DOCUMENT RESUME ED 422 634 EA 029 315 TITLE Alternative Schools: Caring for Kids on the Edge. INSTITUTION Northwest Regional Educational Lab., Portland, OR. SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE 1998-00-00 NOTE 41p.; Printed on colored paper. CONTRACT RJ96006501 PUB TYPE Collected Works - Serials (022)-- Reports Descriptive (141) JOURNAL CIT Northwest Education; v3 n4 Sum 1998 EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Adolescents; At Risk Persons; *Educational Innovation; Educational Principles; Experimental Schools; *High Risk Students; High Schools; *Nontraditional Education IDENTIFIERS United States (Northwest) ABSTRACT This theme issue presents an overview of alternative high schools that serve at-risk students. It opens with an essay on "Learning from the Margins," offering insights on the need for alternative schools, definitions of what constitutes an alternative school, how such schools succeed, and how alternative schools use new ideas to reach students. Four schools are profiled: Mat-Su, a school north of Anchorage, Alaska, which accepts students between the ages of 15 and 21 who are considered at-risk; Portland Night High School (Oregon), which helps students complete their secondary education even if they have already started a job or a family; the Open Meadow Learning Center, a private high school in Portland (Oregon) that uses relationship-based learning to teach life-skills development, preemployment training, peer-advocate groups, and other skills; and Meridian Academy near Boise, Idaho, a small alternative school that emphasizes the importance of each student and fosters a family-like atmosphere. Each profile features information on teaching strategies, the unique approach each school takes to meet the needs of its students, and other alternative school techniques. (RJM) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** E°2 2111ATil er OL3: c-1 CARING FOR KIDS C%1 erC1 T.' ON THE EDGE A NORTHWEST REGIONAL EDUCATIONAL LABORATORY '1 .111& ' , t ' 2 ' ,..., 4' ':n'lr'll-, ,14 4. 1 11. `' 4','.1 4444-4 r, 44- 4, ' U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) liThisdocument has been reproduced as received from the person or organization c.. originating it O Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. VOLUME 3 NUMBER 4 SUMMER 1998 TI OS ISSUE Alternative Schools: Caring for Kids on the Edge 010 12 alsa-Su 18 To Nllja gh 22 Manion on durecalls riksonthau 28 gintit Nolo DEPARTMENTS: 34 On the Wray 36 If.,/t4hr § Nokbciot COVER ILLUSTRATION ©JOSE ORTEGA/THE STOCK ILLUSTRATION SOURCE INC \-\ ,L. U The Les_sons of Alternative Sohools ; liii 1111 IL , .tie ninth-grade student was a show stopper;14alf of her head was shaved,anAhe other half was freaked out19, a bold explo- ion of hair, belpand ribbons. She had three gp)l studs in her nOse And was "ring at least a c. dozen earringsdiat, -- icfchimes whgt Samove& rAbIli§tinctive wif she was a beabtiful ykkug.gir her"v71She had left her former high school to travel across town to a small alternative program. She thought for a moment then explained, 'A'rrrtkri*toliaol everyone treated me like a geek, eve-rybody thought IA-kind of meird. Over here...it's like, I iust disappeared into this really -happy fainityt : f" Hope at Last for At-Risk Youth Alternative Schools tudents attending the nation's estimated 15,000 alter- alternative school, truly remarkable achievement native schools come in all sorts of colorful packages. often occurs." More than a few adopt hairstyles, wardrobes, street Mary Anne Raywid of the Center for the Study of language, and attitudes that would make them stand Education Alternatives has witnessed hundreds of outor be kicked outof mainstream classrooms. similar success stories over the years. In her research But what's most remarkable about this diverse stu- review in The Handbook of Alternative Education dent body isn't outward appearances. It's that these she writes, "Alternative schools are known for the students, many of whom face obstacles ranging from dramatic turnarounds they often bring to the lives of poverty to teen pregnancy to long-term academic fail- individual youngsters whose previous school perfor- ure to chronic delinquency, are making an appear- mance has ranged from poor to disastrous. Well-sub- ance in school at all. stantiated evidence is harder to come by," Raywid A growing body of research and years of anecdotal adds, "but gradually the hard evidence is piling up." evidence show that students who have been labeled That hard evidence includes studies showing failures, troublemakers, or dropouts in traditional improvements in academic performance and'self- schools can thrive in smaller, more individualized set- esteem, and reductions in behavior problems and tings. That may sound like plain common sense to dropout rates, among students in alternative settings. any teacher