (4) are morelikely to attend school and graduate; and (5) are morelikely to participate in, and find satisfaction in, co-curricularactivities. Teachers in SLC’s are more likely tofeel they can make a difference in students’ lives. 32. Family and school connectedness. The 1997 Add-Health study interviewed 90,118 adolescents in astratified, random sample of 80 high schools and theirfeeder middle schools. Researchers looked at varioushealth risk behaviors including delinquency, violence,sexual intercourse, and substance abuse. Most importantin keeping teens from involvement in these riskbehaviors was family connectedness, a feeling of closenessto parents. Next in importance was school connectedness,a feeling of closeness to people at school. 434Smart & Good High Schools