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Five Paths to Success

Throughout the region, high schools try different strategies to make learning more personal, relevant, and challenging.

Picture 100 newly minted ninth-graders, ready to embark on their high school career. Four years later, that same group will have noticeably shrunk: Only 67 will have completed high school and just 38 will enroll in higher education. The group snapshot contracts even further as the years roll by: Just 26 will return to classes after their freshman year and only 18 of our original 100 students will have completed a bachelor's degree within six years or an associate's degree within three years. Added to that, one of every three students going on to higher ed will take at least one remedial course in math, reading, or writing and the figure soars to three of every four new students in some urban community colleges.

Statistics like that—together with the pressures exerted by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, high-stakes testing, and the critical voices of business and higher education leaders—have combined to create a sort of "perfect storm" churning the waters of America's high schools. The tide is so strong that it's become increasingly difficult to ignore.

The five schools profiled in the following pages—small and large, urban and rural—are weathering the storm with a variety of approaches, from smaller learning communities to project-based learning, standards-based models, and distributed leadership. Some have more favorable socioeconomic profiles than others and not all strategies will work elsewhere. But, together they offer encouraging lessons for high schools striving to reach higher.

—Rhonda Barton