Ferrero, Having It All

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Having It AllTwo Chicago-areahigh schools demonstrate that educatorsdon't have to choose between innovation and traditionalism.

David J. Ferrero

Th house lights dim in John Hersey High

School's black-box theater. On e hundred

twenty sophomores sit in the dark,

fidgety with anticipation. After several

seconds, a teacher-made video starts

playing-a disturbing, in-your-face multimedia distil-lation of the ethical debate around genetic experimen-

tation, set to the music of Peter Gabriel's "Shock the

Monkey" The lights go up again. Fo r several minutes,

the students write about their reactions to the video.

Two teachers then step forward to debate: Should

governments regulate genetic research in the name of

human and animal dignity, or would such regulation

impose undue restrictions on the pursuit of scientific

knowledge? Pro. Con. Rebuttal. Students pose their

ow n questions, issue their own challenges, and debate

one another and their teachers.

The entire sophomore class will spend the next

three weeks in English, social studies, and science

classes unpacking ethical issues in science and

exploring their origins in the 19th century Romantic

reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and the

Industrial Revolution. Mary Shelley's 1818 novel

Frankenstein, about a man cobbled together out of

spare parts and brought to life by an overzealous

scientist, will anchor this unit examining both the

historical era that the novel represents and the

contemporary issues that it foreshadows.

Meanwhile, these same students will spend time inability-grouped classes, where they will learn the core

content through materials adapted to their ability

levels an d specially designed to help them master

basic and advanced literacy skills aligned with the

decidedly unromantic AC T College Readiness Stan-

dards and standardized diagnostic assessments. These

standards anchor skills instruction across the

curriculum, and the assessments pave the way toward

the ACT college entrance exam itself, which forms a

part of Illinois' mandated state assessment. Students'

skill deficiencies will be exposed and addressed.

Here's the surprise: Hersey's teachers and adminis-

trators do not regard this grouping and skills drilling

as a distraction from the higher-order, integrative

pyrotechnics of the Frankenstein unit, but as the unit's

foundation. Educators in this middle-income

suburban school, located 20 miles outside Chicago,

are committed to ensuring that all students master the

basic skills that give them access to higher-order

content and controversy Conversely, these educators

believe that exposure to interesting content and

controversy will motivate students to master basic

skills.

According to students, the combination works.

"I feel like I'm getting a life skill, something I can use

outside of any test," says senior Scott Black. When

Black entered Hersey as a freshman in 2002, he

scored in the 51st percentile on the reading sections

of ACT's EXPLORE test. Three years later, his ACT

scores placed him in the top 5 percent nationwide,and as a senior he is enrolled in college-level courses.

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"I feel a lo t more comfortable, a lot

more prepared. The curriculum's effects

were really powerful," he notes.

The data confirm Black's testimony

Since 2000, when Hersey began to

implement the hybrid model, student

achievement has soared:

a The school's average ACT score

rose from the 60th percentile nationally

(21.8) in 2000 to the 75th percentile(23.4) in 2005-even as the percentage

of students taking the AC T increased

from 80 percent to 100 percent as a

result of Illinois' requiring all 11 h

graders to take the ACT exam. This

shift might have been expected to drive

average scores down because more low-

performing and special education

students were taking the test.

mFrom 2003 to 2005, measured

student growth in performance on

ACT-benchmarked assessments (10th

grade PLAN an d11

th grade ACT)exceeded predicted growth by approxi-

mately 71 percent. Value-added growth

gains were most dramatic for students

most at risk, including low-income and

special education students.

n Fo r every 100 students who enter

9th grade at Hersey requiring remedia-

tion, 50 to 75 are enrolled in college

prep or honors courses by the begin-

ning of 11th grade.

* Gains are strongest in reading and

writing, where the model is most fullydeveloped.

