Perspectives on High School Reform

During the last five years, a plethora of reports have been issued about the challenges facing U.S. high schools. Large foundations, business leaders, and federal and state officials are calling for dramatic improvements in the quality of high school education for all students. In order to adequately prepare U.S. students for the demands of the 21st century, we need to dramatically change instructional practice in the classroom and in the relationships that currently exist between teachers and students, as experts from https://customwriting.com/ thinks. We must strengthen our efforts to keep all of our students in school, enable them to be successful with a challenging curriculum, and actively engage them in intellectual dialogue.

National attention has been increasingly focused on high school reform efforts. During the last five years, a plethora of reports have been issued about the challenges facing U.S. high schools. Large foundations, business leaders, and federal and state officials are calling for dramatic improvements in the quality of high school education for all students.

The experts we interviewed for the companion CD - researchers, policymakers, and practitioners - agreed that policy shifts are necessary, but stressed that the hard work of high school reform will take place in the classrooms and schools themselves. In order to adequately prepare U.S. students for the demands of the 21st century, we need to dramatically change instructional practice in the classroom and in the relationships that currently exist between teachers and students. We must strengthen our efforts to keep all of our students in school, enable them to be successful with a challenging curriculum, and actively engage them in intellectual dialogue. This essay reviews the research related to high schools, presents policy proposals from national policymakers, and highlights the experts' recommendations about how to advance the high school reform agenda.

According to a number of different indicators, high schools in the United States are in need of dramatic improvement. International measures indicate that U.S. students need to compete more effectively with their international peers. In 2003, countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tested more than 250,000 15-year-old students in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). When compared with students from other countries, U.S. students fared poorly. For example, out of 40 participating countries with sufficient data, students from the United States placed 28th in mathematics and 29th in problem solving

National measures of student achievement also present a cause for concern. Achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is categorized into four levels: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced. From 1992 to 2002, NAEP scores indicate that 60 percent or more of 12th graders performed below the Proficient level - It is even more disturbing to note that these low performance levels are typical of students who were enrolled in high school. Thus, these numbers do not account for students who dropped out of high school.