February 1994
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 21
School within a school
High schools let teachers take chances
The ideas behind philanthropist
Walter Annenberg’s $500 mil
lion gift to improve U.S. schools
are playing out in two Tar Heel
schools.
By Todd Cohen
isk-taking in the schools
received a high-energy jolt
/ 1 in December, when philan
thropist Walter Annenberg
announced a $500 million “chal
lenge” gift to the nation’s schools.
That gift includes S50 million
each to the Annenberg National
Institute for School Reform at Brown
University and to the New American
Schools Development Corp. in
Arlington, Va.
The remaining $400 million will
be divvied up among schools and
communities that the Annenberg
Institute invites to take part.
A handful of Tar Heel schools
already are working with organiza
tions funded by Annenberg, and oth
ers are expected to apply tor
Annenberg funding.
“I’m sure that not only will there
be individual school systems and
schools going after it, but the state
will be going with a grant proposal as
well,” says Tom Houlihan, education
adviser to Gov. Jim Hunt.
Spread among schools through
out the U.S., the Annenberg gift may
not change the world, but it will give
some educators the luxury of time to
experiment, says John Doman, exec
utive director of the Public School
Forum of North Carolina.
And time can be critical in testing
new ways of teaching.
Terri McMurray, a teacher at a
pilot “school within a schooi” at
South Stokes High School north of
Winston-Salem, says the one-year-
old experimental program hinges on
patience and grit.
“It’s much more difficult to teach
this way,” she says.
Although it is part of South
Stokes High, the school within a
school — known as South Stokes
Essential School — has Its own
teachers, students and building. The
four teachers decide how they want
to teach. Some courses, for example,
are taught in blocks of 110 minutes,
rather than the traditional 55.
Each teacher is responsible for
one of four academic disciplines —
science, math, English and social
studies — but tries to incorporate
the other three as much as possible.
Another goal is to teach the 80
students how to work in teams.
Data are not available on the
effectiveness of the experiment, but
McMurray says student attitudes
and enthusiasm have improved.
That’s particularly encouraging, she
says, because grasping how to really
think and reason can be daunting.
South Stokes is one of two North
Carolina schools working with the
Coalition of Essential Schools at
Brown. The Coalition was founded by
Theodore Sizer, an education profes
sor at Brown who also founded the
Annenberg Institute there.
Students at South Stokes High School's pilot program work in teams
on math problems. From left, Mitchel Allen, Anna Kirby,
Amy Tuttle and Aaron Burkey.
Photo by More J. Kowonishi
The Coalition is a network of 700
schools that subscribe to nine “com
mon principles” designed to help
teenagers “learn to use their minds
well” and be able to demonstrate
what they’ve learned.
Chapel Hill Hi^ School also has
begun a “school within a school” and
is working with Sizer’s Coalition.
The Chapel Hill pilot program
includes 300 ninth and 10th graders
who are organized into three houses,
each of which has a team of four
teachers.
As at South Stokes, teachers
design their own schedules, carving
out longer blocks of time for some
courses. Interdisciplinary courses
have been designed that cover sever
al academic subjects.
Charles Patteson, principal of
Chapel Hill High, expects the pilot
program to grow next year. And
Patteson is working to create a net
work of Tar Heel schools that apply
Sizer’s methods.
“It’s a little too early to judge how
successful it will or not be and
how much it will spread,” Patteson
says of the pilot program at his
school. “We feel fairly comfortable
now with what we’ve got.”
Community solutions
School
performance
keyed to
race, poverty
The serious problems faced by
public schools are intertwined with
those of their communities, and fix
ing the schools will hinge on mar
shaling community resources.
Those are the preliminary con
clusions of a study being conducted
by the Pubhc School Forum of North
Carolina for the U.S. Department of
Education.
The profile of a poorly perform
ing school is “rural, poor and dispro
portionately minority,” says John
Dornan, executive director of the
Public School Forum. “The politics of
poverty and race have everything to
do with the quality of education.”
But sending in cnrriculum
experts — a typical tactic — won’t
work, he says.
The study, to be completed soon,
will recommend that achieving dra
matic improvement in the schools
will require tapping “all of govern
ment’s resources, not just educa
tion,” Dornan says.
“It really cries out for a team of
social workers, psychologists, gang
specialists or crime specialists, and
economic development specialists
that can help bridge the gap between
the business community and the
schools.”
Todd Cohen
School
Continued from page 1
“Modern Red Schoolhouse,” that is
funded by the New American Schools
Development Corp. in Arlington, Va.
The “Modern Red Schoolhouse”
team, which is headed by the Hudson
Institute in Indianapolis, is one of a
handful being funded by New
American Schools. The Hudson team
aims to raise the standards by which
children are taught, and to give
schools autonomy in financing, cur
riculum and staffing.
Its underlying strategy is to iden
tify traditional teaching techniques
that helped children succeed in the
past, and combine those with modern
technology and knowledge about how
children learn.
Murphy, Charlotte-Mecklenburg
superintendent, says the approach
has allowed the schools to shrink the
gap between black and white student
achievement.
Murphy says that when he took
the Charlotte job in 1990, he inherit
ed a “dual school system even if it
was integrated.”
