The path to a diploma can be rocky for some students, but a new effort to increase graduation rates across PPS high schools has produced promising early results.

Applying data from a study on Portland high school dropouts, PPS administrators identified more than 1,500 eighth-graders who were likely to struggle in high school and leave without a diploma. Then, in the 2007-08 school year, high school principals and teachers focused intensively and individually on these “academic priority” students over the course of their freshman year.

As a result, significantly more struggling students stayed in class, passed their classes and moved a step closer toward graduation.

Research shows that students’ chances of graduating from high school often are determined as early as their freshman year. Ninth-grade students are five times less likely to graduate on time if they:

• Fail three or more courses, or
• Miss more than 20 school days.

PPS administrators focused on these risk factors to design programs for targeted students. The goal: Decrease the number of ninth-graders failing three or more classes, or missing more than 20 school days.

Schools submit proposals

Funding came from money designated by Superintendent Carole Smith for additional ninth-grade support. The efforts were paid for, in part, by state school improvement funds.

Each school submitted a proposal for funding similar to a grant application. School administrators identified the kinds of intervention and support that they thought would offer the best educational support to their struggling ninth-graders, and developed a plan to help them and to evaluate the results.

Programs were as varied as the schools themselves, and ranged from after-school tutoring to attendance incentives to mentorship programs. Each school tracked individual student progress throughout the year. Principals also gathered each month in a “Key Results” group to learn from each others’ successes and challenges.

The Bridgespan Group, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to improving schools, studied the efforts within PPS high schools and tracked student success. The results, although preliminary, show promise. Cleveland High School and Biz Tech High School on the Marshall Campus reported the most notable results, greatly reducing the number of freshmen failing three or more classes or missing more than 20 days of school.

Relationships are key

Cleveland Principal Paul Cook attributes much of his school’s success to the relationships that staff members formed with students.

“We tried a lot of things,” Cook said, “but none of it would have made difference if we didn’t establish relationships first.”

Cleveland already was dividing its freshman class into academies — groups of students taking core classes together. Academies effectively shrink the school size, allowing students and staff to establish relationships during the first year of high school. The school took another step with its academic priority students, pairing each one with a staff mentor for the entire year. Mentors called home, regularly met with students and parents and offered support any way they could.

Cook remembers one student he was assigned to mentor. “His discipline file was thick, and he was likely on his way out of school when he came to us,” Cook recalled. “At first he would just sit there, silent. I kept at it, and when he figured out that he could count on me, the conversation began to flow.”

By the end of the year, Cook and the student were meeting almost daily, sometimes to go over homework, other times to celebrate good grades. At the end of ninth grade, the student had A’s and B’s in all his classes, was participating in athletics and was eagerly awaiting his sophomore year.

At Cleveland, the mentorship that teachers and administrators provided to ninth-graders paid dividends. This fall, 94 percent of them returned for 10th grade.

While striking at Cleveland and Biz Tech, positive results were in evidence across the district. Each school kept close track of academic priority students last year, collecting data along the way. High school leaders reviewed the data and are using it to improve programs for ninth-graders this school year. Such annual reviews will ultimately lead to the creation of “best practice” supports to increase graduation rates in all PPS high schools.

Children talk about what they want to be when they grow up, but those dreams are often far from the reality they will face as adults.

Portland Public Schools, through its Career Pathways program, wants to raise students’ awareness of the world of work starting in their middle school years, and then ensure that they have a real chance to explore, and even prepare for, possible career paths before they graduate from high school.

To do this, PPS is working with local businesses to tie career learning to the skills that today’s employers need — and looking at Benson High School’s career education role for the future.

PPS is bolstering its Career Pathways program to help students connect their academic skills with real-world experience. Starting in middle school grades, students become aware of possible fields through the state’s online career information system, visits from professionals in different lines of work and visits to work sites. They also start to develop an individual game plan for how they might pursue their own interests in their high school classes and beyond.

In high school, students are asked to think deeper, and to use three of their elective credits to explore one of six broad career pathways: Arts and Communication, Business and Management Systems, Health Services, Human Resources, Industrial and Engineering Systems, and Natural Resources Systems.

