Second, they adopt new organizational arrangements that create communities of learners, in which students and teachers know and trust each other. They rearrange schedules to give students more time to work on extended projects and teachers more time to collaborate. They extend the school day and the school year to accommodate their new approaches to learning. These new organizational arrangements support new teaching arrangements that make the introduction of an enriched, accelerated curriculum possible. Third, they link school work to future opportunities.
Some schools integrate vocational and academic programs around a particular occupational focus.
Successful schools help students see where their academic success can take them. Fourth, they take an active role as student advocates, coordinating and focusing their own diverse services and drawing in the work of other agencies whose missions target student welfare. Their own school-based efforts respond to the diversity of students' real needs, and they encourage the collaboration of other service providers. This work coordinating services and linking schools to the community can also be supported with Title I funding. Keeping the educational program at the center of their attention, successful secondary schools do what they can to nurture the whole student.