How can the public schools compete? For many wealthy suburban districts, the Advanced Placement, IB, and extensive arts programs are readily available to the top students. Indeed, recent polls indicate that most suburban parents oppose school vouchers because they are happy with their schools’ offerings. But the city schools are in a battle to keep their top students in their system. Long saddled with what Minneapolis Superintendent for High Schools Bob McCauley calls the “malaise” of the 70s in public education, the public schools “didn’t have the kind of standards we should have. The 60s “hippie” thing hurt us. And the education research done then was so poor that we were not able to say what the best practices were.”
The city schools, of course, face a very different set of challenges than the typical suburban or private school. Recently, Minneapolis has been graduating only 47 percent of its students within four years of enrolling them as ninth graders. Within five years that figure still only rises to 58 percent. One in four Minneapolis students are recent immigrants who have to first pass through the English Language Learner (ELL) program before they can even consider any enriched programs. Many have a single parent who has to work three jobs. “That limits the amount of support a family can give,” said McCauley.
In addition to the students who drop out or move to private schools, metropolitan area high schools also lose about 600 high school students each year to the Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program at the University of Minnesota. In that program, students spend their junior and senior high school years in classes at the U. According to PSEO Director Michelle Koker, these students are typically “academically gifted. They take classes here which fulfill their high school requirements, but at a level which exceeds what is offered at their high schools.” One University professor added, “PSEO itself has the disadvantage of taking the best boys and girls away from their schools to spend their days at the U, which is not necessarily satisfactory for the schools, though selfishly I find the best PSEOs brighter than the run of Minnesota freshmen.”
Another program of the University of Minnesota, the College in the Schools (CIS) program, allows students at more than 50 area high schools to take U of M courses while remaining in the high school setting. The University actually instructs motivated high schools teachers in teaching University courses in several subjects, including English Composition, Economics, History, English Literature, and several languages. Students who successfully complete the courses receive U of M credits. According to Susan Henderson, director of CIS, the program is like PSEO in the type of students it attracts, but “it serves a different niche. The students are academically and intellectually ready for a challenge, but they are more integrated into the activities of the high school.” CIS is offered in six St. Paul high schools, two in Minneapolis and about 40 public schools in the rest of the metro area. Five private schools also participate in the program.
So, while city schools lose students at both ends of the economic and educational spectrum, what does the research show about why this migration is happening? Other than the obvious social factors, McCauley says the surveys indicate that students are saying, “I need something different than you are providing. The kids say, ‘Give us a challenging curriculum.” But what they asked for most was, “Give us a caring teacher.”
This fall, the Minneapolis District will launch its “High School Transfor-mation.” The most obvious characteristic of this “transformation” will be the institution in all the high schools of smaller learning groups loosely based upon such specialized interests as aviation, health careers, and international studies. Every student, except for special education and ELL students, will be part of a smaller learning group within his or her high school.
Along with this, McCauley says, they will be trying to set up three basic programs “within the engine of the smaller groups.” First, he says, is the development of a “more challenging, rigorous and connected curriculum.” This will require an increase in the quality of instruction. The second program is to develop a base of “best teaching practices” through teacher workshops on methods and how to function as part of a team. The third goal, he says, is to develop a “personalized approach” for teachers so they “can form a relationship with a kid and give him the advice he needs to be successful.” In other words, the Minneapolis Public Schools will be trying to institute exactly what the private schools have done all along.
What are the chances this approach will work? The district is certainly limited by the makeup of the Minneapolis teaching corps. Four out of five Minneapolis teachers have less than 10 years in the district, and McCauley says “it takes five years to build a teacher.” Retirements, teacher frustration, recruitment by the suburban or private schools all are factors in the high turnover rate. But McCauley is quick to put budget cuts at the top of the list: “We can’t keep those we begin to train.”
Adding the “transformation” to the current curriculum offerings of Advanced Placement, CIS, and IB courses will improve the Minneapolis schools? competitive position, he maintains. “If we lose kids to private schools now, I think they may be making a mistake,” he says. “Now we see the possibilities [of equivalent programs].”
The St. Paul schools have also undergone a transformation of sorts and have in the past several years added gifted student programs, Spanish, and French immersion, IB and expanded AP offerings. Why? “We know more than we used to,” says a district administrator, acknowledging that research now confirms what the private schools have always practiced.
But how students are admitted to the various programs in St. Paul is still a bit problematic. Three high schools offer IB, but admission to all high schools is still primarily based upon where the student lives. A student can apply to any St. Paul high school, but there is no guarantee that she’ll get in, if she doesn’t live in the assigned neighborhood of one of the IB schools-no matter how good her academic record might be. Still, 93 percent of St. Paul students get into one of their top choices, and if they don’t, they can take AP or CIS courses at the high school they do get into.
One problem though: The AP and CIS courses are also spread among the schools. Not all schools offer all AP courses. So a student who goes to one school because of its AP math program may not be able to take the AP history course that is only offered at another school.
Still, the trend in the city schools is toward academic rigor and opportunity and away from what one commentator called the “bias against excellence” that pervaded many systems for the past few decades. As one public administrator said, “There was confusion between equality of outcomes and equality of opportunity. If we can restore to the public schools what the private schools have done all along, we’ll be able to provide opportunities that they can’t. We have economy of scale on our side.”
Continue with this story’s sidebars:
Getting into Harvard
The Single Sex Option
School Athletics
Admissions at Private High Schools
A Sense of Community