ASCD Poll: High School Reform

In the ASCD Poll, we asked you to tell us the most important area high school reform efforts should focus on. If you haven't taken the poll yet, please vote now.

High school reform is one of ASCD's five legislative priorities. Share your comments on high school reform with your peers.

Comments

[Dana]

Why don't ASCD polls have a "none of the above" answer/

[tsherer@culver.edu]

So much needs to be done in reforming high schools, but my experience tells me that every teenager needs at least one caring adult in their lives.

[Cresenda]

Closing the achievement and course placement gap is what I believe is the most important area high school reform efforts should focus on.

This was not a selection option.

[Barry Wansbrough]

Most school boards and high and middle schools are still orgnizationally and curricularly structured for the Industrial Age. "Reform' only addresses how to run the wrong model better. It only deals with the middle management and other gurus instructing teachers how to improve. The 'top' - government and district chiefs, and the 'bottom'- the teachers - are functionally disconnected and the teachers are confused - arguably disabled - by changing agendas they don't control.
The chiefs should set the mandate: vision, mission, goals, values and budget; and the teachers should have the residual decision rights on the content and operations of the schools - accountable to the mandate of the top.
We need to prepare the students for the present age, the Knowledge Age, and that means new curriculum and process, and certaintly ICT underpinning, of serious dimensions.
Cut the top, eliminate most of the middle bureaucracy and empower the front line deliverers of the service.
If all the funding that is going into NCLB (or the bureaucracy that administers it!), went to this transformation, the States would leave the rest of us behind once again, as you did with education in the Industrial Age

[Galen]

I truly believe it is about time we study the effect of block scheduling on High School learning and achievement. I don't seem to see any research that looks at whether or not achievement is improved after block scheduling is implemented. Has anyone seen any research on this subject?
At the same time that many schools are considering block scheduling, many schools who have had block scheduling are returning to a more traditional schedule. Why? We need to answer questions such as these to see if Block/Intensive scheduling (while providing many administrative and management benefits) is really delivering on the academic promises made by Canady and Rettig in the 1980's.

[James Dominguez]

When asked how he made it out of a raging storm while trapped high in the mountains, a Tibetan monk replied, “The only way I could - by taking one step at a time”.

High school reform, or any other grade for that matter, doesn't have to be a complicated process involving huge amounts of money. When teachers focus on “what they teach and how they teach it”, the veil of mystery that covers student achievement suddenly becomes less opaque.

Have you walked into a classroom lately and honestly evaluated both the lesson and homework assignment? How many teachers are starting their lessons with forward questioning vs. stating a learning objective? How many teachers call on the same students over and over again vs. calling on non-volunteers to engage all students. How many teachers check for understanding every 6-8 minutes to evaluate who ISN'T learning - giving them (the teacher) the opportunity to modify instruction in real time instead of looking at tests scores when it’s already too late? And how many teachers are teaching grade-level content that covers the full breadth of state standards daily while paying close attention to time-on-task and instructional effectiveness?

School reform, including high school, has been turned into a Category 5 hurricane when it doesn’t need to be more than a cool evening breeze. It’s the basics, adhered to each and every day INSIDE of the classroom, that are going to get every school off of that big and scary mountain.

Moral of the story: If the effectiveness of classroom instruction has not been improved, no real reform has taken place.

[Glen Kieschnick]

Why not focus on not ending sentences with a preposition?

[Rick Lasher]

In a century where communication is overwhelmingly "visual" - why do we even minimally consider the elimination of Visual Arts Program where students are learned to develop and decipher international symbol systems both critically and creatively?

[Paul Shepich]

I believe one of the most important cornerstones of high school reform needs to focus on the use of formative and summative assessment for the purpose of communicating the "learning" that a student is demonstrating on the given standards. I believe we need to make a fundamental shift in how we "grade" students. Teacher focus cannot be on "grades" but on learning and to achieve this teachers must receive professional development on how to implement assessment "for" learning. I believe our current grading philosophy hurts all kids. Stiggins,O'Connor & Reeves among others are right on point in their research of best practices using assessments for learning and not grading. Until our current grading system is changed kids will continue to feel hopeless and continue to not make the effort to learn which in turn leads to attendance, tardy, behavior, and effort concerns.