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"The ninth-grade student was a show stopper. Half of her head was shaved, and the other half was freaked out in a bold explosion of hair, bells, and ribbons. She had three gold studs in her nose and was wearing at least a dozen earrings that jingled like wind chimes when she moved. In her own distinctive way she was a beautiful young girl. I asked her why she had left her former high school to travel across town to a small alternative program. She thought for amoment then explained, 'At my other school everyone treated me like a geek; everybody thought I was kind of weird. Over here...it's like, I just disappeared into this really happy family..."
Students attending the nation's estimated 15,000 alternative schools come in all sorts of colorful packages. More than a few adopt hairstyles, wardrobes, street language, and attitudes that would make them stand out—or be kicked out—of mainstream classrooms. But what's most remarkable about this diverse student body isn't outward appearances. It's that these students, many of whom face obstacles ranging from poverty to teen pregnancy to long-term academic failure to chronic delinquency, are making an appearance in school at all. A growing body of research and years of anecdotal evidence show that students who have been labeled failures, troublemakers, or dropouts in traditional schools can thrive in smaller, more individualized settings. That may sound like plain common sense to any teacher who has worked to pull a struggling student back from the brink. It's especially timely news, however, as communities across the country wrestle with the staggering social and economic costs associated with undereducated youth. After years of operating on the margins of public education, alternative schools are getting a serious look from many different interest groups: proponents of school reform, corrections workers overwhelmed by juvenile caseloads, and employers concerned about finding enough educated young people to fill tomorrow's workplaces. Robert D. Barr of Boise State University and William H. Parrett of the University of Alaska Fairbanks took a comprehensive look at the mounting body of research literature regarding at-risk students, much of it generated at alternative schools in the Northwest. Their detailed findings, published in Hope at Last for At-Risk Youth, help explain why these diverse schools are earning such widespread attention. As the authors explain, "Once at-risk students leave the difficult world of traditional school classes and enter the supportive, focused programs of an alternative school, truly remarkable achievement often occurs."
Mary Anne Raywid of the Center for the Study of Education Alternatives has witnessed hundreds of similar success stories over the years. In her research review in The Handbook of Alternative Education she writes, "Alternative schools are known for the dramatic turnarounds they often bring to the lives of individual youngsters whose previous school performance has ranged from poor to disastrous. Well-substantiated evidence is harder to come by," Raywid adds, "but gradually the hard evidence is piling up." That hard evidence includes studies showing improvements in academic performance and self-esteem, and reductions in behavior problems and dropout rates, among students in alternative settings. These schools can't work wonders in every difficult case, of course. Nor can schools alone untangle the web of social and economic problems that put so many children in jeopardy. But the results coming from alternative settings are convincing. Barr and Parrett go so far as to argue that alternative schools should be a key component of "a blueprint to restructure public education" so that all students will have a fighting chance to succeed in school. Many of the current buzzwords of school reform—performance-based education, school choice, school-to-work transition, experiential learning—have long been realities at alternative schools in the Northwest and across the country. Now, with an explosion of interest in these program, it's worth investigating what the margins can teach to the mainstream. Who needs an alternative? At least a quarter of the students who entered the nation's high schools as freshmen in 1994 never got the chance, four years later, to don a cap and gown. Before they could march across the stage to receive their diplomas, they either dropped out, or were pushed out, of public schools ill equipped to cope with such wrenching problems as family dysfunction, domestic violence, poverty, and homelessness. Dropout rates run even higher in urban areas where these issues are most acute, according to Staying in School: Partnerships for Educational Change.
