Archived Information

Improving the Performance of High School Students:

Focusing on Connections and Transitions

Taking Place in Minnesota

Cynthia Crist

## System Director for PreK-16 Collaboration Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

## 

Mary Jacquart, Ph.D.

## System Director for Educational Grant Programs Minnesota State Colleges and 

## 

## Universities

### 

David A. Shupe, Ph.D.

## System Director for Academic Accountability Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

### 

March 1, 2002

This paper was prepared for the Office of Vocational and Adult
Education, U.S. Department of Education pursuant to contract no.
ED-99-CO-0160. The findings and opinions expressed in this paper do not
necessarily reflect the position or policies of the U.S. Department of
Education.

Improving the Performance of High School Students:

Focusing on Connections and Transitions Taking Place in Minnesota

Cynthia Crist, Mary Jacquart, Ph.D., and David A. Shupe, Ph.D.

Introduction

Despite nearly two decades of reform efforts in education, sparked by
the 1983 report, "A Nation at Risk," many concerns remain about the
academic performance of students in the United States and the impact of
that performance on their preparation for and persistence in colleges
and universities. Certainly, the goals set have been ambitious, and
expectations for almost immediate results have neglected to recognize
the complexities of both the educational structure and the
teaching/learning dynamic. There have been some glimmers of progress,
and recent polls indicate that the public at large now feels more
positive about the performance of our schools, with a majority of
respondents assigning either an A or a B to the schools in their
communities and some 72 percent expressing the belief that reforming the
existing system is the best way to improve schools (33^rd^ Annual Phi
Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll).

At the same time, policymakers are frustrated by what they see as a lack
of progress. Educators at all levels have their own frustrations,
feeling in many cases that they lack the resources and support needed to
provide the kinds of learning opportunities they know students need and
deserve. The business community has responded by engaging in active
discussion around educational issues and through active partnerships at
local, state, and national levels. The business community has also
directly joined the effort to define and deliver better educational
opportunities by becoming a major provider of educational opportunities,
primarily post-high school, in an effort to provide workers with the
skills and knowledge they see lacking in too many employees. The 2001
American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) State of the
Industry Report found that employers spent an average of \$677 per
person in 1999 on employer-provided training expenses. In its 2002
study, ASTD reported that total training expenditures had increased and
were projected to increase by an average of 37 percent between the years
2000 and 2001.

Even though these and other major differences exist in the perceptions
of key constituencies regarding the reasons for a lack of desired
progress and, therefore, in their ideas about how to solve the problems
facing the American educational system, there is a growing consensus
that one key point of focus needs to be the last two years of high
school. It is clear that too many students, especially in communities of
color, are dropping out before graduation. Too many students are
floating through high school, bypassing courses with the rigor and
content needed to prepare them for success in an increasingly complex
and technological workplace and for college and university work.

Too many students find, upon enrolling in a college or university, that
they lack essential skills and knowledge and, as a result, have to spend
time and money taking developmental courses that offer instruction they
could have gotten in high school or that provides a level of preparation
appropriate to, but sadly not offered in, their school. And too often,
there is a serious lack of communication between the education system,
preschool through grade 12 (P-12) that produces those students and the
postsecondary system that enrolls them following graduation,
contributing to the lack of appropriate preparation for collegiate
success.

Several recent reports, especially, "Raising Our Sights: No High School
Senior Left Behind," the report of the National Commission on the High
School Senior Year, have identified promising strategies to refocus and
improve the learning opportunities of students nearing the end of their
high school careers. In many states, high school students have new
opportunities to access high-quality, rigorous academic programs and to
move from P-12 into postsecondary systems. These efforts to enhance
student learning and to eliminate many of the "disconnects" in the
currently separate systems have the potential to improve student
learning, transitions, and rates of degree completion.

This paper, after further describing the current context, will offer
ideas for potential federal policy and programmatic efforts that might
be undertaken to improve the performance of our high school students
based in part on efforts currently underway in Minnesota. As is always
the case in the educational arena, federal actions alone cannot generate
the kinds of improvement in student learning that we all desire.
However, efforts could lend both direction and support to local, state,
and regional programs designed to connect student learning across the
educational spectrum and, as a result, enhance student transitions from
high school to postsecondary learning and/or career opportunities.

# The Context for Change {#the-context-for-change .OVAE-Title}

An array of national reports makes clear the widespread concern that
even as the high school graduation rate and the percentage of the
population pursuing at least some postsecondary education remain
relatively high, theses rates may not be keeping pace with other
nations. Despite projected higher education enrollment growth of 24
percent over the next decade and the fact that some 70 percent of U.S.
high school graduates enroll in postsecondary institutions, we have lost
the significant edge we used to hold internationally in the percentage
of our population holding a postsecondary degree. While differing
definitions and measures make comparisons difficult, OECD recently
reported that Great Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand
have surpassed our college graduation rate. The 24.8 percent of
Americans earning an undergraduate degree in the most recent year
reported (1997-98) is roughly equal to the 25 percent of young people in
30 other nations, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand,
and most European and North American nations, now completing a
postsecondary degree ("Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators" and
"Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac 2001"). Closer to home, we need
to identify and address the reasons why, although the overall percentage
of those 17 and older who are employed and had participated in
postsecondary education has increased since 1995, there has been a
decline within this overall population of those with annual family
incomes at or below \$10,000 (Source: "Where We Go From Here"). This
seems to indicate a widening participation gap on the basis of family
income.

Concern is also great about the fact that too many of those choosing to
pursue a postsecondary education are arriving at colleges and
universities unprepared to successfully complete collegiate courses.
Several reports note that, despite the goals set in the 1980s and 1990s
to improve student preparation, less than half of high school students
are completing academically rigorous high school programs (sources:
"Raising Our Sights," National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
"Digest of Education Statistics," 1997 and 2000). Demand for
developmental/remedial courses remains high, and far too many students
leave colleges and universities without having completed a degree.
Similarly, employers report that too many recent high school graduates
lack the skills, knowledge, and habits critical to their effectiveness
in an increasingly complex workplace that demands technological skills,
a recognition of the need for lifelong learning, and the ability to work
in teams and communicate effectively with diverse persons.

Of particular concern is the "lost opportunity" of the senior year of
high school, when too many students and their parents view this
potentially pivotal year as a "rest stop between the demands of
elementary and secondary education and whatever follows \[rather than\]
as a consummation of what already has been accomplished and a launching
pad for what lies ahead" ("Raising Our Sights: No High School Senior
Left Behind"). What evidence do we have that the current system is not
adequately preparing students for their futures after high school?
Frankly, there is quite a bit. Data on graduation rates, current high
school course-taking patterns and practices, and remedial course-taking
help tell the story, as does an environment in which too many
educational programs, practices, and policies develop and operate in
isolation from each other. The following paragraphs provide a brief
snapshot of some of those data.

