Somewhere after the Rainbow

OPINION

Somewhere after the Rainbow

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Last night, I was driving home a number of Cambridge Rindge and Latin students from a study session for an AP history class, all friends of my 11th-grade daughter. I relayed to them that CRLS was possibly transitioning back to small learning communities from small schools. One student, Andrise, an African-American, said, "Why would they do that when it is just starting to work?" Another African-American student, Jarmal, said, "In my first year (at CRLS, when it was houses), I was allowed to just do my own thing. I wasn't focused. No one kept track of me. I didn't do so well. Since then, with small schools, the deans have kept on me. They've encouraged me to work hard, and enroll in higher level classes."

Ten years ago, a group of Cambridge parents and educators, called the Cambridge Rainbow Education Task Force, pressured the Cambridge School Committee to produce the first-ever Student Data Report, to focus attention on the two-tiered nature of our public schools. The Rainbow Task Force, like the Concerned Black Educators before them, was concerned that the Cambridge Public Schools was failing its black, Hispanic and low-income students. Over the years, inequities by race and income continued, and in many areas, increased. It was to address these inequities that three years ago the School Committee adopted the plan for small schools at CRLS.

With this backdrop, it is tragic that the Cambridge School Department has abandoned its commitment to small schools at CRLS, especially in light of the most recent Student Data Report, which shows substantially improved student achievement and engagement over the past two years. The report indicates that, in comparison to the last year of a comprehensive high school structure, there have been significant improvements in multiple indicators, while the student population has become more diverse:

Ninth and 10th grade attendance improved, suggesting that the small schools' core academic programs and advisories were making a difference.

Combined in-school and out-of-school suspensions declined.

Course failures declined by more than one-quarter after a decade of increase. The rate for students receiving three or more course failures declined significantly as well.

While course failures were down, there was a slight increase in students receiving honors, and a 25 percent increase in students receiving first honors.

The percent of students enrolling in Advanced Placement courses increased by almost 30 percent. Even with this increase, a slightly greater percent of students passed the course.

The dropout rate declined by more than 40 percent.

There was a slight increase in students planning to go to college.

Significant gains were made in the MCAS - 45 percent fewer students failed the English language arts test in 2001/2002 than did in 1999/2000, while 95 percent more students in 2001/2002 passed the MCAS at proficient or advanced than did in 1999/2000. Similar results were found in math.

Disparities in enrollment and outcomes by small schools were significantly less than those of the former houses.

For the first time since tracking student data, the achievement gap by race and income was reduced in a few categories:

African-American students dropped out of school in 2001/2002 at a lower rate than did white students, and low-income students dropped out of school at a lower rate than did the schoolwide average.

The gap in course failures between low-income students and their more affluent peers was decreased by half.

The gap in Advanced Placement enrollment between African-American students and white students declined by 24 percent. Similar increases in AP enrollment were experienced by low-income students.

These are the first significant upward trends in CRLS outcomes since the Student Data Report came into existence, and are remarkable coming after a mere two years of small schools reform. These trends point to the hard work of administration and faculty, and suggest that the building blocks of small schools have made a difference - personalization, building community, knowing students well, increased student support, increased faculty professional development, increased access to challenging coursework for students, and high student and teacher expectations. These building blocks are the very reason why small schools across the nation result in higher student achievement and engagement for all students, particularly for black, Hispanic and low-income students.

So why would the district choose to abruptly abandon this promising initiative despite compelling data that speaks to its early success? Why are important decisions about CRLS now being made without input from the CRLS faculty or deans, the School Committee or the public, when the original decision to adopt small schools was made by the School Committee with substantial public input? This decision is quizzical in light of the budget crisis facing the Cambridge Public Schools; CRLS will lose up to $500,000 in grant funds for professional development over the coming two years as a result.

The decision to abandon small schools has little to do with the extra expense of small schools, as was quoted in the Chronicle. Small schools are comparable in cost to large comprehensive high schools, and are more cost-effective when comparing cost per graduate, since they have significantly lower dropout rates than do large schools. As well, the newly proposed plan for CRLS will not be merely minor changes, as was also reported in the Chronicle. If all the components of the present administration's plan are implemented, the high school will reclaim many qualities of the inequitable high school of the past.

The plan for small schools was bold and would have placed CRLS at the forefront of urban public high school reform. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education had praised the school this past fall for the progress it had made toward adopting small schools. Many schools and districts across the country have visited CRLS over the past two years to view firsthand the innovations taking place in the small schools.

While I wish CRLS well in the future, I fear that CRLS is headed down a path from whence it has come, and we already know that this path does not do educational justice for low-income students and students of color. While I hope that the Student Data Report for the 2002-2003 school year will reflect the gains of the small schools, we will need to closely monitor the results for the 2003-2004 school year, the first year of moving back to a comprehensive high school. While I will be the first in line to applaud if the gains of the past two years continue, I will have a heavy heart if the proposed changes result in a pendulum swing back toward a two-tiered high school based on race and income.

Dan French is a Cambridge parent of a 2001 CRLS graduate and a CRLS 11th-grader, the executive director of the Center for Collaborative Education, a nonprofit organization that until recently provided a grant to CRLS to transition to small schools, and a member of the former Cambridge Rainbow.

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