Inside High School Reform: Making the Changes That Matter

Author: Horowitz, J., California Academic Partnership Program
Publisher: WestEd
Publication Date: 2005
Available for purchase online at: http://www.wested.org/cs/we/view/rs/777

Abstract (written by WestEd)

What happens when some of the lowest-performing high schools in the state of California make a commitment to reform themselves? This book goes inside the reform efforts of 28 high schools where educators collaborated to fundamentally change expectations for students — in effect, to prepare all students for postsecondary education. By challenging the status quo, teachers and administrators set out to strengthen their delivery of services so that all students, especially those traditionally denied access to college, would leave their care with more options for college and for life.

Reported here are the conclusions from formal evaluations over the past ten years of high school reform shepherded by the California Academic Partnership Program (CAPP). CAPP schools are each funded for three to five years, with grants of about $100,000 a year, to make fundamental changes for their students. As these schools discovered, not all changes are equally valuable, but some are simply essential. The evaluators concluded that work by teachers to strengthen curricula and instruction is the single most successful strategy to improve student learning. To do this well, teachers need time to collaborate and support from their administrators. In the words of the educators themselves and through the perspectives of CAPP advisors who monitored the programs, Inside High School Reform lays out some of the apparently universal lessons of making the reform changes that matter.