G*raduation Rates*. Before we can address concerns about the body of
knowledge and the array of skills that students bring to the workplace
and/or a college or university, we must address the rates at which they
graduate from high school. If education beyond a high school diploma is
increasingly critical to an individual's future potential for employment
and economic advancement, then clearly we must ensure that higher rates
of students graduate from high school. There are many sources of data
demonstrating that earning potential increases with advanced education.
For example, in "Building a Highway to Higher Education," the Center for
an Urban Future in New York reported the range of average expected
incomes from only \$12,500 per year for a female high school dropout at
the low end to \$72,000 per year for a male with a graduate degree at
the upper end. More generally, it has been estimated that over the last
20 years, the real earnings of those with only a high school diploma
have dropped dramatically while college-educated workers have enjoyed
steady or growing wages (Source: "Where We Go From Here").

Given these figures, it is especially disturbing to know that in 1998,
the national high school graduation rate was only 74 percent overall and
an appalling 56 percent and 54 percent for African-Americans and
Latinos, respectively (Source: Black Alliance for Educational Options
(BAEO) Study, 2001). In many cases, the figures are even worse when
disaggregated at a state level by race and ethnicity. For example,
Wisconsin, which has the second highest overall graduation rate at 87
percent, has the lowest graduation rate nationally for African-American
students at only 40 percent. Although one might be tempted to chalk up
that low percentage to relatively small numbers of students of color in
this upper Midwestern state, the data show that much of the problem lies
in Milwaukee, a metropolitan area with a relatively high number of
students of color. Clearly, we are failing too many of our students,
depriving them of a critical credential needed to contribute to society
as adults and to benefit from much of what our nation has to offer.

**Floating through High School.** Despite widespread efforts to set
higher and clearer standards for students in all grades, there are still
far too many students graduating from high school who have not taken
advantage of the courses that will give them the critical skills and
knowledge needed for success following graduation. There is clear and
compelling evidence that what students take in high school has a
tremendous impact on their subsequent academic success. For example, a
U.S. Department of Education study completed in 1999 concluded that the
odds of a student completing a baccalaureate degree doubled when he or
she finished a challenging math course like trigonometry in high school.
For African-American and Latino students, it found that coursework of
"high academic intensity" was the single greatest pre-college predictor
of college completion. Data from Educational Testing Service (ETS) and
The College Board consistently show a high correlation between scores
earned on the American College Test (ACT) and Scholastic Assessment Test
(SAT) and the body of coursework completed in high school. For example,
a recent report by ETS showed that students who took the core classes
recommended by the ACT Assessment (including three years each of math
and science and four years of English) scored an average of 22 in
English, 22.8 in math, and 23.1 in reading on their test compared with
scores of 19.4, 19.8, and 20.6, respectively, for students who didn't
complete a core curriculum. Similarly, students in the high school
graduating class of 1994 who were in the "general" track scored 24
points lower on the reading portion of that assessment than those in the
"college prep" track (Source: The Lost Opportunity of Senior Year").

Student course-taking patterns too often demonstrate that students do
not know about, understand, are ignoring, or are not being encouraged
and supported to act appropriately on this information. According to a
recent Minnesota report, for example, only about 70 percent of high
school graduates have completed the core academic courses recommended
for college, even though some 80 percent pursue a postsecondary
education and all four-year institutions in the state have defined
preparation requirements comprising such a core set of courses (Source:
2001 Minnesota Education Yearbook). Again, the problem is even worse for
students of color. According to a recent NCES report, African-Americans
are less likely than either white or Asian students to take rigorous
high school courses (8 percent compared to 20 and 31 percent,
respectively) and also more often by-pass higher level courses,
completing courses no higher than the core curriculum (42 percent
compared to 29 and 27 percent, respectively).

**Filling in Academic Gaps.** Although the current high rates of
enrollment in developmental or remedial courses have changed little over
the past several decades, those who have sought to improve student
preparation have been disappointed in the lack of progress. Even after
separating out from the data those students who appropriately need to
brush up their academic skills (primarily adult students who have been
out of high school for enough years to have forgotten, for example, much
of the algebra and geometry they learned in high school), significant
numbers of recent high school graduates are placing into reading,
writing, mathematics, and/or study skills courses offering instruction
at a high school level. The costs to both the students and the
institutions are considerable, with students paying for credits that
don't count toward degree completion and that duplicate what they could
have learned at no cost in high school and institutions needing to
devote staff time and other academic resources to instruction below the
collegiate level.

The data paint a picture of lost opportunities across the country.
Nationally, it has been reported that all community colleges, 80 percent
of public universities, and 60 percent of private universities offer
remedial instruction. The percentage of students in those institutions
requiring remediation range from 13 percent at private four-year
institutions to 41 percent of students enrolled at public two-year
institutions. State-by-state data mirror these national figures. In
Minnesota, for example, all public colleges and universities offer
remedial instruction in mathematics, while most two-year institutions
and at least one-fourth of public four-year institutions offer remedial
courses in reading and writing. Approximately 34 percent of students in
public universities in Minnesota were enrolled in at least one remedial
course in the most recent year reported and 46 percent of students in
public two-year colleges were enrolled in one or more remedial courses.
Since not all students who demonstrate on placement tests that they need
developmental work ever enroll in such courses, there are likely even
more students needing to build academic skills that are considered to be
pre-collegiate in nature.

It is important to consider likely future trends in this area, yet
impossible to predict the extent to which the need for developmental
education will increase or decrease in the years ahead. On the one hand,
despite two decades of attention to this issue, there has been little
change in the extent of developmental enrollment. In addition, much of
the enrollment growth in higher education in recent years has come from
populations historically underrepresented in and underprepared for
postsecondary study. On the other hand, it is anticipated that
widespread efforts to better define appropriate high school preparation
and to tie that to graduation standards, new forms of assessment, and
college/university admission requirements will improve student
preparation for college and therefore decrease the need for
developmental instruction. As growing numbers of students graduate under
higher and more clearly defined standards, enrollment figures and test
results will demonstrate whether or not P-12 reform efforts have been
successful. Finally, policy decisions in some states and higher
education systems to move most or all remedial coursework to two-year
institutions may change not only the locus of activity but also student
behaviors. It is too soon to know what impact these shifting
institutional priorities will have on the extent and nature of
developmental education.

**Working in Isolation.** It is an unfortunate reality that our
educational system has long operated largely in isolated pieces.
Elementary schools provide the basis for all subsequent learning, yet
seldom connect in meaningful ways to the junior and senior high schools
to which their students progress. Secondary schools play a critical role
in preparing students for the world of work and for postsecondary
education, yet too seldom have secondary and postsecondary educators
partnered to ensure that students in high schools understand and develop
the skills and knowledge needed for success in those "next steps" in
their lives. Colleges and universities have too often spent more time
complaining about the lack of preparation students bring to their
institutions than talking with students, parents, and P-12 educators
about what those students need for collegiate success.