“Career Pathways is learning by tinkering, designing, problem-solving, building, drawing and experiencing — and by reading, writing and doing the math it takes to make a project happen,” Superintendent Carole Smith told the Portland City Club as she pledged to strengthen the Career Pathways program.

Through their studies, high school students have a chance to explore their passions and to put their skills and knowledge to use — and to make connections in the world of work. The goal of all of the pathways is to include hands-on experiences: Students design Web sites, analyze soil samples, create student films, argue cases in mock trials, dissect frogs and engineer and build robots.

Skills learned are lifelong

Students choose an area of focus for their three electives, but that doesn’t mean they’re selecting a major, or being tracked into one narrow pursuit. To the contrary. In a world where most adults will change jobs a dozen times on average, and even change careers several times, the goal is to give students a head start in exploring their passions and developing a range of important skills that they can carry with them throughout their lives: teamwork, strong communication, project management, responsibility and applied learning.

For Franklin High School senior Megan Russell, participating in mock trial classes and the constitution law team actually led her to the conclusion that she does not want to be a lawyer. But the experience was invaluable nonetheless, she said. “It helped improve my public speaking and confidence,” she said. “We’re often pushed to try roles we’re not really comfortable with … that’s been a huge asset.”

Aaron LaVigue, a Wilson High School senior, has been interested in building since he was a “little kid playing with Legos.” A mentorship in architecture, construction and engineering had him working with a group of students to develop a design, plan, build and budget for a restaurant, an experience that led him to a new career goal: being a project manager for a construction company.

“It forced us to cooperate and collaborate with people from all backgrounds and different ideas on one unique project,” he said.

Task force delves into CTE

In 2007-08, PPS convened a task force of teachers, school leaders, students, employers and alumni to review Portland’s career technical education and to make recommendations for improvements. The task force, in its report, strongly agreed that the school district should build alliances with local employers to expand and deepen students’ opportunities for career exploration.

More than 70 such employers came together Oct. 29 to brainstorm with PPS staff on more relevant career pathway courses for students that offer skills and experiences in alignment with what the employers know firsthand about current economic needs. Many signed up to continue to help the school district, whether as ongoing advisers or by offering guest speakers, worksite visits, job shadows, internships or other career related learning experiences. (Can you help? Let us know. E-mail PPS Career Pathways program manager Jeanne Yerkovich at: jyerkovi@pps.k12.or.us.

The CTE Task Force also proposed that the school district expand its limited career preparation offerings — now almost exclusively located at Benson Polytechnic High School. Those more intensive classes, such as in industrial engineering, computer aided design or skilled trades, may earn students community college credits and also prepare them to enter directly into the workplace with marketable skills.

“Benson is a key element of our high school system — the home to our strongest career and technical programs, which are critical to preparing our students for higher education and for careers,” Smith noted.

CTE Opportunities by School 1st Semester 2007

School	Classes Offered	CTE Class Size Avg.
Benson	112	20.7
Franklin	26	26.8
Alliance	24	11.6
Wilson	19	22.9
Marshall	15	19.8
Cleveland	13	26.5
Roosevelt	6	14.3
Madison	5	21.4
Grant	0	NA
Jefferson	0	NA
Lincoln	0	NA
Total	220	20.5

Notes

1. Only first semester classes in the year 2007 at PPS have been counted
2. With the exception of Alliance, educational options has not been included within this analysis
3. Career pathway classes have not been included within this analysis
4. Core class size average at PPS is about 22.5

The CTE Task Force agreed on the goals of enhanced career connections and learning, but offered several models of how to meet those goals and different visions for Benson’s future. Some task force members favor maintaining Benson as a high school serving grades 9 to 12, with core academic courses such as social studies, English and math as well as technical shops and classrooms. Other options shift the school to be an advanced learning center, with 800 11th- and 12th-grade students from across the city attending half-time, taking their core academic courses in their neighborhood and focusing on intensive career technical classes while at Benson.

Changes ahead?

