Ready, Set, Go
A Washington district commits to making every student ready for college, career, and citizenship
BELLINGHAM, Washington—From the street, the slightly shabby cluster of portables doesn’t look like a beacon of hope. But inside the classrooms of Options High almost 125 students are finding new reasons to connect to secondary school and to reach beyond. While it would be easy to make excuses for kids like Maya, Kirsten, or Jessie—who might come with more than the usual share of “issues”—neither their teachers nor the district is willing to let them off the hook. Here in Bellingham, everyone is expected to meet demanding graduation requirements. Everyone can and should be college ready.
“It requires a lot of work talking to students about what your expectations are—especially with kids who don’t have a lot of hope,” says Gigi Morganti, Options’ feisty principal. “It’s all about different levels of support for different kids, but not closing any doors or making decisions for them.”
That message about wide open possibilities apparently is getting through. According to Morganti, in a random sample of Options’ ninth-graders last year “100 percent said they understood that their teachers expected them to go to college and would provide support for them to do that.”
Connecting to project-based learning
Of course, ready for college doesn’t necessarily mean every student will ultimately choose a four-year institution. Will, a sophomore who’s busy preparing a presentation on the health risks associated with space travel, says he plans to become a mechanic after graduating. “I’ll start at a technical college,” he says, “but then I’d like to go to a NASCAR training program.” Will explains that he came to Options after trying a more traditional high school. “I didn’t like it [because] they weren’t able to individualize it at all,” he says. “When I got here I realized how much I needed an education. They really turned my life around.”
Like Will, Skye finds the project-based learning approach at Options meets her needs. Each student completes four projects during the year linked to a broad schoolwide theme like community issues, changing the world, or career possibilities. The student must construct an essential question, identify grade-level expectations, and produce a scholarly paper. Making a public presentation and reflecting on the process are also critical parts of the process.
Skye, a soft-spoken junior, has chosen prisoner re-entry as the focus of her current project. “This was a big learning stretch for me,” she confides. “First I was going to do it on how people are affected by release from prison, but then I realized that I needed to look at what it’s like to be a prisoner.” She got different perspectives by interviewing a corrections officer, someone in a work release program, and another individual who recently completed a 10-year prison sentence. Her research will culminate in a presentation.
“Options makes you think more,” says Skye. “In bigger schools there’s a lot of memorization, but here they teach you more critical thinking. This school focuses a lot on college and they taught me what I can do to make myself more acceptable for college.” Skye hopes to go to Evergreen State College: Project-based learning will help prepare her “because that’s how they run things there.”
Demanding more
Bellingham School District:
By the numbers
| Number of students | 10,577 |
|---|---|
| Number of ELL lunches | 543 |
| Free and reduced-price lunch | 34% |
| Number of schools | 21 |
| Average class size | 25.2 |
| Cost per student | $8,054 |
| (State average cost) | ($8,189) |
To earn a diploma, students at Options and Bellingham’s three other high schools face more demands than their counterparts around the state. While Washington requires 19 credits for graduation, Bellingham has upped the ante to 23. And, future Bellingham students will face even stiffer standards that are aligned with Washington’s four-year college entrance requirements. After two years of study—marked by substantial community and parent input—the Bellingham School Board voted last spring to phase in new requirements in English, math, and foreign language over the next seven years.
Executive Director for School Administration Sherrie Brown led the task force that proposed the changes. “One of the things we wrestled with as a task force is what do we mean by ‘college ready’: does it mean a technical/training school, community college, or four-year university?,” she asks. “We decided we wanted to set it up so students could make that choice instead of us making it for them.”
Students, in fact, played a key role in pushing for the tougher graduation standards. Deputy Superintendent Susan Zoller explains that the district tapped into current and former students, asking them what they need to be successful. “That was a very important piece to take back to our constituents—especially our internal ones,” Zoller observes. “Their voice was more powerful than others in saying you didn’t push us hard enough.”