Increasingly, policymakers are frustrated by this lack of meaningful and
sustained connections and have called for the development of a "seamless
system" that helps students of all ages move from one stage in their
education to the next. They point to high levels of remediation, for
example, as evidence of a costly "disconnect" between\
P-12 and higher education. Said one state education committee chair,
"You can't expect one area to improve without talking about bringing the
two together -- and that's K-16." (Source: "Where We Go From Here").
Growing numbers of educators at all levels are also frustrated by the
lack of meaningful interaction across the education continuum,
recognizing the ways in which they could better serve their students if
they weren't so isolated from their peers at other institutions and
levels. As the awareness of the importance of partnerships spanning the
full educational spectrum has grown, so have the number of formal and
informal partnerships, some at local levels between two or more
institutions, others at a regional, state, and/or multistate level.

One critical area of focus within the partnership context is the initial
and ongoing development of teachers with the skills, knowledge, and
dispositions necessary to successfully reach and teach children of all
ages, talents, interests, and backgrounds. The challenges to today's
teaching force are significant, from rapidly changing and highly mobile
student populations to increasing demands for improved student
performance, and from a work environment notable for its lack of
resources and time for professional development to increasingly
uncompetitive salaries coupled with greater accountability. Policymakers
worry about how schools can recruit and retain sufficiently
well-prepared teachers; administrators struggle to find enough
individuals with even minimal qualifications to fill needed teaching
slots; teachers fret over how to be sufficiently well prepared to offer
students a growing array of mandated learning opportunities; business
and community leaders demand greater preparation in the disciplines
while questioning the value of teacher preparation in pedagogy; and
Colleges of Education grapple with their own, higher national standards
and the expectations of state and federal policymakers for greater
accountability.

**Lack of Information on Individual Student Achievement***.* Secondary
and postsecondary institutions share a negative feature: the inability
as organizations to know what their individual students know and can do.
Unless high schools draw upon periodic outside testing, typically they
record and can communicate only which courses a student took and how
they did according to a grade assigned by the teacher. Any sense of
specific areas in which a student may have a special ability is lost in
the single measure of a grade point average. At the postsecondary level,
the situation is perhaps worse; the documentation is similar
(courses/credits/grades), but the expectation of individuation is
higher. It should be possible for colleges and universities to clearly
know and communicate to others the individual strengths of each student
completing a degree, but they have never had this capacity.

This problem of the absence of knowledge about student achievement is
not limited to the time of degree completion. The question that is
applicable across the course of a student's secondary and postsecondary
studies is, "How well prepared is this student for the next learning
opportunity?" The inability to answer this question creates problems.
Small transitions -- whether courses in a sequence or prerequisite
courses -- and large ones -- whether high school to college, college
transfer, or readiness for work from either high school or college --
become problematic because of this lack of information. When the problem
becomes political, it is usually resolved by a declaration, with the
force of policy or law, that the completion of a certain set of courses,
by definition, constitutes preparedness for the next stage of education.
Faculty knows well, however, that in any specific individual situation
this may or may not be the case.

There are several underlying issues. One is that our institutions, both
secondary and postsecondary, are forced to make a large inference -- an
educational syllogism, if you will. If a course is intended to develop a
certain knowledge or skill, and if a student passes that course, it is
inferred that he or she now has that knowledge or skill.

A second issue is that the only measure we have of how well a student
has done in a course -- the course grade -- is nearly always an
averaging of achievement evaluations. A course has several instances of
student accomplishment, and actual variation in student achievement --
for instance, one student doing *task one* better than *task two* and
another student doing *task two* better than *task one* -- can be lost
when both students receive an identical (because averaged) course grade.

A third issue is the need for close attentiveness when attending to
student achievement. As adults looking back on their lives, we know that
our present distinctive individual strengths were apparent, but only
barely so, when we were students. It is valuable for both the student
and the institution to notice the beginnings of individual strengths
among students, but this requires careful attention and careful
documentation, and these do not exist.

A fourth issue is that organizations cannot expect to be "seamless" in
their inter-organizational transitions, if they are not already
"seamless" inside these organizations. If we can find a way so that
students can smoothly cross small, internal transitions, then the large
transitions become much easier. Transfer between two organizations that
notice and trace the personal, professional, and intellectual
development of students could be easily done by a comparison of actual
and expected learning outcomes.

This lack of organizational knowledge about individual student
preparedness has always been there. The reason that it is now an issue
is that employers have raised the bar. They are looking not for generic
graduates, but for individuals with a specific set of capabilities.
Employers know that each person varies considerably from others, and
they spend considerable time and money trying to find the right match
between person and assigned work. Secondary and postsecondary
institutions have never been able to make these distinctions. The gap
between what employers prefer (and what students and their families
would prefer if only they knew they could ask for it) and what secondary
and postsecondary institutions can provide continues to widen.

# The Response {#the-response .OVAE-Title}

Like other states, Minnesota has focused considerable time, energy, and
resources in recent years on understanding and responding to these and
other challenges facing the state's students, educators, and
institutions. With leadership alternately coming from the Governor and
his cabinet; from legislators and their staffs; from education agencies,
institutions, and systems; and from teacher and other professional
education organizations, a variety of innovative and successful efforts
has been put in place to improve student preparation for the careers and
educational programs they choose to pursue after high school and to
support and enhance transitions from one level or program to another.
Although many such innovations could be described here, this paper will
focus only on several of those designed specifically to enhance
transitions from high school to college and/or the world of work. As
such, they do not reflect the full range of approaches that the state
and its educational enterprise have taken to enhance and improve
learning opportunities but rather a key subset designed to help students
move more seamlessly and successfully from one stage of learning to
another.

**MnSCU Work Plan Goals and Staffing.** Prior to his arrival in
Minnesota in July 2001, James McCormick, Chancellor of the Minnesota
State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), the largest public
postsecondary system in the state, conducted a "fast track" planning and
listening process that yielded a work plan during the first month of his
tenure in the system. Included in this ambitious plan are several goals
targeted to improving transitions into and among the 34 colleges and
universities comprising the MnSCU system. Of most immediacy for the
purposes of this paper is the goal focused on building P-16
partnerships, an effort which may be expanded to P-20 in recognition of
the critical role of professional development for teachers in ensuring
the quality and effectiveness of our educational system.

A cross-functional team of system administrators has been assigned to
realize this critical goal and its many components, tracking progress
towards a seamless P-16 system and building and sustaining the
relationships critical to such a system. The team has defined its
overall goals in the following terms, taken directly from documents
developed to operationalize the work plan:

In order to fulfill its mission, MnSCU must work closely with the P-12
system that serves our students before they arrive on our campuses. This
requires regular contact between the Chancellor and key P-12 leaders
(e.g., the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children,
Families & Learning \[MDCFL\] and heads of\
P-12 organizations), collaborative work between his staff and the staff
of MDCFL and education organizations to address key policy and program
issues, and collaborations between and among MnSCU institutions and P-12
schools/districts. Intended results include

(1) Greater ease of movement by students throughout the educational
    continuum;

(2) Improved educational outcomes (e.g., less need for developmental
    education; better articulation of graduation standards and
    college/university admissions requirements; and clearer
    communication with students, their parents, and P-12 schools about
    college/university expectations); and

(3) The recruitment, preparation, induction, and development of a
    sufficient supply of fully qualified teachers and administrators for
    Minnesota classrooms.