Converting Benson to an advanced tech school for upper classmen would follow the model of the Center for Advanced Learning, a highly successful school in east Multnomah County that is a collaborative among three east county school districts. But it would fly in the face of almost a century of Benson tradition.

Benson’s 1916 building celebrates its technical education, although its long and proud tradition has evolved since it served the almost exclusively white, working class boys that are depicted in the friezes over the main entrance. Then, students learned factory trades, with little emphasis on academics, and graduated with skills to jump into a machine shop or apprenticeship — family wage jobs where they might spend their entire career, retiring 30 years later.

Benson is now among Portland’s most diverse schools, with students of both genders digging deep into industrial and engineering, health occupations, and arts and communication. Through their experiences, Benson students gain a clear understanding of the education and training required to successfully pursue these occupations. They may enter apprenticeships, attend college to pursue their professional ambitions or go directly into jobs right after graduation.

Benson has changed — but not enough, according to interim Principal Steve Olczak. He envisions a school offering a “more fluid, engaging and integrated approach” between technical education and academic classes such as English and history, with a modernized school building and up-to-date technology as well as partnerships with local employers that draw students out into the workplaces of the community.

“Benson should be rebuilt from the inside out,” Olczak said. “The school of the future doesn’t have four walls. Where the learning is, is where the action is.”

On a recent morning, Benson automotive teacher Brett Anderson took the action outside the classroom as his ninth-grade students tested their first major project. The students had completely dismantled, then reassembled a lawn mower engine — and were shouting with excitement as they revved the engines up.

Anderson, who participated in the CTE Task Force, said he understands the logic behind the 11th- and 12th-grade model, which would allow more students in upper grades to experience Benson’s advanced technical classes. But he appreciates that Benson now gives him the chance to connect with students over four years, starting with small engines and working their way up to computerized diagnostics and diesel mechanics.

“When you’ve got them hooked and they know you care about them, you can go deep,” he said. “It’s so powerful to see them do well … they come in struggling and they leave with a passion.”

Strong career pathways and technical education can unlock that passion for many students — keeping them engaged, earning strong grades on the way to graduation. The location and distribution of career technical education, Benson's future and more will be considered as part of Portland Public Schools’ overall work to rethink the high school system to help all students be successful.

“I will invite the entire community to join me in that work and those conversations,” Smith said, “as we design a high school system that helps every student leave our school, ready to succeed in college and careers.”

Sixth-graders sort through soil at Lane Middle School's Learning Gardens, an outdoor lab for students that also provides community members space to grow food.

It was a school on the brink of the most severe sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law. But in a dramatic two-year reversal, the students at Lane Middle School have shown achievement gains and earned their school a “strong” rating on this year’s state report cards.

How does a school make such a turnaround in a relatively short period of time? For Principal Karl Logan, the answer isn’t by focusing on test scores — it’s by teaching students the skills they need to succeed in high school, and beyond.

When Logan and Assistant Principal Terri Sing started at Lane in 2004, they were taking over a school that at least one parent ruefully called “Lane Cinema” because of how often students watched films during the school day.

Over four years, Lane — a Southeast Portland school at which 19 languages are spoken and 82 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — had failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind law because of perennially low test scores.

Last year, the stakes were high. If Lane failed to make progress, it faced the harshest NCLB sanctions — which could have meant removal of the entire staff and starting over as a new school.

But Logan had more important things to worry about than whether his school made AYP. His students had low expectations of themselves and their classes. Even students who were meeting benchmarks on state tests were not necessarily getting ready for high school.

“The first year,” Logan recalled, “kids were everywhere around the school when they were supposed to be in class. I remember a girl named Brandi hanging out by her locker. I asked her why she wasn’t in class and she said her class that period was ‘hall.’ ”

Logan was determined to change the culture of the school. He and his teachers would make rigorous academic instruction the focus of each day with their students.

His goal was to make sure his sixth- through eighth-grade students were prepared to be successful, not just in middle school, but at the end of ninth grade. If he produced students who were ready for the demands of high school, he figured AYP would take care of itself.

