Maine Commission on Secondary EducationMaine Department of Education,

Augusta Maine 04333

PROMISING FUTURES

A Call To Improve Learning

For……… Maine's Secondary Students

Executive Summary August, 1998

Purpose

Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese appointed the Maine Commission on Secondary Education in May 1997; to examine the quality of education provided publicly to Maine's 14 to 19 year olds. The Commission studied the nature and needs of current secondary students, the instructional and assessment practices in our high schools and applied technology schools, and how these schools and their communities shape student learning, growth, and aspirations. The Commission's goal was to make comprehensive recommendations to the public education community that would enhance the quality of learning for secondary students in Maine.

Commission and Activities

The twenty-seven people who served on the Commission included two high school students and a broad representation of educational roles, geographic locations, and types of school. The Commission's first six months were dedicated to "mapping the current realities" of Maine teenagers and their schools and to creating a set of core beliefs for the Commission's work. Then the Commission turned its attention to seeking out approaches and practices that would respond to identified needs in a manner consistent with our core beliefs and current research. The Commission consulted extensively with students, educators, and state groups and sought testimony widely. Its co-chairs were Gordon Donaldson (University of Maine) and Pamela Fisher (Southern Maine Partnership).

The Report: Promising Future: A Call to Improve Learning for Maine's Secondary Students

The Commission's report to Commissioner Albanese, Promising Futures, recommends an ambitious approach to learning that takes as its goal the attainment of the Maine Learning Results for all Maine youth. Its purpose is to generate creative, student-responsive, and forward-thinking instruction and school organization. Promising Futures is not a menu of mandates. Instead, it is intended to stimulate discussion and action in every school district in Maine so that every one of our teenagers will leave school prepared for his or her own promising future.

The report invites readers, first, to think about six Core Principles that, in the Commission's judgement, lie at the heart of all secondary educational planning and practice. Second, it recommends two sets of Core Practices, one addressing learning and teaching activities and one addressing how the school functions to support these learning and teaching practices. Finally, Promising Futures recommends steps that policy-makers and leaders beyond the school -- school committees, community leaders, state law makers, and professional associations -- can take to encourage and support secondary school improvement. Appendices include suggestions to foster discussion and planning, a summary of findings about the "current realities", and a bibliography of references and helpful resources. (See Table of Contents)

SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS AND CURRENT CHALLENGES

In 1998, approximately 74,000 Maine youth attended 143 public high schools and applied technology schools and 10 "public-private" academies. Average enrollment in a Maine secondary school was 485 (12th lowest in the U.S.). In 1997, approximately 76% of the state's secondary population attended public or public/private high schools; 12% attended applied technology schools; 10% attended private schools; and 1% were home-schooled.

The Commission's study of secondary schooling in Maine led to eight major observations, each of which framed a challenge for the future.

Observation 1. Maine schools are graduating the highest proportion of eligible students in the state's history.

Challenge: To continue to raise this proportion and to assure that all graduates can perform at adequate skill and knowledge levels as described by the Maine Learning Results

Observation 2. Secondary school students exhibit more varied and complex learning, social, and
emotional needs than in the past.

Challenge: To meet the needs of our increasingly diverse youth population without
overtaxing the fiscal and human resources of our secondary schools

Observation 3. Every Maine secondary student does not have equal access to learning in comparison to other students in his or her school.

Challenge: To assure equal access to learning for all Maine youth regardless of socioeconomic background, gender, or educational history; to know well and to value every student and her/his learning styles, needs, and aspirations

Observation 4. Academic achievement is, on average, high but uneven from school to

school.

Challenge: To provide conditions for students, educators, and parents in all Maine
communities that will give all students equal opportunities to meet Maine's learning standards and their own personal learning goals

Observation 5. Students and, to a degree, staff in Maine secondary schools view educational experiences as irrelevant or disengaging for many students.

Challenge: To authentically engage students, teachers, and parents in learning experiences
that are rigorous and that students find relevant to their current needs and future ambitions

Observation 6. Maine students feel disengaged from serious decisions about their own

education, about school life, and about their futures; many parents share these feelings.

Challenge: To develop means through which students and their parents can make important
decisions about future goals and current educational activities and can participate democratically in shaping school procedures that significantly effect student learning

Observation 7. The highest percentage of graduates in Maine's history is accepted at higher

education institutions but their rate of completion is no better than the national average and they have low confidence in the value of higher education.

Challenge: To provide continuous personal, academic, and career services throughout the transitional years which encompass secondary and higher education to permit every Maine youth to prepare for a productive and fulfilling life.

Observation 8. Maine high schools serve many diffuse purposes and struggle to succeed at

them all.

Challenge: To focus the primary resources and energies of every Maine secondary school on its most central mission: learning; to refocus social, athletic, cultural, and behavioral missions to serve this central mission in a coherent fashion.

...high schools have accumulated purposes like barnacles on a weathered ship... The nation piled social policy upon educational policy and all of them on top of the delusion that a single institution can do it all. Today's high school is called upon to provide the services and transmit the values we used to expect from the community and the home and the church. And if they fail anywhere along the line, they are condemned.

Ernest Boyer, (1983). High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America. NY: Harper and Row. p. 57

SUMMARY OF CORE PRINCIPLES FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

The report presents six Core Principles that establish the philosophical foundation for this improvement effort. They are summarized below.The Maine Commission on Secondary Education believes that successful secondary educational experiences require:

a safe, respectful, and caring environment that assures that every student can attend fully to

her and his central mission: learning;

2. adults to hold high universal expectations of all students and to provide a variety of
pathways for students as they strive to meet these expectations;3. frequent assessment of student learning and reviews of these assessments among student,
teacher, and parent so that all can share responsibility for planning and carrying out learning activities;4. teaching and procedures that honor and build upon the unique contributions and needs of each learner so that all students will make full use of their opportunities to learn;

5. staff, parents, and especially students to be engaged democratically in decisions about learning and the conduct of the school so they learn civic responsibility and skills and so that respect and equity are assured among all members of the school community;

internal coherence among school mission, goals, actions, and outcomes so that the efforts of
students, staff and community result in fulfillment of the mission and goals.