What happens to the kids who disappear from the educational system? Statistics paint a grim picture. More than 80 percent of prison inmates are high school dropouts; teen parents who have two or more children can expect to remain on welfare for a decade. According to a 1997 Juvenile Justice Bulletin ("Reaching Out to Youth Out of the Education Mainstream"), "Research has demonstrated that youth who are not in school and not in the labor force are at high risk of delinquency and crime. Society pays a high price for children's school failure. In 1993, one-fourth of youth entering adult prisons had completed grade 10; only 2 percent had completed high school or had a GED." After a decade of study, researchers can chart the characteristics of students most at risk of school failure. According to the Staying in School report, "Black, Latino and less-affluent Americans of all ethnic groups and nationalities drop out at far higher rates than members of other groups, especially in the inner-cities." Studies also show that students are more likely to leave school early if they have a history of poor academic performance or low attendance; if they are older than their peers by the eighth grade (often due to retention); if they become pregnant during high school; or if they need to work to support their families. Barr and Parrett add, "Research clearly indicates that many school attempts to help at-risk students (including retention, expulsion, and ability tracking) too often backfire and become contributing factors toward forcing students out of school." Dale Mann, writing in Teachers College Record, describes a "collision of factors" leading to an individual student's decision to leave school: "Most students quit because of the compounded impact of, for example, being poor, growing up in a broken home, being held back in the fourth grade, and finally having slugged 'Mr. Fairlee,' the school's legendary vice principal for enforcement." As Mann points out, school-related factors are often only part of this complicated picture. Much of the research on at-risk youth has focused on the problems these students face at the time they leave school. But often, their academic challenges begin years earlier, even before they start school. Ready to Learn, a 1991 study by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, reported that more than one in three kindergartners arrive at school unprepared and poorly equipped to learn. "If children do not have a good beginning," the study cautioned, "it will be difficult, if not impossible, to compensate fully for such failings later on." After years of watching a steady percentage of their students fail to become engaged in learning, educators have become adept at predicting which kids will be lost from the system. "Using only a few identified factors, schools can predict with better than 80 percent accuracy students in the third grade who will later drop out of school, Barr and Parrett report. Subjective factors, they add, are often as telling as hard data: "Regardless of what others might call them, teachers have always known these kids. They have known them as disinterested and disruptive, as those students who refused to learn, and as those who they thought could not learn. And they have known these students as those who, by their presence, have made teaching and learning so difficult for all the rest." According to Public Agenda, 88 percent of teachers nationwide believe academic achievement would improve substantially if persistent troublemakers were simply removed from class. Every student who leaves the system early, either by choice or as punishment, loses much more than a diploma. These young people "are being disconnected from the functions of society," argues Fred Newman, director of the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools at the University of Wisconsin. "Not just from economic productivity," he adds, "but from the functions of citizens in a democracy." Because the costs of losing touch with at-risk students are so profound, many states have passed legislation allowing alternatives. Oregon law goes so far as to require districts to provide educational alternatives for students who either are not meeting, or are exceeding, educational standards. Some Oregon districts contract with private schools to provide alternatives while others create their own, unique programs. In Washington, where the state actively encourages and supports alternative education, the number of alternative schools expanded from 44 schools in the mid-1970s to more than 180 in 1995. What is an alternative school? Alternative schools have long been defined by what they are not: Not in the educational mainstream. Geared for students not succeeding in traditional classroom settings. Not bound by the conventional rules and regulations regarding textbooks, class size, curriculum, grades, teaching styles. But what are they, exactly?
There is no simple answer. An alternative "cyberschool" in California delivers individual instruction via home computers to high school students who range from gifted to slow learners. In Connecticut, an adventure curriculum is built around rock climbing and other forms of outdoor education designed to build students' self-esteem. Students in a Foxfire program in New England conduct oral history interviews in the community to learn how local folktales reflect their culture.
In the Northwest, alternative programs are similarly marked by innovation and variety. Students interested in real-world education can gain experience at jobsites in the community while developing their own "master skills" (such as reasoning, problem solving, and communications skills) through a program called CE2. First developed in Tigard, Ore., CE2 has been adopted in dozens of other communities. In rural Idaho, an alternative school serves students in grades K-12 with small classes, a schoolwide focus on technology, and outdoor learning experiences in which older students act as counselors for their younger classmates. Clearly, programs labeled "alternative" cover a varied map. While they are diverse in organization, teaching style, and curriculum, many of today's alternative schools can trace their roots to the free schools or community schools founded during the 1960s. Richard Neuman, writing in Phi Beta Kappan, describes the early alternative schools as springing from an idealistic, counterculture era when the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. The early free schools shared a general belief that education should be tailored to students' needs and interests, Neuman recounts. "Consequently, alternative programs attempted to blend academic subjects with practical areas of knowledge and personal interest. They offered individual learning plans for each student. Students developed their personal learning plans and made curricular decisions. Faculty acted as partners, collaborating in development and operation of their school." Unlike more traditional schools, these institutions avoided tracking, ability grouping, and other forms of labeling. Many of these ideas have endured as alternative schools have evolved. Today, educational alternatives include a smorgasbord of private and public programs, each one with a distinct flavor. What they continue to share, according to Jerry Mintz of the Alternative Education Resource Organization, "is an approach that is more individualized, has more respect for the student, parent and teacher, and is more experiential and interest-based."
