Governors Take on High School Reform
Saying "the states have a powerful incentive to plug the leaks in the education pipeline," the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices issued a series of policy recommendations to help guide high school reform. In a publication titled Ready for Tomorrow: Helping All Students Achieve Secondary and Postsecondary Success, the organization encourages governors and other state officials to take the following steps:
- Set a statewide benchmark for postsecondary achievement
- Create and support an integrated K-16 data system
- Better align K-12 and higher education expectations and incentives
- Promote more learning options
- Focus on low-performing schools
The report shares three Northwest examples that put those recommendations to work:
Integrated K-16 data systems
Idaho offers districts access to computer-based assessments of student performance that can inform classroom instruction, including a standards-based, grade-level exam that meets NCLB requirements and an exam that has "adaptive" questions that become easier or harder depending on how well the student is performing. State officials believe the adaptive questions and the 24-hour turnaround time for reports on the results of the computer-based assessments will yield diagnostic information useful to teachers and principals.
Aligning K-12 and higher education expectations
Oregon has been working to align high school and postsecondary standards since 1993. When fully implemented, the Proficiency-based Admission Standards System (PASS) will align Oregon's high school standards with college admission and placement. Students will have to demonstrate proficiency in six areas: math, science, English, social science, the arts, and a second language. To make the system work, Oregon is revamping its student record data system, training faculty in implementing PASS, and planning to provide feedback to high schools that compares their students' college performance with their students' PASS assessment results.
Promoting learning options
Washington's Running Start program began in the early 1990s. Qualified 11th- and 12th-graders can take college courses for free at the state's 34 community and technical colleges and three public universities. The school district pays the college tuition according to a state-set formula. In 2000-2001, more than 13,000 students took advantage of the program.
Although high schools are subject to fewer mandates than elementary and middle schools under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, there are a number of requirements that high schools must meet. These include:
- Employing only "highly qualified" teachers in core academic subjects by the end of the 2005-2006 school year
- Defining graduation rates in a rigorous and standardized way
- Annually testing students in either 10th, 11th, or 12th grade in math and reading (and eventually in science)
- Incrementally increasing test scores and graduation rates so 100 percent of students are "proficient" by spring 2014
- Ending the practice of counting GED and alternative graduation certificates as comparable to high school diplomas
The full report by the National Governors Association is available at www.nga.org.
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