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Excerpts from Northwest Education Magazine
[From Transforming High School, Fall 2004]
We all have our memories of high school: Mine are stuck back in the late 1960s in a monstrously large urban school undergoing cataclysmic change. One of the oldest and biggest public secondary schools in Dade County, Miami Senior High drew a largely white, economically mixed student population from the expensive high-rise condos on Biscayne Bay to the blue-collar neighborhoods on the fringes of downtown. While a small percentage of Miami High's "Stingarees" were headed for college, the majority would find their niche in the workforce, well-prepared by vocational courses offered at the school ....
Midway through my sophomore year, world politics flipped our world of pep rallies and Friday night dances upside down. A flood of refugees-some 3,600 a month-poured into Miami with the beginning of the Cuban airlift. Overnight, students who were strangers in a strange land filled the corridors, attending makeshift classes in hallways, custodial closets, and the auditorium. By the time I was a senior, almost 4,000 students jammed the school's three floors.
Today, Miami High's enrollment stands at more than 3,200 and its students are 90 percent Hispanic and 4 percent white. It earned a "D" grade in 2002 and 2003 from the Florida Department of Education based on statewide assessment tests. Though test scores are improving, only 42 percent of Miami High students scored at or above level three (on a five-point scale) in math, and just 20 percent reached that mark in reading. Graduation rates are a dismal 51 percent.
While Miami High's disappointing standings may be linked to unique circumstances, it's not an isolated case. In the 21 years since A Nation at Risk concluded that "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people," we've struggled to make substantial strides in educational achievement, and have failed in high schools ....
—Rhonda Barton[next »]