While the earliest alternative schools were designed as options for any student who wanted to experience a different style of learning, today's public alternative schools are more likely to be problem-solving programs geared to serving a specific population of struggling students. Education Week defines alternative schools as "public schools which are set up by states or school districts to serve populations of students who are not succeeding in the traditional public school environment." This shift in emphasis led Don Giles to write in Changing Schools, "The term alternative is no longer generally regarded as applying to a variety of models but instead has become associated exclusively with nonconforming programs for 'at risk' or 'bad' students." Because alternative schools have meant different things in different communities, researchers looking to compare programs have run into an apples-and-oranges dilemma. As Raywid explains in Making a Difference for Students at Risk, "The challenge in researching effectiveness of these programs has been the absence of a standard definition." Yet most alternative schools do emphasize central themes and philosophies, Raywid notes, citing "smallness, personalization, interpersonal relationships, and a primary focus on students as human beings." By looking at patterns in alternative school organization, teaching methods, and philosophies, Raywid has found three models that emerge from the thousands of individual programs currently in place across the country.
If free schools sound somewhat like educational utopias, then Raywid suggests two more metaphors to describe the other models. Disciplinary programs resemble soft jails, while problem-solving schools are more akin to therapy. How they spell success "This is the only school where I've never had an attendance problem, where I was interested in learning, and where the teachers were there to help me. Most people I know in my position would have quit school, so I'd say I chose 'the less traveled road.' The difference in my life has been great," wrote one student in an essay. When alternative schools work, they work wonders. They offer students who thought they were failures a taste of success. They reach the hardest- to-reach. Although such stories can seem miraculous, there's no magic formula behind programs that enable students to succeed. Indeed, research shows that it's not what alternative schools teach, but how they work with students that can make a difference. In Expelled to a Friendlier Place, Martin Gold and David W. Mann suggest two factors most likely to help delinquent youth improve in alternative settings: 1. A significant increase in the proportion of a student's successful vs. unsuccessful experiences 2. A warm, accepting relationship with one or more adults A change of setting, they point out, can serve as a fresh start for a student who has learned to associate school with failure. As one teacher observes, "Kids know, when they arrive here, that they've stumbled somehow. And they know everyone else here has stumbled, too. This is a place where they can start over, without all the grief." Ironically, the discipline problems that may have bounced students out of the mainstream tend to be reduced in alternative settings. In a national survey, Raywid found that the personal relationships alternative schools foster between students and staff were more critical for success than curriculum or instructional strategies. Similarly, Barr and Parrett observes, "Many alternative educators report significant improvement that is not directly related to the curriculum or the instruction (although these most certainly make a difference). It is student attitudes that seem to make the difference.
In "Overcoming the Odds," Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith note that the more resilient youth in their long-term study often had supportive teachers "who acted as role models and assisted with realistic educational and vocational plans." Choice is another key to the success of programs that work. "Alternative schools must be membership institutions, places with which the students want to affiliate," Raywid reports. "Nobody gets sentenced here," explains one program director, "not the students or the teachers." Strategies for Teacher Success
Source: Meridian Academy
Rather than operating as dragnets to pull students back from the brink of failure, effective alternative schools are more like safety nets into which struggling students can choose to jump. When researchers at the University of Wisconsin looked at 14 schools with successful programs for at-risk youth, they concluded, "The key finding of our research is that effective schools provide at-risk students with a community of support." Barr and Parrett synthesize research findings into these three "essential characteristics" of effective schools for at-risk youth: 1. Comprehensive and continuing programs. Students who are not thriving in mainstream schools are seldom helped by short-term alternatives that dump them back into their old schools after a few weeks or months. In long-term programs, students can benefit from efforts that may address academic, social, family, and health concerns. 2. Choice and commitment. In the most successful alternative programs, both students and teaching staffs choose to participate. 3. Caring and demanding teachers. Barr and Parrett point to caring and demanding teachers as perhaps "the most powerful component in effective programs for at-risk youth." They explain, "There is an abundance of research that emphasizes how important it is for teachers to care for at-risk youth, to believe that these students can learn, and then to hold high expectations for them as learners." Small program size also seems to be a critical factor, according to both the research literature and those who work in alternative settings. "However great we may be," observes a writing teacher from an alternative high school in Portland, "even we wouldnbe getting very far if we had to deal with a class of 35 kids. Staying small is the only way we can keep these kids from getting lost all over again." Students often arrive at alternative schools lacking or behind in basic skills. Many students are surprised at how quickly they can make up for lost time in programs that deliver individualized instruction. Rather than doing slowed-down, remedial work, they may find themselves on an accelerated learning curve. In Teaching Advanced Skills to At-Risk Students, Barbara Means and Michael S. Knapp explain the logic behind accelerated learning for students who may have struggled to keep up in regular classes. Remedial education, they say, tends to "postpone more challenging and interesting work for too long, and in some cases forever. Educationally disadvantaged children appear to fall farther and farther behind their more advantaged peers as they progress in school."