The new graduation requirements are just one part of a well-orchestrated and highly visible readiness campaign. All school buildings are plastered with posters—in English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, and Punjabi—that tout Bellingham’s mission of getting students ready for college, career, and citizenship. The theme is reinforced on the district’s Web site (www.bham.wednet.edu) and in publications like the annual progress report and online Ready Guide that parents can use to help students plan their courses.
“Our message has consistently been to help our community understand how our world has changed and to bring them along in what we’re doing in response to that,” explains Communications Director Tanya Rowe. “We’ve been sharing key messages that we’re preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet.”
Statistics from organizations like the College & Work Ready Agenda—a coalition of Washington businesses—underscore how important postsecondary education will be for the workers of the future. The group forecasts that by 2014 more than three-fourths of new family-wage jobs in Washington will require an education or training beyond high school. Of those jobs, more than half will be held by workers with four-year college degrees.
Starting early
Aiming for college has to start long before high school—especially when a son or daughter may be the first college-bound member of the family. That message isn’t lost on students at Shuksan Middle School, a Title I school where sixth- through eighth-graders are already busy filling out college applications and drafting admissions essays.
The students are part of Shuksan’s AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program, which combines a national academic counseling curriculum with independent projects and tutoring. Fifteen percent of the school—about 75 students—was selected for the program based on grades, test scores, interviews, and teacher recommendations. “They had to apply and choose to be in the class,” notes AVID Coordinator Sharece Steinkamp. She adds that student and parent buy-in is key to the program’s success.
“Historically there’s been a focus on highly capable or low-performing students,” says Shuksan Principal Andy Mark. “AVID takes academically average kids who may have challenges like ELL or low income and looks at what they need to get to college. It introduces them to more rigorous courses and infuses them with content-driven skill support.” Mark and Steinkamp point out that kids “in the middle” tend to be passive; AVID teaches them how to advocate for their own success.
AVID meets daily during an extended learning block. Students who are not in the program spend the period receiving extra reading or math support or—if they’re already highly capable in those subjects—they’re offered enrichment courses. Even students who don’t participate in AVID still get some of the benefits, since all Shuksan teachers are trained in the curriculum and weave it into their classes.
In Heidi Sherman’s classroom, AVID students have just finished a discussion about checking accounts in preparation for tomorrow’s visit by a bank executive. Some of the class turns to researching colleges while others huddle in peer tutoring groups. Tutoring help also comes from regular volunteers—students from Whatcom Community College and Western Washington University—who answer math or science questions and more personal ones, too.
“The kids are trying to fit themselves into a future image as a college student,” says Western Washington education major Lauren Andison. “One minute they’re asking you about volcanoes, but then they’ll suddenly want to know how much do you spend on books and do you eat Top Ramen all the time?” Andison says it’s important for these kids to “have a relationship with someone who’s made the decision to commit to an education and has thought through the sacrifices.” Andison’s own path to university included a two-year stint working in a cookie factory after graduating high school. She impresses on the students how it felt to lift 200-pound barrels of dough, “watching people my mom’s age working beside me and thinking I’ve got to get out of here.”
Jaime is one middle-schooler who doesn’t see hard labor on a factory floor as part of her future. She wasn’t identified as a potential candidate for AVID but pushed to be admitted. “I knew it was supposed to help kids, so I asked Ms. Steinkamp if I could be in it this year,” she says. “It’s kind of like a family. Last year I got really bad grades and got in trouble, but now I’m getting good grades and I’m really organized.” To prove the point, she proudly shows off her neatly arranged notebook, complete with agendas and Cornell notetaking examples.
Easing transitions
Teaching middle school students how to organize and take notes can help them make the leap to high school: so does providing extra support in the crucial freshman year. At Sehome High School, a sprawling campus with a stunning view of Mt. Baker, support comes in the form of integrated ninth-grade teams that offer a more personalized environment. Three teams of 100 students each share the same English and social studies teachers along with dedicated math and science instructors.