For example, he says, Charlotte
in 1990 had about 55 black teenagers
enrolled in advanced placement
courses. In the past two years, that
number has increased to more than
350. What’s more. Scholastic
Aptitude Test scores for black and
white students in the entire system
have risen by 32 points and 27
points, respectively, and now are at
the national average.
And by the spring of 1998,
Murphy hopes to have all graduating
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seniors who plan to attend college
performing at an advanced-place
ment level.
“Many poor black youngsters
walk into our schools and the deci
sion is made the day they walk in
that they’re not going to be success
ful,” he says. “Those are the types of
attitudes we have to change.”
To turn the system around,
Murphy has asked principals to
restructure their sehools, aliowing
each school flexibility in scheduling
classes, teaching and using re
sources.
Change, he believes, requires
direction from the top, but it must be
brought about by people throughout
the system. It also requires using
resources as efficiently as possible.
Two years ago, the Charlotte
Chamber of Commerce sponsored a
year-long study, funded by the coun
ty, that concluded the school system
could shift $3 million from adminis
trative spending into the classrooms.
Murphy, by supporting programs
such as the one at Lake Wylie, is try
ing to do just that.
Stone, the Lake Wylie principal,
wanted his school to serve its stu
dents, rather than forcing them to
follow rules established simply for
the convenience of teachers or
administrators. Putting that philoso
phy into practice has included some
changes that might seem unrelated
to the job of teaching but are in fact
designed to help children learn for
themselves by making decisions
about simple matters.
To give them the sense of freedom
that goes with responsibility, for
example, students are permitted dur
ing class to chew gum and listen to
music on headphones. If simply
chewing gum or listening to music
improves student attitudes, and
doesn’t interfere with their work.
Stone says, why prohibit such prac
tices?
Stone also hired a professional
chef for the cafeteria, and students
have a choice of menus, and also can
choose where they want to sit during
meals.
Not only is the cafeteria turning a
profit, but the cuisine and environ
ment are attracting 80 to 90 parents
a day for lunch. Stone has worked to
convert those diners into school vol
unteers: Last year. Lake Wylie boast
ed 250 parent volunteers.
Stone also found ways to shift
resources so he could increase his
teaching staff, and thus reduce the
number of students assigned to each
teacher. First, he told Murphy he
wanted to take money targeted for
teaching assistants and hire teachers
instead. With lobbying by Murphy,
state lawmakers voted to allow that
exception to state law, and Stone
hired six teaehers instead of 12
assistants.
He also swapped art and Spanish
teaching positions for other teaching
positions. Regular classroom teach
ers picked up the task of teaching
art, and Spanish now is taught by
interactive video that originates in
Arizona.
Unlike many elementary schools,
which may assign a teacher to teach
numerous academic disciplines,
teachers at Lake Wyiie teach what
they’re best at. Stone says. And their
teaching methods differ with individ
ual children, geared to the ways each
child learns best. One child, for
example, may learn more easily
through hands-on aetivities,' while
another may learn better by hstening
to a lecture.
“Learning style has nothing to do
with intelligence,” Stone says. “It’s
how you process and retain new and
difficult Mormation.”
Students also are grouped aud
taught based on how well they are
performing, not on their ability.
Students are tested periodically, and
are advanced as they demonstrate
they have mastered a subject. And
parents are kept up to date on what’s
expected of their children.
Many schools require failing stu
dents to take courses over from the
very beginning even if they have mas
tered some of the subject. Lake Wylie
School, however, allows students to
pick up subjects at the point they left
off the year before.
Lake Wylie also works to teach
students to be responsible members
of a community. Instead of filling a
custodian position. Stone bou^t vac
uum cleaners and fourth-, fifth- and
sixth-graders volunteered to vacuum
their classrooms.
Next year Stone will have saved
enough in custodial salaries to hire a
technology teacher.
Lake Wylie School is in only its
second year, and it’s too early to
assess the overall effectiveness of the
risks Stone is taking.
One measure cited by Stone is the
virtual elimination of any gap
between black and white kinder
garten students in their readiness to
advance to the next grade level.
Based on a scale that is measured
systemwide, that gap is less than
four-tenths of one percentage point
at Lake Wylie, compared with 21
points for Charlotte-Mecklenburg as
a whole.
Stone emphasizes that the risks
he’s taken have been possible only
because of strong leadership from
Murphy.
While Murphy’s strategy of
encouraging innovations such as
those adopted at Lake Wylie has won
support from parents and community
leaders, some public school advo
cates say it will be important to do
more than simply test new theories.
John Dornan, executive director
of the Public School Forum of North
Carolina, says a critical challenge for
school reform efforts will be to publi
cize what works and to make those
strategies work on a broader scale.
Murphy agrees. In fact, at his urg
ing, the Hudson Institute agreed to
fund a pilot program that included 17
schools, compared with three schools
for each of the other systems on the
“Modern Red Schoolhouse” team.
Those pilot schools serve as
“mold-breakers” for the rest of the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg system,
which incorporates tactics and
strategies found to work in the pilot
schools.
With the carrot of freedom that
Murphy has handed out goes the
stick of accountability. Murphy
makes it clear he will judge the risk-
takers by the “outcomes” they pro
duce. And the risks, he says, are
worth taking if schools truly are
going to improve.