Doing the impossible : making urban schools excellent

Abstract

Every 29 seconds a student drops out of high school in the United States and more than one million students stop attending school annually. African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are disproportionately represented within this statistic: over one-half of them fail to graduate from public high school with their class. Despite these alarmingly poor rates of graduation for students of color in U.S. public high schools, there are examples of schools and school districts that have begun to slow this trend or reverse it, graduating nearly all of their students, regardless of ethnicity, within four years. Primarily working with the same ethnic groups found at the heart of the depressing statistics noted above and in urban areas infamous for having under-resourced schools and communities, these learning environments have engineered what many would say is impossible: they have made urban schools excellent. This paper will analyze these models and answer the question "What makes a high school's learning environment successful?" A school's "learning environment" can impact student achievement. Although the learning environment experienced by students is comprised of many elements like the physical condition of the school building, the community surrounding the school, students' relationships with school staff and the school culture, the cases discussed in this paper indicate that teachers are at the center of improving student graduation rates. This paper identifies some of the traits that enable certain schools and educators to overcome the dismal national trends in graduation rate in public high schools.

(cont.) Through case studies, participant interviews and observations covering four schools and one school district in different areas of the country, this paper will offer the following lessons to policymakers, parents, educators and young people striving to improve public school education: 1. Successful urban schools demand that students reach high standards and provide the support necessary for youth to meet those standards 2. Successful schools use relevant and purposeful curricula 3. Successful learning environments anticipate dropouts and intervene before the student leaves school.