Many of the initiatives described below are included in the unit's work
plan, with specific projects targeted to achieving the three broad sets
of results listed above currently underway and progress being reported
quarterly. A critical element of all of this work is close internal
collaboration and external collaboration, not only in implementing
solutions to respond to existing and emerging problems but also in
defining future needs. As new issues and ideas arise, they are evaluated
for their "fit" within the work plan goals before any decisions are made
to pursue them.

In addition to ongoing efforts to realize the specific partnerships
goal, the Academic Resources team is connecting with work being done on
other MnSCU work plan goals that may impact student transitions and
success and assisting with the preparation of quarterly reports to the
board. Connections with key state agencies, the Governor's Office,
educational organizations, Colleges of Education within the state
universities, the MDCFL, and the University of Minnesota are being
strengthened. In addition, the team is reaching out to national
organizations focused on the creation of seamless systems of education
and on improving the educational outcomes of such a system. Building on
an existing foundation of specific partnerships and programs created
over the past 15-20 years, the work plan goals are providing new focus,
energy, and commitment to collaborative planning and implementation of
programs designed to enhance student preparation for and transitions
into post-high school activities.

**Tech Prep and School to Work.** Minnesota has a strong, coordinated
system designed to meet the needs of students with skills, talents, and
interests in pursuing a variety of technical education and career
options. This system has built partnerships between nearly every MnSCU
institution and neighboring school districts, some defined clearly
within the parameters of the Tech Prep and School to Work programs and
others more generally falling within this area. Seamless transition from
high school and better preparation for college and/or the workplace has
been the dual goal of Tech Prep in Minnesota. For example, strong
collaboration by the largest suburban school district of Anoka with
Anoka-Hennepin Technical College and the local area business community
has resulted in the Secondary Technical Education Program (STEPS) where
high school students simultaneously satisfy requirements for a high
school diploma and earn up to 36 credits toward a postsecondary diploma,
degree, or certificate in design and manufacturing, health, or
information technology career fields. Each student develops a
student-managed portfolio and works with a student support team to
facilitate transition from high school to college to employment. This
accelerated program is located on the technical college campus. The
Minnesota legislature invested \$12.7 million for the college to make
facility repairs and improvements to accommodate this exemplary program.

Another example of a largely successful transition effort is the
Automotive Technology Program established through the Automotive Youth
Education System (AYES), a national program with over 240 participating
high schools supported by more than 2,400 dealers, established to
encourage and support automotive service careers. Focusing on the last
two years of high school, high school juniors are invited to take part
in AYES. In addition to taking the required academic courses toward
their high school degrees, these students take challenging
classroom/laboratory courses in basic automotive technology or collision
repair and refinish. Upon high school graduation and AYES certification,
participating students are prepared to begin full-time entry-level
employment or to advance their technical education (AYES, Inc.). In
Minnesota, partnerships for continued education are not only established
within our two-year automotive programs, but also extend to four-year
university opportunities at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and
Minnesota State University, Moorhead. This nationally certified program
is helping both secondary and postsecondary levels restructure the
curriculum to meet national industry standards, providing industry
support for high school programs, helping faculty and two-year programs
secure ASE certification, and facilitating the transfer of credits from
high school to postsecondary programs. The AYES model is now being
applied to secondary and postsecondary transitions in the program areas
of graphic arts and manufacturing.

## **Post Secondary Enrollment Options and Other "College Credit"** **Opportunities.** Minnesota's Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program was established in 1985 as a means to "promote rigorous educational pursuits and provide a wider variety of options for students." Through this program, high school juniors and seniors receive high school credit for college or university courses completed and subsequently may apply for postsecondary credit upon entering college. The program currently offers courses in two ways: on a college or university campus, with the high school student travelling to the campus to take courses alongside "regular" college students; and through "College in the Schools" programs that allow students to stay in their high schools while simultaneously pursuing college-level coursework.

## 

## Although any postsecondary institution may participate in this program, most opportunities for PSEO or concurrent enrollment are offered by public colleges and universities. MnSCU institutions are the dominant provider of college credits to Minnesota juniors and seniors, awarding 62 percent of the total college credits earned by high school students in 1999-2000 (Source: MnSCU Office of Internal Auditing Post-Secondary Enrollment Options Study). There is no cost to the student and her/his parents to participate in the program, since state dollars follow students to the college or university offering the PSEO courses, but the state makes a considerable investment on behalf of these students. In fiscal year 2000, the State of Minnesota and local school districts spent nearly \$27 million dollars for high school students to earn college credits. During the 2000-2001 school year, the total number of juniors and seniors participating in PSEO was 16,927 (MHESO "College Prep Activity").

## Student and parent satisfaction with PSEO courses has grown steadily over the years, as has support by postsecondary faculty, staff, and administrators. However, P-12 educators remain divided over this program, worrying about the academic costs of the programs for high schools and those students who do not utilize the PSEO program and about the social and sometimes academic costs to students who leave high schools to pursue collegiate learning opportunities. It has perhaps been in response to these concerns that some districts have sought to expand the number of enriched learning opportunities offered on-site in order to retain the "best and brightest" students on high school campuses without depriving them of advanced academic offerings. These include the use of the PSEO statute to offer "College in the Schools" or concurrent enrollment programs, which allow students to simultaneously earn high school and college credits by completing college courses taught in their high schools, and national programs like Advanced Placement (AP), in which 14,830 Minnesota juniors and seniors were enrolled in 2000-2001 (MHESO "College Prep Activity").

## 

One example of recent efforts to help students take full advantage of
enriched learning opportunities is found at Como Park Senior High School
in St. Paul. Enrollment figures make evident the fact that Como Park is
one of the city's most ethnically and racially diverse high schools; of
its total students of color enrollment, 50 percent receive English
language support, and 37 percent received free/reduced lunches (St. Paul
Public Schools website). A major effort to recruit more students (and
especially more students of color) into Advanced Placement (AP) courses,
to train more teachers to serve as AP teachers, and to provide review,
tutoring, and other additional support to help students succeed has
yielded impressive numbers. Since 1992, the number of students taking AP
exams has grown from 18 to 204 last year; total AP tests taken similarly
increased from 18 to 394 over the same period of time. In total, an
estimated 30 percent of Como Park students are enrolled in AP or pre-AP
courses. Last fall, 19 Como students received honors from The College
Board for their high scores on the spring 2001 AP exams, a real honor in
light of the fact that, nationwide, less than 15 percent of students
taking AP exams are awarded honors.

