By J.D. LaRock
June 23, 2003

At the 71st Annual Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Education Standing Committee focused much of its attention on the problems and challenges facing high school students in America's cities. Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, Chair of the Education Committee, began the session by recounting the dismal state of her own city's high schools before she gained authority over the public school system four years ago.

"It was a system in crisis," she said. "Almost three-fourths of our students did not graduate high school, and if 80 percent of our students showed up to school on a given day, it was a good day." Since assuming control over the schools, she said, "our graduation rate has increased to 37 percent, and we have certified teachers in every school, in every subject. We're not where we need to be, but it's a good start."

Committee members — including four mayors newly assigned to the committee — heard presentations from a panel of experts and practitioners who are working to improve high school education on the local and federal levels. Christina Milano, Executive Director of the National College Access Network, began the presentations with a discussion of her group's work in Cleveland.

College Access

Noting that "a college degree is worth today what a high school diploma was worth in the 50s and 60s," Ms. Milano explained that her organization's goal is "simply to help students — especially low-income students — learn about and enroll in college." High school guidance counselors, she said, are so overwhelmed that few can give students the time and attention they need to make informed decisions about pursuing a college education. For example, she said, in Cincinnati, the typical high school has one guidance counselor for every 535 students; in California, the figure is one counselor per 1,000 students.

To address this problem, Milano said, the National College Access Network recruits and trains community volunteers to go into high schools "and sit down with students, tell them about the options available to them, and guide them forward if they decide to go to college." In Cleveland, said Milano, advisors have paid special attention to reaching out to the most economically disadvantaged students. With support from Mayor Campbell's office, the group offers scholarships to high achievers.

Since its inception, said Milano, 84 percent of the students who have gone on to college after going through the National College Access Network's program return to college for a second year; 70 percent have graduated. "It's a very simple strategy, but it works, and there's a great need for programs like these in more cities," she concluded.

High School Reforms

Susan Frost, the Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based Alliance for Excellent Education, began her remarks by decrying what she called the "nonexistent role" of the federal government in supporting American high schools. "Today, only 5 percent of federal Title I funds, which support high-poverty schools, go to high schools," she said. "High schools are severely underfunded. And what we find is, when you provide financial support in the early and middle grades, but not in high schools, when you test those high school students, their reading and math scores are at the level where you stopped giving support."

Pressing her case, Frost unveiled a chart listing high school graduation rates in several major American cities. Only one had a graduation rate of more than 70 percent; most had graduation rates between 30 and 40 percent. Making matters worse, she said, the federal No Child Left Behind now holds high schools to strict requirements, even though it does not provide much financial support. "It has teacher quality requirements, testing requirements, and compels school systems to report graduation rates. There's a lot that it mandates."

Despite her dire warnings, Frost said her group had identified a set of strategies — called the "Framework for Excellent Education" — that she believes could produce positive changes to high school quality. Among her recommendations:

• Mayors should press the federal government to fund adolescent literacy initiatives, such as reading classes in high schools;
• School systems should increase the number of literacy specialists in middle and high schools;
• Cities should provide more incentives to attract high-quality teachers to high-need schools.
• Cities should also support college preparation initiatives and urge the federal government to continue its support for so-called "smaller learning communities," such as high school academies.

Proposal for Innovative High School

The final presenter, Karen Sitnick, of the Mayor's Office of Employment Development in Baltimore, described a proposal to create a smaller learning community in that city. Pending funding, she said, the city plans to open the Academy for College and Career Education, a 350'student school that will stress the link between high school and workforce development.

For years, said Sitnick, Baltimore has been concerned about the state of its high schools — especially its nine "zoned" high schools that primarily serve students from the neighborhood, and have no specific admissions criteria. "In these schools, 9th-graders enter reading at a 5th-grade level," she said. "Sixty percent of the kids are absent more than 20 days. And the average SAT score at these schools is just 685."

The Academy for College and Career Education is part of a larger attempt to restructure these neighborhood schools. Over the next several years, Sitnick said, the city will spend $20 million to transform them into "innovation schools," which will be organized around three guiding principles: providing academic rigor, a small learning environment, and effective principal and teacher leadership.

At the Academy for College and Career Education, for example, students will receive a "double dose of reading, writing, literature and math," said Sitnick, as well as instruction using project-based learning techniques. The school will operate on a year-round schedule, and the school day will run from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Students will have access to campus of Johns Hopkins University, which has been involved in creating the school. Finally, the school will provide multiple internship and job'shadowing opportunities for students.

During the discussion, mayors expressed a great deal of interest in the presenters' ideas, and also described their own efforts to improve education in their cities. For example, Mayor Kirk Humphreys of Oklahoma City spoke of his $700 million funding plan for capital improvements to schools; Mayor Dannel Malloy announced that schools in Stamford have begun universal pre-kindergarten for all four-year-olds; and Providence Mayor David Cicilline described his efforts to increase community involvement in both large and small high schools throughout the city. The session closed with votes on five resolutions — concerning support for After-School programs, college access programs, middle and high school reform, equal access to educational opportunities, and full funding of the No Child Left Behind Act — all of which were adopted unanimously.