College Summit and Aspen Institute Roundtable on “Launch Pad” High Schools
Read the white paper Read the summary
On December 2, 2008, a group of policy leaders and successful education practitioners convened at the Aspen Institute for the release of College Summit's white paper on building a college-going culture in high schools .
The discussion focused on the importance of building a college-going culture in high schools, and the policies that will make that happen. "Schools need to stop seeing high school graduation as their ultimate goal and start seeing their purpose as serving as a launch pad for college and career success," J.B. Schramm, Founder and CEO of College Summit and co-author of the white paper, told the group, while outlining the urgent need for critical mind shifts to dramatically increase the number of young people going to college.
Supported by MetLife Foundation
MetLife Foundation supports education, health, civic and cultural organizations throughout the United States. It seeks to increase opportunities for young people to succeed, give students and teachers a voice in improving education, create connections between schools and communities and develop leadership. Its funding for education is informed by findings from the annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher.
Click here to listen to the College Summit and Aspen Institute roundtable podcast.
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Remarks from Roundtable
I have never met a parent in my life that actually didn’t care about [their kids going to college], but I have met thousands who had no idea how to do this.
Once you create these kinds of structures [for high schools to be high performing] which are becoming much more common in reform orientated schools, you still then have the challenge of helping counselors teach teachers to do the work their doing to facilitate the work of going to college. This doesn’t happen magically. College Summit has helped play that role in schools.
We’ve actually really wanted to make college going and data on college going a key performance indicator that could be used to drive student culture...however we haven’t been able to do that in most places because those systems are not available. If we had that data available and used it, it could drive a transformation in data driven instruction and school culture in our high schools.
Jon Schnur, Co-Founder and CEO of New Leaders for New Schools
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Education experts call for 'launch pad' to college
By Sarah D. Sparks
December 2, 2008
Student achievement in high schools remains one of the deepest problem areas for districts under NCLB, but a group of education experts argues districts must take a holistic approach to solve the problem. To improve student achievement in high school, experts say educators have to get students to think about life after high school.
"It's logical that a young person who has set her sights higher will be more likely to get to that finish line and cross over," said Shirley Sagawa, an education consultant and College Summit researcher.
Sagawa and College Summit colleague J.B. Schramm released Dec. 2 a new analysis of high-performing high schools. They argued school districts should develop a K-12 college-going "launch pad" culture that helps students find relevance in their schooling.
Focusing students on going to college not only increased actual acceptance rates but also general math and reading proficiency and graduation rates for the case study schools, even when students did not attend college after graduation.
"If you get the college acceptance letter in your hand and then choose not to go, that's fine. But if you don't apply, that's not a choice," said Miriam Nightengale, principal at Martin Luther King Jr. High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice in New York, one of the studied schools.
"I really think we gave kids a story of why they were going to high school, and that story was college. But you have to make sure all of your school practices align with that story."
For example, Nightengale said, if a school sets high expectations, it shouldn't contradict those by letting students take half-days or participate in extracurricular activities if their grades are low. "That doesn't fit the story," she said.
The report advised districts that want to create a college-going culture at their schools to:
-Include college-enrollment rates to measure high school success, and solicit feedback on problem areas from recent graduates. "Schools cannot create a culture in which college success is the North Star if they don't look at what happens to students after high school," Schramm said.
-Require college-oriented guidance counseling for all students.
-Bolster the efforts of guidance counselors with teachers who push students to choose college and with students who encourage their peers.
-Provide a system to train teachers, parents and students about how to select, apply for and prepare for college and a career.
"Schools cannot create a culture in which college success is the North Star if they don't look at what happens to students after high school," Schramm said. Require college-oriented guidance counseling for all students. Bolster the efforts of guidance counselors with teachers who push students to choose college and with students who encourage their peers. Provide a system to train teachers, parents and students about how to select, apply for and prepare for college and a career.
Linda Darling-Hammond, codirector of the Stanford University School Redesign Network and head of President-elect Barack Obama's education transition team, said she liked all of the policy recommendations "a lot" but found the last -- training in college planning -- the most critical. "You need to teach students and parents how to engage this pathway and pursue it; it doesn't just happen," she said. "It has to be explicit."
Darling-Hammond suggested providing more federal support for schools to include structures to build college-going culture.
"Part of the mind-shift for teachers is to say, 'You are responsible for students, not subjects' . . . but also to put the support structures in place to make that possible," she said.