A Como Park AP instructor noted, "If you encourage the kids to challenge
themselves, many times they'll be surprised at how well they can do. A
whole lot of my best success stories are kids who needed that one
something to find their way to believe that college was for them. It's
helping them find the sense that they can do it." The philosophy of
getting high school kids into challenging classes is one of the best
ways to ensure they go to college and do well there, it was reported.
Yet, the number of students of color and teens from low-income families
who end up in AP and other demanding courses is small, fueling an
achievement gap that often extends from generation to generation. Como
Park has found that kids who test as low as the 65^th^ percentile in
reading can make it in AP. Principal Sharon Eichten relayed, "We're
pretty well sold right now that what we're doing works. We want kids to
feel they can take a chance. It's our job to help them where they're
at." (Source: "School's Tougher Courses Pay Off")

A federal grant aimed at recruiting more low-income students into
academically challenging high school classes has now made it possible
for more low-income students in Minnesota, statewide, to participate in
AP courses over the internet through Apex Learning. In addition,
Minnesota is participating in an emerging project being advanced by the
Midwestern Higher Education Commission to increase the historically low
percentage of Minnesota students pursuing AP learning opportunities by
identifying barriers to AP enrollment, aligning AP courses with state
graduation standards, developing supportive instructional materials, and
coordinating professional development for current and prospective AP
teachers. An additional focus of this emerging project is to achieve the
involvement of a more diverse student population in AP programs in
Minnesota and across the upper Midwest.

## 

## Overall, it seems clear that, in one way or another, the PSEO program has enabled a growing body of high school students to complete courses previously unavailable to many while simultaneously earning college credits, thereby jumpstarting their college careers.

## **Developmental Education: Reporting and Early Assessment.** The national concern about the extent of remedial or developmental instruction needed by college and university students has been strongly felt in Minnesota as well. In 1999-2000, every public postsecondary institution in the state offered at least one developmental course. While this is consistent with the open admission mission of many public institutions and necessary to ensure that all students have the foundation upon which to build success in postsecondary programs, it is still problematic in terms of the costs to students, institutions, and society. These costs include coursework that doesn't generate credits towards degree completion and duplication of learning opportunities available at no direct student/parent cost in high schools and thus paid for twice, in effect, by the state. Thus, while it will likely always be essential for colleges and universities to offer some developmental coursework, it is generally agreed that better pre-college preparation could significantly reduce the demand for remedial courses.

## 

## In the belief that better information for high schools about the extent and nature of developmental coursework taken by their recent graduates could help them improve student preparation and therefore reduce remedial enrollment, the Minnesota Legislature passed legislation in the early 1990s requiring all public colleges and universities to report to school districts on the developmental course-taking of their students within two years of graduation and on their performance on college placement tests or other performances measures used to determine college readiness. They simultaneously amended the state's Government Data Practices Act to allow individually identifiable data to be reported to school districts in order to enhance their ability to make use of the reported data. The team preparing this annual report has periodically met with school district personnel to ensure that the content and design of the report is usable by and useful for districts and to work with them on ways in which to make effective use of the data. Because data incompatibility problems have resulted in the completion of only two reports to date, it is too soon to measure the impact of these reports. However, there are anecdotal data to indicate that the reports have been useful to high schools, colleges, and universities in better understanding the connection between high school preparation and college readiness and in forging effective partnerships that can help enhance student preparation for, and therefore successful transitions into and completion of, postsecondary programs.

## 

## More recently, some institutions and state legislators have begun to experiment with ways in which to assess college readiness at critical points during a student's high school career in order to help students connect high school work with college readiness and to select high school courses accordingly. A handful of colleges and universities have experimented with the use of college placement tests with high school sophomores and juniors for this purpose, subsequently working with those students and their counselors to identify deficiencies and which classes can help fill in identified gaps. Several Tech Prep consortia in rural northwestern Minnesota have provided college placement testing to tenth grade students in their member high schools. As a result of examining the early test outcomes, five schools have increased math requirements from two years to three years. Six districts incorporated more applied, or contextual, teaching methodology into their math courses. One high school is experimenting with using a technical college developmental math textbook in the high school. A Tech Prep coordinator involved with these efforts commented that, "The best thing we've done for kids and parents is to drive home the point that technical colleges require college level math skills."

## 

## Some of these experiences have formed the basis for a new Developmental Education Demonstration Project recently mandated by the Minnesota Legislature and now underway through a partnership between two MnSCU institutions and five high schools. Begun in the fall of 2001, this partnership includes Bemidji State University (BSU) and Itasca Community College (ICC), two northern Minnesota institutions with a long history of collaboration with each other and with the broader community they serve. In November and December 2001, all juniors in five area high schools were given the placement exam used by BSU and ICC. Later this winter, counselors, faculty, and administrators from all seven educational institutions will work with each other and with students and their parents to enhance student preparation. Following graduation from high school, participating students will be followed as they enter college to determine how useful the project was in helping them prepare effectively for collegiate work. These and other project findings will be used to assess the effectiveness of this approach to supporting student transitions to college and to shape additional future efforts to improve student success. 

## **Graduation Standards/College Preparation Alignment.** Educational reform in Minnesota is being driven largely by the adoption, refinement, and implementation of statewide graduation standards, defined both in terms of "basic" standards which all students are required to meet in order to graduate from high school and "high" standards toward which all students must work and against which they must demonstrate defined levels of performance prior to graduation. Comprehensive in nature and focused on performance and mastery, the standards have been developed collaboratively by educators throughout the state and at all levels. Postsecondary educators have been afforded frequent opportunities to influence the development of the standards and have more recently been working to align their own preparation requirements or expectations with the graduation standards. Teacher preparation programs have done significant work to incorporate the standards into their preservice programs and to revise programs to meet national teacher preparation standards that have themselves been aligned with national standards in the disciplines. Simultaneously, the state's rules governing the approval of teacher preparation programs and the licensure of teachers have been revised in alignment with both state graduation standards and national teacher preparation/accreditation standards.

This is difficult, complex work that, like the standards themselves,
will likely never be "done." However, considerable progress has been
made. For example, work is nearly complete to show the alignment of
postsecondary courses with the high standards known as the "Profile of
Learning," particularly, but not only, to assist students and schools
with the selection of PSEO courses that will support student efforts to
meet the graduation standards. A project is underway to better define
the preparation needed for academic success in two-year institutions
including technical colleges, and alignment with the graduation
standards is a key component of this project. Historically, college
preparation standards were applied within the context of four-year
colleges and universities. It is important to communicate that rigorous
preparation is equally important to successful experiences within
two-year institutions as well. The changing workplace demands increased
academic preparation for those pursuing technical careers, especially in
the areas of math, science, and communications. Previously developed
preparation competencies for the state universities will soon be
revisited to ensure or improve their alignment with the current
graduation standards, and a process to collaborate with the University
of Minnesota in order to have a clear and consistent set of preparation
requirements for all public four-year institutions in the state will
begin later this spring or summer. Meanwhile, planning is underway to
convene dialogues among secondary and postsecondary educators by
discipline focused on graduation standards, preparation for college, and
the alignment of the two.