who has worked to pull a struggling stu- These schools can't work wonders in every difficult dent back from the brink. It's especially timely news, case, of course. Nor can schools alone untangle the however, as communities across the country wrestleweb of social and economic problems that put so with the staggering social and economic costs associ- many children in jeopardy. But the results coming ated with undereducated youth. After years of operat- from alternative settings are convincing. Barr and ing on the margins of public education, alternative Parrett go so far as to argue that alternative schools schools are getting a serious look from many differ- should be a key component of "a blueprint to ent interest groups: proponents of school reform, restructure public education" so that all students will corrections workers overwhelmed by juvenile have a fighting chance to succeed in school. caseloads, and employers concerned about finding Many of the current buzzwords of school reform enough educated young people to fill tomorrow's performance-based education, school choice, school- workplaces. to-work transition, experiential learninghave long Robert D. Barr of Boise State University and been realities at alternative schools in the Northwest William H. Parrett of the University of Alaska Fair- and across the country. Now, with an explosion of banks took a comprehensive look at the mounting interest in these program, it's worth investigating what body of research literature regarding at-risk students, the margins can teach to the mainstream. much of it generated at alternative schools in the Northwest. Their detailed findings, published in Hope WHO NEEDS AN ALTERNATIVE? at Last for At-Risk Youth, help explain why these At least a quarter of the students who eniered the diverse schools are earning such widespread atten- nation's high schools as freshmen in 1994 never got tion. As the authors explain, "Once at-risk students the chance, four years later, to don a cap and gown. leave the difficult world of traditional school classes Before they could march across the stage to receive and enter the supportive, focused programs of an their diplomas, they either dropped out, or were NW Education / Summer 1998 7 pushed out, of public schools ill equipped to copedescribes a "collision of factors" leading to an indi- with such wrenching problems as family dysfunction,vidual student's decision to leave school: "Most stu- domestic violence, poverty, and homelessness. dents quit because of the compounded impact of, for Dropout rates run even higher in urban areas where example, being poor, growing up in a broken home, these issues are most acute, according to Staying in being held back in the fourth grade, and finally hav- School: Partnerships for Educational Change. ing slugged 'Mr. Fairlee,' the school's legendary vice What happens to the kids who disappear from theprincipal for enforcement." As Mann points out, educational system? Statistics paint a grim picture. school-related factors are often only part of this com- More than 80 percent of prison inmates are highplicated picture. school dropouts; teen parents who have two or more Much of the research on at-risk youth has focused children can expect to remain on welfare for aon the problems these students face at the time they decade. According to a 1997 Juvenile Justice Bulletinleave school. But often, their academic challenges ("Reaching Out to Youth Out of the Education Main- begin years earlier, even before they start school. stream"), "Research has demonstrated that youthReady to Learn, a 1991 study by the Carnegie Foun- who are not in school and not in the labor force aredation for the Advancement of Teaching, reported at high risk of delinquency and crime. Society pays athat more than one in three kindergartners arrive at high price for children's school failure. In 1993, one-school unprepared and poorly equipped to learn. "If fourth of youth entering adult prisons had completedchildren do not have a good beginning," the study grade 10; only 2 percent had completed high schoolcautioned, "it will be difficult, if not impossible, to or had a GED." compensate fully for such failings later on." After a decade of study, researchers can chart the After years of watching a steady percentage of their characteristics of students most at risk of school fail-students fail to become engaged in learning, educa- ure. According to the Staying in School report,tors have become adept at predicting which kids will "Black, Latino and less-affluent Americans of all eth-be lost from the system. "Using only a few identified nic groups and nationalities drop out at far higherfactors, schools can predict with better than 80 per- rates than members of other groups, especially in thecent accuracy students in the third grade who will inner-cities." later drop out of school, Barr and Parrett report.