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Benefits of
The Northwest
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Alternative Schools: Approaches for Students at RiskThe Northwest Sampler - Oregon
Location Contact Alpha High School, established in 1980 and run by the Multnomah County Education Service District, serves 115 students from six school districts in the eastern part of the county. Using ESD funds, each district purchases slots for its students at Alpha. An advisory board made up of a representative from each district determines the student referral process and other procedures.
Alpha is based on the Experienced Based Career Education model initiated by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in 1972. Alpha focuses on academic training, positive self-development, school-to-work opportunities, and job readiness skills. Its goals for its students include earning a diploma, focusing on a career interest area, and being employed in that area upon graduation. Alpha's students are those who have been unsuccessful in traditional schools where their education does not seem to have as direct a connection with the outside world. They thrive once they are in a hands-on setting and can see how, for example, geometry is related to house building.
Students are involved in career planning throughout their time at Alpha. Each student has an individual occupation plan for career selection and all students spend half of every day at a job site. Early on they explore six different career pathways for two weeks each through activities such as job shadowing. Then they select one of the areas they explored earlier for a more indepth six- to 13-week exploration called a learning level. As seniors, students spend the half day at a job site in their selected career area as a paid employee, intern, or apprentice.
Academic and work-based learning are deeply integrated in the Alpha curriculum. For instance, students complete two 13-week integrated learning projects each year. These projects are devised jointly by the student, employer, one of the student's classroom teachers, and another teacher, to reflect both school- and work-based learning. To demonstrate research and writing skills for an English class a student working at a transmission shop might investigate and write a report on OSHA requirements for that industry and what the shop has to do in order to comply with them. In addition, the student might do an oral report with visual aids.
In order to provide Alpha students with school-to-work opportunities the school-to-work liaison has recruited 260 business partners.
Alpha students meet the same standards and undergo the same testing as other Oregon high school students. They also participate in twice-yearly, student-led conferences; parents attend these, as well as anyone else the student would like to invite. At the conferences students typically show any projects they have completed, discuss their plans for the future, and explain what they must do to accomplish those plans.
In the 1997-98 school year, Alpha will pilot the use of a skills standards document, developed with a local community college, for beginning-level welding. As students working in this field progress, employers and teachers will sign off on the academic and workplace skills enumerated in the document. Next year the metals field will be one of the Certificate of Advanced Mastery areas and students will able to participate in a metals program that articulates with a community college program.
Alpha is structured around the goal of workplace readiness. Students must clock in and out of school and wear appropriate clothes to school and the job site. When they arrive at the job site they call in to a voice mail that records the time. If students have more than five unexcused absences in a nine-week period they are referred back to their original high school and must wait 90 days before they can return to Alpha. The school has a full-time person in charge of attendance and accountability.
Instruction at Alpha is individualized. Each teacher has only 15 students per semester. Working in a family-like atmosphere, students have input into their job sites and the curriculum. Until recently many of the staff at Alpha had been at the school many years, some from the time of its inception. In the 1996-97 school year many of the long-term staffers moved to other ESD alternative schools to disseminate their school-to-work expertise.
Alpha is temporarily sharing space with another alternative high school in Portland while a new building is constructed next to the light rail in downtown Gresham, a suburb of Portland. The building, which will be ready for the 1998-99 school year, is designed to be part of the community. It will have a demonstration area for Alpha's business partners to introduce students to various trades and a place for organizations to list community service projects in which they would like students to participate.
Observed Outcome
Keys to Success
Location Contact Established at the close of 1995, Portland YouthBuilders, which teaches students construction trade skills, is a private, nonprofit, community-based alternative school funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Portland Public Schools dropout retrieval program.
By federal mandate, Portland YouthBuilders serves very low-income high school dropouts in an inner-city target area. Students are recruited through a broad effort that includes street outreach, newspaper ads, radio announcements, and networking with social service agencies. Students range in age from 16 to 24.
Portland YouthBuilders operates on a 10-month cycle, with rolling admissions during the first four months as openings occur. Enrollment is limited to 40; program staff total 13.5 FTE with eight of these in direct service positions. Though students earn high school credits for their work at Portland YouthBuilders, most of them are working toward a GED. Through an articulation agreement they also receive 19 college credits from Portland Community College.
Organized into four crews of 10, students spend alternating weeks in the classroom and on jobsites, building and restoring affordable housing in their community. The classroom curriculum integrates academic concepts with work-based content; for example, instructors may use examples from carpentry to convey principles of geometry, or examine topics such as community development, housing needs, and architecture from an historical perspective.
Portland YouthBuilders is part of AmeriCorps, a national service program. Students spend half a day each week doing community service with a nonprofit agency chosen to match their skills and interests. For this they receive a $2,363 stipend to be used for college tuition or an approved school-to-work program.
After the 10 months of full-time services, students receive 12 months of follow-up support services. Participants are provided career counseling, vocational mentors, instruction in job readiness skills, individual counseling, case management, support groups, life skills workshops, alcohol and drug education, social and recreational activities, and referral to other community services.
As students progress through the program they are given opportunities to develop leadership skills and take responsibility for themselves, their families, the program, and the community. For example, program policy is determined by a committee of eight students and two staff members.
Portland YouthBuilders sets skills standards that are equal to those of employers in the construction industry. Students sign a rights and responsibilities contract on entry to the program. While minor infractions are addressed on an individual contract basis, serious infractions including poor attendance, intoxication, or bringing weapons to school result in dismissal. The program is alcohol and drug free; participants must undergo random urinalysis.
Portland YouthBuilders tracks student progress extensively, performing educational tests, and inventorying attainment of job skills, life skills, and construction skills. Counselors also track the personal goals students set for themselves at the outset of the program.
Observed Outcomes
Keys to Success
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