Following the adoption in the early 1990s of preparation competencies
for the state universities and related course requirements at the
University of Minnesota, student performance on the ACT and SAT tests
improved, with ETS and The College Board identifying growing numbers of
students in the state completing a core preparation curriculum as a key
factor leading to the improved test scores. We anticipate that further
efforts to clearly define preparation requirements, aligned clearly with
graduation standards, will generate similar results.

**Documentation of Student Achievement.** Minnesota has a special
opportunity to address this problem because both the secondary system
and the postsecondary system have an interest in and a track record in
documentation of performance achievement per individual student. In the
high schools, this is the effort to link individual students to their
achievement of specific "high standards" or, Profile of Learning. Within
MnSCU a different effort -- although similar in spirit -- is several
years underway.

This effort began in 1997 when selected faculty at Inver Hills Community
College began the Liberal Studies/Professional Skills (LS/PS) program.
Based on the Minnesota Skills Profile (a template developed at the
University of Minnesota), the faculty developed a new academic practice
-- assessing individual students in their courses by skills achievement.
Several years of collaborative work have led to well defined and
carefully calibrated potential learning outcomes. Individual student
achievement in these skills is tracked as the student moves through the
curriculum, yielding a Skills Profile of what he or she has
demonstrated. Although limited to transferable skills, this is a real
accomplishment, proving the concept that it is possible for a college to
measure the educational progress of individual students by their
demonstrated achievements. A technical system supports this effort and
makes it easy to record, track, and communicate student achievements.
The LS/PS program at Inver Hills Community College is gaining national
recognition for this accomplishment: it is an active member of the
21^st^ Century Learning Outcomes project (sponsored by the Pew Trust and
the League of Innovation), and it recently won the 2002 Bellwether Award
for Instructional Programs and Services (sponsored by the Community
College Futures Assembly and the National Council of Instructional
Administrators).

Noting that Inver Hills had proven the concept of tracking student
achievement, per student, across the curriculum, the Office of the
Chancellor has encouraged the extension of this model to other MnSCU
institutions. To facilitate this, several changes have been made.
Whereas Inver Hills had initially chosen only to track transferable
skills, the model has been revised to include the full range of possible
student achievements:

-   *Understanding*: What a student knows and understands that is
    specific to a context (profession or discipline)

-   *Performance*: What a student can do that is specific to a context
    (profession or discipline)

-   *Perspective*: What a student knows and understands that extends
    across contexts

-   *Capability*: What a student can do that extends across contexts

Any given faculty member typically is concerned with one or two of these
four types of achievement, but programs as a whole, institutions of
higher education, and, indeed, students gain by including and equally
valuing all four types.

The approach being taken in Minnesota provides a prototype information
system with a structure of uniform design intended to be used across the
full range of technical, professional, and liberal arts programs in its
34 institutions. The result is an easy-to-use, flexible structure that
permits college and program faculty to choose and calibrate expected
learning outcomes and to have continuously produced data on actual
student achievement by subsequently linking the names of individual
students, the achievement, the time, and the curricular setting (at
whatever level is appropriate: college/program/ course/section/term) in
which that achievement was noted.

A choice of standard or customized queries on these resulting data allow
one to hold a given student as a constant (showing his or her
achievement to date), to hold a given achievement as a constant (showing
where in the curriculum that achievement is being noted), or to hold a
given curricular setting as a constant (showing what achievements were
demonstrated in that setting). Here then are direct data on student
achievement that are able to answer the question, "How well prepared is
each of these students," at numerous levels of aggregation, including
those high-level educational results specified in institutional
missions.

This approach is currently being tested by faculty at six different
MnSCU institutions to see whether it can handle learning outcomes from
the full range of disciplines and professions. If the pilot is deemed
successful, it may be provided to all of the 34 MnSCU institutions for
their use. It is expected that many will use it to track Perkins data
for core indicator 1P1 (attainment of academic skills) and 1P2
(attainment of technical skills). Others will use it for professional or
institutional accreditation. Interest has been expressed by Student
Affairs professionals to use this to show what students are
demonstrating in co-curricular activities.

This system was designed with conscious attention to assisting the
transition from high school to college. It does this by documenting the
transition from pre-college achievement to initial college achievement
as easily as, and in the same way that, it documents the growth of a
student's knowledge and abilities within college. It permits the
tracking of a student's learning curve throughout college, and, given
the secondary system's development of data on individual student
achievement in high school, there is little or no reason why that
learning curve cannot fully include the transition from high school to
college.

**Charter Schools.** In 1991, Minnesota became the first state in the
nation to authorize charter schools (then called Outcome-Based Schools).
The law (M.S. 124D.10-11) permits teachers, parents, and other community
members to form and operate independent charter schools. To promote
innovation, these schools are exempt from many statutes and rules
governing school districts but held accountable for results. A charter
school is a public school, part of the state's public education system.
The law requires that a charter school must meet one or more of the
following purposes: (1) improve student learning; (2) increase learning
opportunities for students; (3) encourage the use of different and
innovative teaching methods; (4) require the measurement of learning
outcomes and create different and innovative forms of measuring
outcomes; (5) establish new forms of accountability for schools; or (6)
create new professional opportunities for teachers, including the
opportunity to be responsible for a learning program at the school site.

There are currently 79 charter schools approved to operate in Minnesota
at locations throughout the state; of these, 68 are operational. Both
the perceptions of and results achieved by charter schools are mixed to
date. While supporters see them as an effective public alternative for
students not well served by local school districts, others view them as
"competing" for already scarce public resources. The role of sponsors
has been somewhat unclear; as a result, a series of changes in state
statute have sought to more fully define the responsibilities which the
state expects sponsors to meet, and sponsors may now charge a modest
amount of funding per pupil to fulfill their duties. In addition, a lack
of sufficient financial and management accountability and safeguards has
resulted in some significant management difficulties at a handful of
charter schools in the state and problems at many more schools securing
funds sufficient to cover all operating costs. As a result, increasing
attention has been turned to defining means by which the potential for
mismanagement can be reduced and to determining what kinds of assistance
and resources charter schools need in order to operate effectively.

Katrina Bulkley of Rutgers University has effectively described the
difficulty of ensuring adequate accountability for charter schools. She
has identified four challenges, all of which are clearly being felt in
Minnesota:

(1) Educational performance is not simple to define or measure, nor is
    how good is "good enough" in educational quality.

(2) Other aspects of a school's program, often more difficult to measure
    than test scores, are also important to families and authorizers. In
    their context, authorizers sometimes turn to "proxies" to assess
    school quality.

(3) Teachers, parents, and students become very invested in particular
    schools and destroying a community may be more difficult for
    authorizers than serving a diffuse public interest.

