Category Archives: High schools

A New Type of High School

Examples of Educational Alternatives

Toolkit for Creating New High Schools

New Schools to Bypass Traditional High Schools

Jobs for the Future will open schools that accelerate high school and college by compressing grades. Early College High Schools are small schools from which students leave with not only a high school diploma but also an Associate’s degree or two years of college credit toward a Bachelor’s degree. Several foundations will provide major funding [...]

Youthbuild USA, An Exciting Alternative

Youthbuild USA works with low income youth in 200 communities. Young people growing up in poor neighborhoods desire skills to help them move forward in life. However, they are often discouraged by an education system that fails to recognize their intelligence, fails to help them overcome learning difficulties, and fails to make learning a meaningful [...]

High School Redesign

A new report, State Strategies for Redesigning High Schools and Promoting High School to College Transitions by the Education Commission of the States is the latest in a long saga of reports from various sources calling for significant reform of high schools. This brief (6 pages) describes the problem, suggests changes and outlines the initiatives [...]

Changing High School

Because high schools have been so resistant to change, educational choices have expanded enormously. Why can’t high schools change? A provocative essay, “The Blind Men and the High School” descibes six strategies to change school. Each states a strategy, problem definition and theory of action. Here is one of the stategies as an example: Strategy: [...]

High School: Crisis or Possibility

A new report, Crisis or Possibility Conversations about the American High School (downloadable) by James Harvey and Naomi Housman for the National High School Alliance began with the assumption that something needed to be done. Some 40 organizations participate in the Alliance for this important and well-funded study about the need to “reinvent the American [...]

Advanced High School

The Providence, RI Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, or MET school for short, was created as a high school taking advantage of best practices in school reform and therefore departs significantly from the norm. A strong advisor program, small school size, and tremendous amount of community based learning are among its features. Dennis Litkey, [...]

Create New Schools

Community Based Organizations (CBOs)have entered the education scene by sponsoring new charter schools. The YMCA of America, YouthBuild and the National Council of LaRaza are examples. YouthBuild received a $5.4 million Gates Foundation grant to establish 10 new schools to add to the network of 23 Youthbuild schools. How National Organizations and Their Affiliates Can [...]

Another Alternative: Career Academies

From an article: Established more than 30 years ago, Career Academies have become a widely used high school reform initiative that aims to keep students engaged in school and prepare them for successful transitions to post-secondary education and employment. Typically serving between 150 and 200 high school students from grade 9 or 10 through grade [...]

Breaking Ranks II Calls for Major Reforms

Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals reaffirms and strengthens recommendations in the earlier 1996 addition. A free copy of the report is being sent to every high school principal in America with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The recommendations [...]

High Schools: Need for Alternatives

Indicators of serious problems in high schools continue to pop up like secrets that cannot be suppressed. Now the National Research Council of the National Academies (probably the nation’s most prestigious and unbiased organization) has published, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’ Motivation to Learn, a report showing a grim picture of high schools unlikely [...]

Schools within Schools

A long standing practice to provide choices is the practice of creating schools within an existing school. For example, a large high school might have several subunits that serve as alternatives for students and staff. The Gates Foundation funds a large number of projects to carve large schools into smaller units, for example $55 million [...]