Rather than focusing on a student's academic deficits and insisting on mastery of the basics before a student can move ahead, they outline an alternative approach that acknowledges a student's intellectual strengths. This doesn't mean ignoring the basics. Instead, they use "a complex, meaningful task" as the context for instruction. The active learning approach found in most alternative settings means instruction is delivered through dialogue rather than lectures. Students practice advanced and basic skills while being actively drawn into problem solving. For instance, students might study the physical principles involved in shooting a basketball foul shot, or analyze the lyrics and structure of a rap song as if it were a sonnet. They wind up acquiring new skills along with a new belief in their capacity to think, and their leap in confidence can help make up for lost time. Although alternative school teachers work with some of the hardest-to-reach students, they report a high degree of job satisfaction. They enjoy the creativity required to connect with students who have not previously enjoyed learning. In studies of the most effective alternative programs, researchers have found extensive collaboration between teachers. Alternative programs typically involve the faculty in designing programs and developing curriculum. One research team described "a climate of innovation and experimentation" among the faculty at effective alternative schools. Pioneering new ideas One of the best known alternative school programs in the country was started almost by accident in New York's East Harlem neighborhood. Recounting the story in Miracle in East Harlem, former Deputy Superintendent Seymour Fliegel describes this neighborhood as "one of the toughest and poorest" in America, with one in seven adults unemployed and violent crime twice the citywide average. Being at risk of school failure was more the rule than the exception for his students. In 1973, East Harlem had the worst academic performance of New York City's 32 school districts. At one high school, 93 percent of the ninth graders dropped out before graduation. Yet by 1987, the percentage of East Harlem students reading at grade level had soared from 16 percent to 63 percent. Student achievement zoomed from 32nd place to 15th place. Dropout and truancy rates had declined dramatically. The difference, Fliegel asserts, could be traced to the opening of 26 small, innovative alternative schools focused on meeting individual student needs. Each school was started by a teacher or a small team of teachers who had a dream about how to deliver education. The district, frustrated by chronic student failure, gave them the autonomy to bend the rules and experiment with alternative approaches. The result, Fliegel believes, has been "more congenial environments for students and teachers alike." East Harlem took many of the lessons first learned in alternative schools back to the mainstream, creating small schools designed and run by committed teaching staffs who were encouraged to be creative in designing programs. As school reform efforts continue in the Northwest and elsewhere in the country, similar applications of the alternative school model may be ahead. Alternative schools have pioneered such concepts as cross-age grouping, schools without walls, nongraded learning, competency-based graduation requirements, school choice, and site-based decisionmaking. Observe Barr and Parrett, "It is startling to consider the vast numbers of concepts, approaches, and programs first developed in alternative schools that now have become widely used in traditional public schools."
Despite their well-documented success and innovation, alternative schools continue to operate in the shadows of mainstream education, often fighting an uphill battle for respect. Some schools continue to struggle against being treated as "dumping grounds" for hard-to-handle kids. "They are likely to be seen as fringe or flaky…as programs for losers, misfits, misbehaviors," Raywid admits. Gold and Mann, whose research has demonstrated the value of alternative programs for students with serious delinquency problems, lament that these innovative schools "are particularly fragile. It does not take much to close such schools—an incident of violent behavior, an unfavorable report on achievement test scores, a tight school budget." By their very design, alternative schools have a flavor that's unlike the mainstream. "We have a different look, taste, and feel," acknowledges a teacher who has spent his long career in alternative settings, working one-on-one with students who could not, or would not, survive among "30 students in a cell with a bell." For a student who has felt stifled in a traditional classroom, the difference can be as invigorating as fresh air. At his graduation from the Portland Night High School in 1997, Chris Moore summed up the benefits of an alternative education in his simple but joyous song:
What teachers here have done. A kid comes in upside down And they turn him around. 
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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