Essential question: How do we make school more relevant to students?
High schools must find ways to make school relevant for students. Students understand and retain more when their learning is relevant, engaging, and meaningful to their lives.1 Integrating a standards-based curriculum with a career focus is a recommended instructional approach to link students’ education to their future.2 Connecting the curriculum to the workplace allows students the opportunity to learn real-world applications and to solve problems in a work context. This approach makes the curriculum relevant for students and engages them in learning.3
Subcommittee 1 used the following three criteria to assess whether an educational model provides relevant and engaging instruction. A successful model:
- Promotes effective academic engagement
- Uses contextual approaches for learning
- Ties formal education to the broader world of career, community, and engaged citizenship
Two educational models that met the preceding criteria, the California Partnership Academies and the San Bernardino County Schools’ Applications by Business and Labor for Educators program, were reviewed.
California Partnership Academies (CPA). A CPA is a three-year program that spans grades ten through twelve and incorporates the following components:
- The program is structured as a school within a school.
- A close family-like atmosphere is created.
- The focus is on student achievement.
- A standards-based academic curriculum and a career-focused curriculum are integrated.
- Mentors are provided for eleventh grade students.
- Internship programs are provided. After their junior year, students performing well enough to be on track for graduation are placed in jobs.
- A common planning period for teachers is required.
- An advisory committee is established consisting of individuals involved in the academic operations of the academy and representatives from the private sector.
- Business partners are involved who:
- Serve on a CPA steering committee that oversees the program.
- Help to develop the career-focused curriculum.
- Provide speakers for CPA classes.
- Host field trips to give students a perspective of the workplace.
- Provide mentors who serve as career-related role models and personal points of contact in the field of training.
- Provide summer jobs and part-time jobs during the school year for students.4
CPAs have a student enrollment requirement that at least 50 percent of the students enrolled must be at risk of dropping out of high school. Even with this high at-risk student population, the success rate for students in CPAs is far above that of the state average. Data obtained during 2003-04 reveal the success rate as follows:
- In that school year, 95 percent of the twelfth graders in CPAs graduated from high school.
- In that same year 84 percent of eleventh graders and 80 percent of tenth graders completed 90 percent of their coursework.5
Students who participated in well-developed CPAs:
- Had increased grade point averages compared with students participating in other high school programs. This increase is particularly true for at-risk students.
- Had lower high school dropout rates.
- Were more likely to attend postsecondary education.
- Had a decreased need to take remedial English in college.6
Recommendation 1.1
Increase the number of CPAs, expand the model to a four-year program, eliminate the current enrollment requirement for at-risk students, and make the curriculum developed for CPAs available to the public.
Specific ways to implement recommendation 1 are as follows:
- Increase the number of CPAs from the current 286 to 900.
- Expand the CPAs model from the current three-year program for grades ten through twelve to a four-year model for grades nine through twelve.
- Eliminate the 50 percent at-risk student enrollment requirement for CPAs and continue to fund qualified students in CPAs at the current rate or higher.
- Make the curriculum and lessons developed by CPAs available to the public and post them on the CDE Web site or a public database.
Applications by Business and Labor for Educators (ABLE) program. California needs to establish a statewide network to help high school teachers connect the curriculum to the workplace. After exploring different models and methods of applying the academic content standards to the workplace, Subcommittee 1 decided to narrow its focus to one academic subject, mathematics. The need to focus on mathematics is well supported in the research.
The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools has a program that connects teachers with business and labor partners to create examples of authentic mathematics applications that teachers can use in their high school mathematics classes. The program, called ABLE, efficiently communicates the mathematics standards to business and labor partners so that examples of authentic mathematics applications can be easily developed. Currently only teachers in school districts in San Bernardino County have access to this program.
Recommendation 1.2
Expand the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools' ABLE program throughout the state. This expansion will establish a statewide network of local business, labor, and educational partnerships to connect the mathematics curriculum to the workplace.
A statewide ABLE program will require the following components:
- A project coordinator for each local partnership who will:
- Facilitate and oversee the process and development of the authentic mathematics applications.
- Oversee the compilation and archiving of the work.
- Examples of authentic mathematics applications that will be:
- Cross-referenced with the mathematics content standards and that will identify the standards used
- Organized by industry sectors
- Compiled in a database that resides at the local partnership, local educational agency, or Regional P-16 Council
- Archived on the CDE Web site for statewide access by all educational systems
- Funding that will be allocated to conduct a long-term evaluation of the statewide ABLE program to assess its effectiveness on student learning.
Subcommittee 1 full Report and Recommendations
(PDF; 278KB; 25pp.)
Footnotes
1 Learning for the 21st Century. (Outside Source; PDF; 592KB; 36pp.) Washington, D.C.: Partnership for the 21st Century. 2004.
2 Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform. Reston, Va.: National Association of Secondary School Principals, 2004.
3 Gene Bottoms, and Karen Anthony, Project Lead the Way: A Pre-Engineering Curriculum That Works, A New Design for High School Career/Technical Studies. Atlanta: Southern Regional Education Board, 2005.
4 California Partnership Academies, Program Overview. Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2006.
5 Bernie Norton, "Statistics Regarding CPA Enrollments." E-mail to Mary Donnelley-Ortega, December 6, 2005. See Appendix 1 "Summary of Data from the 2003-04 Annual Report for California Partnership Academies," which appears in the report for Subcommittee 1.
6 Nan L. Maxwell, and Victor Rubin, Career Academy Programs in California: Outcomes and Implementation (Outside Source; PDF; 362KB; 54pp.), 2001.
