Stanford University School of Education is now heavily involved in the movement to redesign smaller schools that are more responsive to the needs of students and teachers.
It has been 25 years since East Palo Alto had its own public high school. The city’s Ravenswood High School was closed in 1976 as part of a desegregation order. During all that time, local youth have had to travel to surrounding communities for their secondary education. Statistics show that nearly two-thirds fail to graduate from the schools they attend. Now that is about to change. Thanks to the concerted efforts of numerous individuals and the generosity of several foundations, a new charter school is opening its doors in East Palo Alto this fall. During its first year, the school will have 80 ninth-grade students, and will add one grade level each year, ultimately serving about 320 students in grades 9-12.
The Stanford University School of Education (SUSE) is one of three partners in this exciting collaboration, which includes Aspire Public Schools—a non-profit organization that runs public charter schools—and the Ravenswood School District. Its goal is to develop a more effective secondary school model that addresses the needs of low-income, urban youth and that can be replicated elsewhere. SUSE’s role will be to provide the new school, East Palo Alto High School, with curricular support, professional development, and school design assistance. The school will also serve as a professional development school for the training of new teachers in the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP).
This major undertaking on the part of SUSE reflects a new direction for STEP. Under the leadership of faculty sponsor, Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, and director, Professor Rachel Lotan, STEP is now moving to a professional development school (PDS) model of teacher training. “Under this model,” explains Professor Darling-Hammond, “SUSE faculty and students work with a small number of Bay Area schools that serve diverse learners to create settings where state-of-the-art education for children is married to state-of-the-art training for teachers. These schools, like teaching hospitals in medicine, aim to represent the best practices in education and will serve as training and demonstration sites for educators locally and nationwide.”
East Palo Alto High School, the newest professional development school to affiliate with STEP, is a part of what is commonly called the small schools movement, due to its size and design. Two decades of research findings offer compelling evidence that well-designed small schools help produce conditions that are especially effective for improving the education of low-income urban students. In the past, such students have been especially disadvantaged by large schools (see front page sidebar).
Resources for the Redesigned East palo alto high school in East Palo Alto
East Palo Alto High School’s mission is an ambitious one—to prepare every student for success in college, the workplace, and life. SUSE’s job, together with Aspire, is to provide the high school’s faculty and students with the support they need to accomplish this. Toward that end, SUSE faculty and students are engaged in a variety of strategies that will benefit the school while it enriches STEP.
All 58 students enrolled in STEP for 2001–2002 will be involved in East Palo Alto High School in some way. Several student teachers will be assigned to the high school for their primary placement, reducing the school’s already low 20-to-1 student-teacher ratio even further. In addition, STEP students will be able to attend some of their university courses at the school, participate in demonstration lessons and professional development with the school’s teachers, and learn about its curriculum and teaching methods. Students enrolled in STEP will train under the mentorship of East Palo Alto High School teachers (seven of whom are STEP alumni), and Stanford faculty will support professional development for veteran teachers. Cooperating teachers will have the opportunity to take education courses at Stanford that will enrich their practice. Stanford faculty will also work with high school faculty in selecting curriculum materials, developing curriculum, and developing practice through staff development at the school site.
Both the STEP program and the school are infusing technology into their teaching. Together, Stanford and East Palo Alto High School have secured a grant from Hewlett-Packard for an HP Mobile Computing Classroom that provides the school’s students and faculty with access to the latest computer technology. Everyone at the school will eventually have a laptop computer and a wireless connection to the school network and the Internet. Both teachers and students will be able to access their individual folders remotely on the school’s network. They will also be able to communicate with one another through the school’s electronic website. The partnership will support the faculty in developing technology-based curriculum units and teaching methods.
To help all students achieve high levels of literacy, the school will implement an extensive literacy program, based on the work of both Second Chance/ExCel and Strategic Literacy, research-based programs that have proven very successful in helping older students learn to read and think critically. STEP faculty will receive training in the programs at the same time as the school faculty, so they can train future student teachers. It is hoped the program will gradually spread to other school sites where STEP places student teachers and works with veteran teachers.
East Palo Alto High School teachers are expected to meet high standards. One requirement is that they either already possess National Board Certification or be willing to pursue it within five years. In 1998, Darling-Hammond began the Bay Area’s first support program to help teachers acquire national certification, and Stanford will offer this support to all of the school’s teachers.
As an integral part of the PDS partnership, Stanford faculty and graduate students will use multiple measures to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies used at East Palo Alto High School and to document its work. They will advise the school staff in evaluating students through performance-based measures, as well as standardized tests, and will track school progress through student data as well as surveys and interviews with students, teachers, and parents.
California Schools Redesign Network
East Palo Alto High School is a member of the SUSE-sponsored California Schools Redesign Network. According to Consulting Associate Professor Charla Rolland, the network includes organizations, such as the Bay Area Coalition of Equitable Schools (BAYCES), that have their own established networks in place, as well as all other organizations, schools, districts, and individual practitioners that are interested in the redesign and operation of more effective small schools.
As Rolland emphasizes, the new network is not about small schools—it is about redesigned small schools. “There are plenty of small schools in existence that are just as bad for students and adults as large schools. The California Schools Redesign Network will support and strengthen the work of small schools by focusing on those features that research has demonstrated promote school effectiveness.”
As network organizer, SUSE serves as a clearinghouse for existing research about small school designs and outcomes, and also conducts its own research on strategies for making small schools effective. In collaboration with the George Lucas Education Fund and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the network will use this research to create video- and web-based resources on school design that help schools learn about the “invisible” aspects of schools that make a difference in their outcomes for students. These technology-based resources will provide virtual tours of schools, outlining the model design elements of small schools, so that people can visit the schools without having to travel to them. The network will also support teams of educators in visiting model small schools elsewhere in the U.S., and share information via its website, through study groups and conferences.
This past summer the Stanford-based network sponsored four week-long summer institutes on redesigned small schools. Topics included the design features of effective small schools, setting up a new small school, and performance assessment. One outcome of the summer institutes was an electronic network that now makes it possible for those interested in redesigned small schools to share information.
The Network will sponsor a Performance Assessment Collaborative, which will enable schools to work together on the implementation of performance assessments—portfolios, performance tasks, and exhibitions—and support research and development to strengthen and disseminate their work. Darling-Hammond explains that “these kinds of assessments engage students in challenging tasks like research projects, science investigations, and extended problem solving that focus on higher order thinking and proficient performance. They raise standards for performance while providing students opportunities to develop their critical thinking skills and helping teachers gain information about student understanding.”
If you are interested in learning more about redesigned small schools and performance assessment, contact the California Schools Redesign Network (Charla Rolland, crolland@stanford.edu or Linda Darling-Hammond, ldh@stanford.edu).
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