From the Suburbs to the City

Hersey's early success caught the atten-

tion of the Chicago Charter School

Foundation (CCSF), which was looking

for a high school model that would

effectively serve low-income and

minority urban students. With a grant

from the Bill &Melinda Gates Founda-

tion, the Chicago Charter School Foun-

dation established Civitas Schools. It

)kastuy

recruited Charles Venegoni, Hersey's

English/Fine Arts division head and th

Hersey model's chief architect, to lead

the organization. In fall 2002, Civitas

opened its first school, Chicago Inter-

national Charter School Northtown

Academy Campus, in a shuttered

Catholic school building on Chicago's

north side.

Although operating Northtown on

less than half of the per-pupil expendi

ture that Hersey enjoys, Civitas had th

advantage of creating the school from

scratch. Venegoni screened prospectiv

teachers for a commitment to the

model's dual emphasis on standards

and student engagement and adopted

lottery-based admission system in

compliance with Illinois' charter law t

ensure a diverse student body. North-

town Academy students are about 50

percent Hispanic, with white, black,and Asian students making up roughly

equal shares of the remaining half.

Approximately 50 percent of students

are eligible for free or reduced-price

lunch, and most students enter 9th

grade reading two to three years below

grade level.

In 2004, Northtowns juniors scored

an average of 19.4 on the ACT compo

nent of the Illinois state assessment,

ranking the school at the top among

nonselective schools in Chicago, eventhough that cohort of students had no

had the benefit of the freshman-year

foundational work. As at H ersey, gains

have been most dramatic for lower-

income students and students who

enter lagging the farthest behind

academically

The success of this approach at

Hersey and Northtown has encourage

the Chicago Charter School Founda-

tion, with Civitas Schools, to expand

the model to other schools under its



Gates Foundation grant. Next year, it

will open a campus in an all-blackneighborhood on Chicago's south side.

And Township High School District

214, where Hersey is located, is poised

to implement the model in four of its

other five high schools.

Innovative Traditionalism

Two schools: one suburban, middle-

class, and mostly white; one urban,

low-income, and racially diverse. Both

have deployed a student-centered

instructional model to move the needledecisively on those measures that have

proven most difficult to improve: stan-

dardized achievement test scores. Both

have accomplished this through a

combination of test prep, classical

content, and collaboratively developed

thematic projects grounded in contro-

versy and designed to cultivate student

voice an d civic engagement.

Any educator knows that those

things aren't supposed to go together.

So what gives?

It may seem paradoxical at first to

use the term "student-centered" to

describe a model that focuses on

building students' skills in alignment

with standardized assessments. In

conventional professional usage, the

term usually refers to curricular prac-

tices that start with individual student

interests and aim to cultivate diverse

individual talents. In contrast, schools

in which teachers determine thecontent and pacing of the curriculum

tend to be derogated as "teacher-

centered."

But at Hersey an d Northtown, these

terms have a different resonance. There,

"teacher-centered" refers to school poli-

cies that permit individual teachers to

teach idiosyncratically without a collec-

tive plan for ensuring that all students

succeed according to measurable

criteria. "Student-centered" means that

teachers coordinate and align their

TRADITIONAL

Standardized tests

Basic skills

Ability grouping

Essays/research papers

Subject-matter disciplines

Chronology/history

Breadth

Academic mastery

Eurocentrism

Canonical curriculum

Top-down curriculum

Required content

efforts to ensure that students master

essential skills and knowledge. Under-

stand that shift, and you're well on

your way to comprehending the genius

of the Hersey/Northtown model.

That genius begins with a willingness

to disregard the ideological divisions

that educators have erected between

themselves and to reconcile competing

principles into an integrated whole.

The accepted division between tradi-

tional and innovative principles and

practices (see "Education's Ideological

Divide") virtually defines the profes-sional identities of working educators.

Each of us knows which side we're on .

Even when our practices prove less

pure than our principles, as so often

happens in workaday instruction, the

identities an d ideals remain entrenched

and divisive both within individual

schools and throughout the profession.

