November 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 2002 Vol. 11 No. 1
Sidebar article to “Designing, and Making, the New American High School,” by Bob Pearlman.
Are Students Successful at these New High Schools?
Has reinventing the high school experience made any difference in the success of the students? For Napa New Technology High School and the Met, their first students are now in college, while High Tech High's oldest students are now in the eleventh grade. Each of these schools believes that the real measure of success is not standardized test scores, but instead the post-secondary success of its students, measured in college-going, college-retention, college-graduating rates, and labor market outcomes. Each school is now working with evaluators to capture that data, but the story will only unfold over several years. Preliminary data, however, appears hopeful.
Forty-six Met seniors graduated on June 9, 2000, in ceremonies held on the Brown University campus. Every member of that graduating class is attending college, of whom 74 percent are the first generation college-bound in their families. The Met does not give standardized tests, considering them a poor measure of student success. However, it does report holding data (absentee rate, suspension rate, and dropout rate) and progress on the school's five learning goals. The absentee rate, suspension rate, and dropout rate are, respectively: 7 percent, 1.4 percent, and 8 percent, compared with 20 percent, 8 percent, and 27 percent rates in Providence's other eight high schools. (The Met data is from Eliot Levine, One Kid at a Time [Teachers College Press, 2002]).
At Napa New Technology High School, 98, 80, and 85 students graduated in 1998, 1999, and 2000, respectively, with college-going rates of 95 percent, 95 percent, and 98 percent for the respective classes. This compares with a district average college-going rate of 38 percent over the same period. New Tech High achieved a top rank of 10 on California's Academic Performance index (API), the only high school in Napa Country to receive a top rank. New Tech High had a 2.5 percent absentee rate, a 3 percent suspension rate, and a 0 percent dropout rate in 2000-01.
High Tech High students also achieved a top rank of 10 on California's API for 2001 and a similar schools top rank of 10, the highest high school scores in San Diego County. HTH's absentee rate for 2000-01 was 4.1 percent, and its suspension rate was 7 percent.
Each of these schools' student bodies fully reflects the ethnic diversity of their local school districts.