(4) Finally, charter schools have become a highly politicized issue on
    both sides, and some authorizers are concerned about their decisions
    reflecting poorly on charter schools as a reform idea. (Bulkley,
    2001)

Clearly, all of these challenges are being faced in Minnesota,
complicated by a few cases of significant mismanagement. On the bright
side, some of the newer charter schools established in the state clearly
offer tremendous potential to better prepare students for future work
and learning goals, and some early charter schools are being recognized
for the real successes they have achieved. For example, Skills for
Tomorrow High School (SFTHS), one of Minnesota's oldest charter schools,
was established in 1994. SFTHS was the first school-to-work charter
school in the nation and is a partnership between business, higher
education, Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools, surrounding suburban
school districts, Minnesota Teamsters Joint Council 32 and Minnesota
Teamsters Service Bureau, and several community-based organizations and
agencies. The mission of the school is to assist secondary students in
making the transition to postsecondary education and high-skill
workplaces by integrating academic instruction and work-based
experiences in learning environments that respect cultural diversity. As
a public charter school, SFTHS primarily teaches students from the Twin
Cities metropolitan area, many of who are from low socioeconomic
backgrounds. With its school-to-work programmatic focus, SFTHS provides
core classes in math, English, social studies, and science, as well as
electives. After an initial orientation period (Phase I), students
complete service learning projects (Phase II) and develop
problem-solving skills, teamwork, leadership, and personal
responsibility in a community-based social service agency. In the high
school's employment, training, and readiness program (Phase III),
students complete a one-year internship at a local business site.
Students gain concrete experiences in self-chosen career fields through
individual experience and analysis of the skills necessary in that
field. Finally, students are expected to begin Post Secondary Enrollment
Options at local technical or community colleges or universities and
prepare a portfolio presentation for graduation that is reviewed by a
panel of business and education leaders (Phase IV). SFTHS has developed
accountability standards beyond the basic graduation requirements. The
school strongly supports parental involvement and feedback. Monthly
parent meetings are conducted where parents and staff discuss both
successes and areas of concern. Quarterly parent- and faculty-led board
of directors meetings are also conducted to review school policies,
develop the school's operating plan, and review the financial health and
long-term financial viability of the school.

The SFTHS has experienced many accomplishments and results over the past
five years. Selected examples include:

-   Thirty graduates completed 400-hour internships, 180-hour service
    learning projects, and at least one postsecondary educational
    option.

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-   Thirty graduates completed all academic courses with at least a
    grade of 75 percent or better (a "C" or better), along with at least
    90 percent attendance.

-   Seventy-five percent of the school's 30 graduates have successfully
    begun working toward a postsecondary education degree in their
    chosen career field.

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-   Twenty current candidates are now enrolled in an internship program
    and postsecondary education enrollment option program.

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```
-   Successful completion of 65 service learning projects providing
    11,700 total hours of volunteer services has occurred in the
    Minneapolis and St. Paul area.

The charter school movement as a whole is likely to continue growing,
with educational innovators using this strategy as another means to
improve student preparation for their individual educational and work
goals and to find effective ways to smooth their transition out of high
school into college.

Minnesota Alliance for Education. Building on the model of the "Learning
First Alliance," leaders of the Minnesota Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education joined with Education Minnesota (the first effort to
combine the state affiliates of the National Educational Association and
American Federation of Teachers into a single, statewide union) and
several other key professional education organizations to create the
Minnesota Alliance for Education in 1998. The Alliance has now grown to
include all of the key state agencies, organizations, and systems
responsible for meeting the statewide educational needs of students and
communities at all levels. This includes the Minnesota Parent Teacher
Student Association; the MDCFL; the Minnesota Board of Teaching; the
organizations representing elementary and secondary school principals,
school administrators, and school boards; and organizations representing
postsecondary educators, sometimes including P-12 educators as well.

## To date, the Alliance has chosen to focus on issues of quality and availability of educators for Minnesota's classrooms and has convened several statewide forums, convened monthly membership meetings, and crafted strategic documents to be used with policymakers to address the recruitment, development, and retention of high quality educators in the state. Currently chaired by a member of MnSCU's P-16 Partnership team, the Alliance is serving as the foundation for building other strategic partnerships and for identifying and advancing common issues of concern that can help build a seamless P-20 system in Minnesota.

## 

#  Opportunities for Federal Policies and Programs {#opportunities-for-federal-policies-and-programs .OVAE-Title}

It is always challenging to determine the best and most appropriate
level at which to seek educational improvement. A long-standing
tradition of local control has led communities to expect that their own
elected school boards and the staff they hire will determine local
curricula. State-level policymakers couple significant financial support
with mandates and programs intended to set a consistent direction for
student learning and performance along with standards for the
preparation and licensure of teachers and administrators. The federal
government, recognizing how critical education is to the nation's
economic and social health, has played varying roles over time to
identify priorities, set an overall direction for educational
improvement, and provide funding designed to address problems, stimulate
change, and support innovation. Within the context of improved student
preparation for postsecondary education and post-high school careers and
enhanced transitions to college classrooms or the workplace, there are
at least three directions the federal government might consider in order
to extend the promise of "No Child Left Behind" to students in their
last years of high school. While many possible actions for all levels of
policymakers and educators are effectively articulated within the report
of the National Commission on the High School Senior Year, this paper
will advance three general approaches that the Department of Education
might consider.

**1. Information Campaign to Articulate Preparation for Post-High School
Success.** Despite many local and state efforts to help high school
students recognize the importance of the choices they make in high
school to their future success, the message still doesn't seem to be
reaching or convincing high school students. One reason may be that
messages are sometimes fragmented, put forward by discrete institutions
or systems within the broader educational continuum. Another may be that
the existence of open admissions institutions gives students the false
perception that no particular preparation is needed for academic success
in those institutions. Given the large number of students served by
those institutions, especially by first-generation college-goers and
previously underserved populations, reshaping the perception of what is
needed for success in community and technical colleges could reduce the
need for remediation and improve student success in college, including
persistence to degree completion.

Any effort to more effectively reach students must also recognize

(1) the realities of adolescent behavior and the inevitable difficulties
    of getting teenagers to realistically assess future options and
    realities (not to mention accepting the fact that adults know things
    that they don't and which are relevant to their lives!);

(2) the significant numbers of students who are working while in high
    school and the impact of the hours spent on the job on their
    willingness to pursue a set of rigorous high school courses and
    complete the work needed to complete necessary work for those
    courses; and

(3) the lack of guidance counselors and other adults in high schools who
    can help students identify their strengths, talents, and needs;
    articulate future goals in line with personal and academic abilities
    and interests; and make a variety of academic decisions appropriate
    to those goals.

The federal government could play a critical role by targeting its
resources to the development of a high-quality informational campaign
designed to help students and their parents better understand and take
responsibility for their choices in high school and securing support
from key leaders in business and industry as well as in educational
institutions and government agencies to broadly communicate that
message. Such a campaign would continue to leave decisions at the local
level about the curriculum itself and about specific standards for
advancement and graduation while helping students better understand the
impact of their high school course-taking on future success. It could
help make clear the role that high school plays in setting future
directions and particularly how decisions in high school can keep open
or foreclose future choices.