Educators at Hersey and Northtown

have found a way to channel their

pedagogical an d ideological differences

into a coherent curricular structure.

INNOVATIVE

Authentic assessment

Higher-order thinking

Heterogeneous grouping

Hands-on projects

Interdisciplinary integration

Thematic integration

Depth

Cultivation of individual talents

Multiculturalism

Inclusive curriculum

Teacher autonomy/creativity

Student interest

The approach is carefully planned and

calibrated, however, and teachers must

accept certain ground rules-beginning

with an agreement to embrace stan-

dardized testing.

When Traditional...

Illinois' high school testing policy

requires every 11 th grader to take the

ACT college entrance exam ination.

ACT provides clearly articulated skill

guidelines called College Readiness

Standards and offers 8th and 10th

grade tests that teachers can use togauge students' progress toward

mastery of the skills. Teachers at Hersey

and Northtown recognize both the

importance of the test in terms of

college admissions and the founda-

tional importance of the skills tested.

So rather than resist or ignore this

feature of the state's accountability

system ou t of hostility to "teaching to

the test," they start with the College

Readiness Standards in mapping what

they need to teach students. They use

Education's Ideological Divide



Both schools combine classical contentwith thematic projects designed to cultivate

student voice and civic engagement.

Yet the skills and content from the first

three years provide rich content for the

last, and themes from the core sequence

inform elective choices. AP courses are

a popular option because students'

three years in the core have prepared

many of them for college-level work.

Teacher and Student Roles

To make the program w ork, teachers

must collaborate within and across

departments, forgoing a lo t of indi-

vidual freedom to shape their courses.

Unlike other efforts to centralize

management of curriculum and

instruction, however, the Hersey/

Northtown model depends on teachers'

leadership and willingness to partici-

pate in creating lessons, units, and

projects that remain within the parame-

ters of the system.

The Frankenstein unit provides a case

in point. The curricular framework

requires teachers to introduce 10th

grade students to the Enlightenment,

Romanticism, and the Industrial Revo-

lution, and to help students see the

connections between those historical

developments and the contemporary

world. Within those limits, Hersey

teachers chose which texts, themes,

and questions to emphasize; teachers

also designed the genetic research

forum and student projects related to

the unit. Because the curriculum is so

multifaceted and collaboratively devel-

oped, teachers can play to their own

strengths and interests. Those who

prefer classical content can research

and deliver the lessons; those who like

to debate can organize the forums;

those who favor student-centered

instruction in the more traditional

sense can design the project assign-

ments; and so on .

Students also have a strong participa-

tory role to play It's true that the model

eschews those philosophies of schoolingpredicated on strong principles of

student ownership: Students have no

formal role in shaping the basic struc-

ture of the curriculum, and as a result

of the consolidation of course offerings,

they have fewer curricular choices. But

the interdisciplinary projects that cap

each integrated unit provide on e

opportunity for students to take owner-

ship of the content and to practice self-

directed leaming. The public forums

provide another. These are organizedlike town halls, and adults and students

alike prepare for and participate in

them, forming a community of learners

pursuing focused inquiry. Here,

students get the opportunity to practice

the crucial citizenship skills of reasoned

public argumentation and shared delib-

eration. Students participate in 12 such

forums between 9th and 11th grade.

Once they get the hang of it, most

students thrive.

Says Hersey 11 th grader Karla

Cervantes,

At first I was intimidated. All these big

words and complicated ideas-as afreshman it was all kind of bewildering.But the reading instruction really helpedme out, and I got used to the forums. Icould say whatever I wanted as long as Igave good reasons for what I felt.

In her freshman year, Cervantes was

placed in remediation. This year, she is

taking all college preparatory courses,



COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Having It All

SOURCE: Educ Leadership 63 no8 My 2006

WN: 0612103461002

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it

is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in

violation of the copyright is prohibited.

Copyright 1982-2006 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

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