The curriculum would emphasize critical thinking, collaboration, story writing, reading and math: 21st century skills that students would need well beyond their years at Lane.

If Lane had to jettison physical education to make more time available for academics, so be it, no matter if parents complained. Private school students, Logan observed, had days full of academics — with parents paying for athletics after school. Lane parents couldn’t pay to have their children take private dance lessons or play sports, but at least he could give them a day full of challenging classes.

“We had constant conversations around instruction and kids,” Sing said.

No excuses allowed

That focus had not always been prominent at Lane, Logan recalled, in part because the socioeconomic realities of the families who sent their children to Lane often impinged on the classroom.

Many struggling students couldn’t stay after school for tutoring because they had to watch younger siblings at home while their parents worked multiple jobs. Homeless students sleeping in the back of classes were not an uncommon sight.

Those realities, Logan said, offered Lane “every excuse in the book: ‘It’s the kids, it’s the homelessness, it’s the low parent involvement.’ ” But he believed that while it might be compassionate for a teacher to let a homeless student sleep in the relative warmth and safety of a classroom, the student needed higher expectations.

“Education is the equalizer in this country,” he said. “There are opportunities for each kid that we can’t fathom. That’s why we need to set high expectations for ourselves and our students.”

In Logan’s eyes, teachers are the determining factor in a student’s ability to learn: Once they recognize that they have that power, they can help any student learn.

Logan and Sing challenged teachers to embrace those high expectations. Whenever someone cited one of the many impediments that typified the lives of Lane’s low-income students — such as an unstable living situations or parents who were uninvolved in the school — they would respond, “Yes, but what can you do?”

It wasn’t easy. There were hard conversations, especially about race. It wasn’t lost on Logan and Sing that kids of color were sent to the office more often than white students.

But the school culture began to change. Lane Cinema was gone (Logan began to require written, curriculum-based justifications for showing films in class). Now Lane was becoming “a place of learning.”

Teachers began collaborating, talking to each other about what worked and what didn’t in their classrooms. They used data to identify individual students who were struggling and tailored interventions to meet each student’s unique needs. They began to observe and to coach each other.

One teacher began tutoring students in algebra during lunch.

The school schedule changed to provide more time for writing and math, and to give teachers more opportunity to review student work.

They also brought in research-based programs such as Striving Readers to help boost the skills of students who were falling behind.

And Logan raised the visibility of the school mascot, the Quasars and instituted a new motto: “Cherish the dream, honor the struggle.”

School finds willing partners

Portland State University helped Lane establish Learning Gardens, which provided an outdoor lab for students and a place for Lane’s culturally and linguistically diverse families to grow food for their tables, build relationships with each other and become more engaged in their children’s education.

Lane’s SUN School program provided academic continuity after school ended, along with music and art.

Sing sees Lane’s changes reflected most dramatically, not in test scores or grades, but in the aspirations of the students, who now want to go to college — and want to take classes at Lane that put them on-track to reach that goal, such as pre-AP language arts.

“We knew the kids would do what we asked of them,” she said. “Families want their kids to succeed.”

Logan feels middle school offers an underappreciated opportunity for school reform:

• First, the early adolescent brain is developing extremely fast — at the same rate as infants to 3-year-olds. In the past, one of the primary purposes of middle school was to teach “group norms,” or socialize students in advance of high school. Now educators are realizing they must keep these quickly expanding minds challenged and engaged, while finding ways to channel the natural “exuberance” of the middle-school years.
• Second, the stakes are rising for all students to graduate with the skills necessary to succeed in college, even if they choose to go directly to work. As the bar is raised for high school students, it is also raised for middle schools to ramp up their academic rigor.

For Logan, Lane’s experience is a model for how middle schools can meet these challenges, especially for students who face barriers of income, language and other hurdles.

This year, Lane remains under the shadow of NCLB sanctions. If the school doesn’t meet the law’s test-score requirements, it will revert to where it was beginning last year: on the verge of the most extreme sanctions. But Logan isn’t sweating his students’ performance.

With confidence, he says, “We’re going to make AYP.”