For Kevin Johnson and Shannon Casey, team teaching not only benefits freshmen but teachers as well. “Now I think bigger than just my classroom,” says Johnson, who teaches World Connections. “It’s added more depth to my curriculum because there’s more of a humanities focus,” agrees Casey, an English teacher. Taking advantage of the fact that their adjoining classrooms are separated by a movable wall, the partners teach a combined lesson at least once a week. Today, the two trade off introducing a unit on heroism that will require students to choose a heroic figure, do rigorous research, and describe what makes that individual a hero. “The key part is to find three or four examples or moments that reveal the person’s heroism,” Johnson tells students as they rush to the bank of computers to begin their search.
Sehome Principal Phyllis Textor says the move to integrated teams—and common planning time for team teachers—has had an immediate impact. In the first semester of implementation, the number of freshmen failing one or more courses was cut in half, going from 40 percent to 22 percent. “[Our students] enjoy learning in connected ways, they enjoy working on real-life issues, and they enjoy project-based learning experiences,” Textor writes in a message to parents. “Our teams will strive to provide our ninth-graders with these opportunities, while personalizing the learning and creating teacher-student relationships that will last throughout each student’s high school career.”
Ramping up counseling
Textor points to her counseling team as another critical piece in helping students feel connected and prepared for life after high school. “The three [counselors] have embraced the college ready theory and are living it out,” she says. “Their role has changed to being an academic counselor instead of dealing primarily with crises and crying kids.”
One reason for the change is Washington’s requirement that each student prepare a “High School and Beyond Plan.” These plans outline what students hope to do after graduation and what they’ll do in high school to get there. Students begin their plans as they schedule courses for freshman year and revise them throughout high school with help from counselors.
Sehome’s Julie Kratzig describes her fellow counselors as more “intentional” now, planning more before the school year even starts. “In the past our delivery model was to get kids to take as many college ready courses as possible,” she says. “Now, we spend five minutes with each kid during our registration process: We go over what they’re registering for and we ask questions like, ‘Where’s your algebra?’ We double check to make sure they’re getting what they need.”
“Being proactive is the thing that’s ultimately changed,” agrees Counselor Michelle Nilsen. Instead of meeting with groups of juniors and seniors, the counselors schedule individual sessions with each student. “When we did group meetings, we were giving the message that one size fits all,” adds Nilsen’s colleague, Bobby Stafford. “But you have to be cognizant of the fact that students are coming to you with different needs. You’re there to hear what their dream is, and help them find how to get there.” Nilsen echoes that belief: “We have to keep the doors open, and show them they can do whatever they want to do.”
Ready for a brave new world
It’s difficult to imagine what exactly is in store for these students. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have worked in as many as 14 different jobs by age 38. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 will be ones that didn’t even exist in 2004.
In adopting new graduation requirements and focusing on being college ready, Bellingham School District is trying to ensure that all students can meet those challenges. In the words of Bellingham’s annual report, “We are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, to use technologies that haven’t been invented yet, in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet.” 
College eligible and college ready
The Bellingham School District has set specific benchmarks toward the goal of preparing all students for postsecondary challenges. The goals for 2008–2009—and how the district measures up—include:
- 70 percent of students eligible to attend a four-year university in Washington (currently, 45 percent are eligible)
- No students will need remediation to attend a community or technical college (of 285 district graduates in 2006 who went directly to community or technical college, 47 percent had to take at least one remedial math class)
- 75 percent of district students will take at least one Advanced Placement or honors course (59 percent did in 2005–2006)
- 60 percent of students will take eighth grade algebra and four years of high school
- math (32 percent of eighth-graders took algebra in preparation for rigorous high school math in 2005–2006
To earn a high school diploma, current Bellingham students must earn 23 credits, including 3.5 credits in English, 2 in math, 2 in science, and 3 in social studies. The number of required math and English credits will increase for the class of 2013, and the class of 2014 will need to earn two world language credits.