If teachers choose to treat the students like young adults, the students need to choose to accept that responsibility and act like young adults.

Maine student motto, Commission Forum, 1997

SUMMARY OF CORE PRACTICES TO IMPROVE LEARNING

Fifteen recommended Core Practices are presented with a rationale and description of essential elements for each.

A. Core Practices for Learning and Teaching

1. Every student is respected and valued by adults and by fellow students.

2. Every teacher tailors learning experiences to the learner's needs, interests, and future
goals.3. Every teacher challenges learners both to master the fundamentals of the disciplines and to integrate skills and concepts across the disciplines to address relevant issues and problems.4. Every student learns in collaborative groups of students with diverse learning styles, skills, ages, personal backgrounds and career goals.5. Every student makes informed choices about education and participation in school life and takes responsibility for the consequences of those choices.6. Every student employs a Personal Learning Plan to target individual as well as common learning goals and to specify learning activities that will lead to the attainment of those goals.7. Every teacher makes learning standards, activities, and assessment procedures known to students and parents and assures the coherence among them.

8. Every student who receives the secondary school diploma has demonstrated, through performance exhibitions, knowledge and skills at a level deemed by the school and by the state to be sufficient to begin adult life.

B. Core School Practices to Support Learning

9. Students and teachers belong to teams that provide each student continuous personal and academic attention and a supportive environment for learning and growth.

10. Learning governs the allocation of time, space, facilities, and services.

11. Every teacher has sufficient time and resources to learn, to plan, and to confer with
individual students, colleagues, and families.12. Every staff member understands adolescent learning needs, possesses diverse skills, and is a constructive model for youth.13. Every school has a comprehensive professional development system in which every staff member has a professional development plan to guide improvement.14. Staff, students, and parents are involved democratically in significant decisions
effecting student learning.

15. Active leadership by principals and others inspires and mobilizes staff, students, and
parents to work toward the fulfillment of the school's mission and, within it, their own learning and life goals.

Promising Futures concludes the presentation of Core Practices with a list of current practices which often conflict with the Core Principles and undercut the Core Practices. The Commission urges schools and communities to explore ways to phase these practices out.

THE NEED FOR EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND ACTION

The final section of Promising Futures outlines seven recommendations to community leaders, district leadership, and state organizations and agencies. This section, entitled "Secondary Schools Cannot Go It Alone", makes the argument that these players outside our high schools and technical schools must be involved more in the initiation and support of change if each Maine youth is to have a promising future.

The seven recommendations are:

1. Use this document in educational and policy-making forums statewide to conduct
discussions of the question: What is our responsibility to support and to stimulate improvement in the learning experiences of high-school-age students?2. Foster opportunities to learn for secondary educators that will prepare them to undertake Core Practices and sustain them through the challenges of making the practices effective.3. Revise state and local policies that currently hamper schools from fulfilling the principles of sound education and realizing the innovative practices recommended.4. Establish business-school collaboration to provide learning opportunities beyond the school's walls in which students can learn more deeply and learn career skills and knowledge.5. Restructure pre-service education, certification, and professional development for teachers, administrators, coaches, counselors, and other staff to reflect the new requirements of learning, teaching, and professional conduct embedded in the Core Principles and Core Practices.6. Fund innovation in Maine's high schools and applied technology schools and explore ways to reallocate existing resources so that secondary schools can adopt Core Practices.

7. Change attitudes and beliefs about the purposes of secondary schools and the nature of educators' work.

Ernest Boyer, (1983). High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America. NY: Harper and Row. p. 57

PROMISING FUTURES

A Call To Improve Learning

For……… Maine's Secondary Students

Table of Contents

PrologueKevin Stanley's day at Allme HighA Call to ActionThe challenge and an invitation to join the effortCore Principles of Secondary Education Practice in MaineSix beliefs that guide the improvement of learningPublic Secondary Education in Maine in 1998: A SnapshotSummary of observations and challengesCore Practices: Recommendations for ActionPointers about he process of improving schoolsLearning and Teaching PracticesCore Practices 1 - 8 about learning and instructionSchool Practices to Support Learning and TeachingCore Practices 9 - 15 about school-wide mattersPractices to Consider Phasing OutCurrent practices that impede the Core PracticesSecondary Schools Cannot Go It AloneSeven recommendation to local and state policy makersEpilogueA day at Allme High later in the yearAppendices

A. An invitation to Improve Learning: Suggestions for Using This Report

B. The Current State of Public Secondary Education in Maine: The View from 1998, by
Gordon A. Donaldson, Jr.

C. Bibliography

...most teenagers are not as hostile or indifferent to education as many adults fear. To the contrary, most echo beliefs about education that are widely held by adults. Most teenagers are not "turned off and tuned out."... [But] most teens view the academic side of school as little more than "going through the motions" -- a monotonous and meaningless series of exercises that teachers and parents expect them to complete

Getting By: What American Teenagers Really Think about Their School: A Report from Public Agenda. NY: Public Agenda. 1997. p. 13.

Click here to find out how to order your copy of Promising Futures.

Center for Educational Transformation Information

Maine Commission on Secondary EducationMaine Department of Education,