Such a campaign could reach a wide range of students and be tied
directly to goals and expectations recently set for students and schools
across the country. Well-known personalities from all walks of life
could be engaged in helping get the message out to students in ways
designed to reach into every community and appeal to a wide array of
student interests, talents, and needs. The power of a national
information campaign would be significant and could help shape student
preparation in profound and lasting ways. Such a campaign could be
modeled after other successful national and state efforts, such as
anti-drug or anti-tobacco campaigns, and the successes of and lessons
learned from programs already operating with federal support, such as
the Tech Prep Program, could provide useful information to inform such a
campaign. One theme could build from the "No Child Left Behind" to
include leaving no high school students behind when it comes to
preparation for success in the workplace and in college classrooms.

**2. Identification and Support of "Best Practices."** A wide array of
efforts is underway across the county to improve student preparation and
transitions, but many are operating piecemeal, are underfunded, or are
disconnected in ways that limit broader implementation. For many, modest
support is all that stands in the way of implementation and
dissemination. Some have the research data needed to demonstrate their
effectiveness; others need only a little encouragement and support to
collect the data that would prove their value or to help them connect
with other, similar projects or key experts in order to identify ways in
which changes could improve performance and ultimately generate results
that could be disseminated to other sites or programs. Federal
leadership is needed to accelerate the process of bringing successful
practices to scale, as appropriate, nationwide.

Federal support in the form of modest grants designed to encourage the
identification, implementation, improvement, and dissemination of new
and emerging best practices across the country focused on improved
student preparation and transitions could generate results leading to
wide-scale reform. This paper has described an array of efforts
currently underway in Minnesota, many of which might well be expanded
here and replicated in other states; it is likely that the other 49
states could generate similar lists of efforts worth building more
broadly and duplicating across the country. There is a long history of
federal agencies and programs using similar means to encourage and
advance educational improvement efforts upon which this effort could
build. A planning group might be convened to more clearly define the
kinds of efforts which the federal government would like to explore,
encourage, and support and to collect information on programs like those
described above to help define current "best practices" focused on
improved student preparation and transitions.

A variety of organizations, including those represented by the members
of the National Commission on the High School Senior Year and by those
who prepared commissioned papers for the Commission, would likely help
articulate and support the development of funding opportunities,
including possible categories for grant activity, and might even
generate opportunities for matching or follow-up funding for the best
ideas. The net could be cast broadly in order to solicit a wide array of
potential projects, or more carefully defined opportunities could be
advanced targeting improvements identified as being most critical to
student preparation and transitions. In any case, relatively modest
funding could likely stimulate significant efforts that would help
students across the country, with diverse talents, interests, and
backgrounds, better prepare for their futures regardless of whether they
focus on the workplace first or following some postsecondary education.

**3. Documenting Student Achievement**[.]{.underline} Linking resources
to results has been an accountability goal, but the weak link has been
that the results were not as well specified as the resources. It is
possible to have specific information on the achievement/preparedness of
individual students as the best possible record of educational results.
It would be valuable if the U.S. Department of Education would set out,
as a goal, levels of institutional accomplishment in the documentation
of student achievement. This would visualize the progressive raising of
the bar, even if it takes institutions a while to get there. It would
identify the direction in which institutions should move, and it would
set the criteria for making progress. The Carl D. Perkins Vocational
Education Act of 1998 has already done this through the establishment of
an accountability system with four core indicators. So has the North
Central Association (NCA) with its three levels of institutional
accomplishment. Something analogous from the U.S. Department of
Education -- a clear expansion of the range of data that would be
desirable from institutions -- could focus institutional attention on
the kind of data on actual student achievement for which they should be
aiming.

# A Time to Act {#a-time-to-act .OVAE-Title}

Congress and President Bush have demonstrated the ability to forge
essential compromises in order to serve the needs of students
nationwide. The provisions in the recent reauthorization of the ESEA are
appropriately focused primarily on students in grades three through
eight, and both the content of ESEA and the spirit of bipartisanship
which led to its enactment can serve as a foundation for an additional
focus on the last years of high school. As its authors noted in "Raising
Our Sights," "The high school senior year and graduation \[can\] become
not so much a finish line as a relay station." With direction and
support from Washington, we can reach high school students with messages
designed to help increase the likelihood that their futures will be
productive and successful, regardless of their educational and career
aspirations. We can help end the "splendid isolation" that has kept
higher education at something of a remove from P-12 schools and forge
new, broader partnerships that better serve students and help them move
smoothly from one level to the next ("The Learning Connection, "Kellogg
Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities"). We can
bring an end to the persistent, though often invisible, practice of
tracking students in high school, thereby leaving too many without the
knowledge and skills needed to move in many directions after high
school, and we can make clear our belief that all students can succeed
at high levels, seeking collectively to end what President Bush has
called the "soft-bigotry of low expectations." Our students deserve no
less, and our nation's strength depends on our ability to ensure that no
student, whether a child, a teen-ager, or an adult, is left behind.

#   {#section-11 .OVAE-Title .unnumbered}

# References {#references .OVAE-Title}

Bulkley, Katrina, "Educational Performance and Charter School
Authorizers: The Accountability Bind," *Education Policy Analysis
Archives*, October 1, 2001.

*Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac*, 2001.

*Digest of Education Statistics*, 1997, 2000, NCES.

*Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators*, OECD, 2000.

*Getting Prepared: A 2001 Report on Recent High School Graduates Who
Took Developmental/Remedial Courses,* Minnesota State Colleges and
Universities and University of Minnesota, April 19, 2001.

*High School Graduation Rates in the United States*, Jay P. Greene,
Black Alliance for Educational Options, November 2001.

*The Lost Opportunity of Senior Year: Finding a Better Way, Summary of
Findings*, National Commission on the High School Senior Year, 2001.

*Math Skills Lagging Among Minnesota College Students,* James Walsh,
Star Tribune, January 8, 2002.

Minnesota Higher Education Services Office Website, "College Prep
Activity," www.mheso.state.mn.us.

*Post*-*Secondary Enrollment Options Program Study Report*, MnSCU Office
of Internal Auditing, July 2001.

*Raising Our Sights: No High School Senior Left Behind*, Final Report of
the National Commission on the High School Senior Year, October 2001.

St. Paul Public Schools Website, www.stpaul.k12.mn.us

*School's Tougher Courses Pay Off,* Paul Tosto, Saint Paul Pioneer
Press, 2001.

*The 33^rd^ Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes
toward the Public Schools*, Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, September
2001.

*2001 Minnesota Education Yearbook,* Mark Davison, Office of Educational
Accountability, University of Minnesota.

*2002 ASTD State of the Industry Report,* Mark E. Buren and William
Erskine, ASTD, February 2002.

*Where We Go From Here: State Legislative Views on Higher Education in
the New Millennium*: Results of the 2001 Higher Education Issues Survey,
Sandra S. Ruppert, Educational Systems Research, Littleton, CO, 2001.