What Are You Going to Do When a District Can’t Educate Boys and Youth of Color?

From VCS' website

What a claim to fame! Rochester, NY has the country’s lowest high school

graduation rate for minority boys, graduating less than 9 percent of African American and less than 10 percent of Latino boys. (This data, from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, is based on 2009-10 school data. Let’s hope it’s gotten better.)

This is one of the reasons I continue to be a strong supporter of charters, even though the evidence about charter schools is too mixed to make it a strong reform model. It is one of the few ways we have of getting education dollars to over-age and undercredited students and other underserved kids.

Vertus Charter School is trying to address this crisis in Rochester by opening up a new career prep high school for young men. I have to say I’m personally suspicious of the need for single-gender schools but still remain open that sometimes that is just the right thing for some kids. It’s fascinating to read about their design, as it draws on a number of strategies such as career exposure, supports, social-emotional learning, and use of blended learning. It is way too early to tell about results – let’s give them three years to work out the kinks.

The key elements of their strategies are:

Strong Relationships and Support: VCS has created a new role of preceptor, a role model, mentor and tutor rolled into one. Preceptors work with teams of 12 students. According to the Next Generation Learning Challenge description of VCS, “Preceptors do not need to be certified teachers. They are adults with a track record of success who understand and can support boys of the inner city and are willing to be 100% responsible for the success of the students on their team.”

I love this structure, in part because it also will whittle away at the low unemployment rates of men of color, another piece of this horrifying cycle that has led to such dismal graduation rates. Individual Life Plans help formalize the conversation about where students are, where they are going and what needs to happen to get them there.

Blended Learning: It looks like VCS is using adaptive software products to allow students to move through a curriculum at their own pace. They are calling this mastery-based learning, but it’s not really clear if mastery is being determined by the software or if there are other assessments, especially performance-based assessments, that would ensure kids are having a chance to apply their learning. It’s also not clear whether teachers have the responsibility for assessing students’ progress. I’m a bit worried that their academic strategies are not as strong as the other elements of the school design.

Strong Career Focus: The school is constructed to provide students with both college readiness and career readiness. This is fantastic because, as far as I can tell, college readiness is not synonymous with career readiness, even though a gaggle of advocates and researchers continue to say that it is. As far as I know, no one has ever taken the time to start with career readiness (including having work experience) and then cross-walked it to college readiness to see where there might be gaps. According to NGLC’s description of VCS, “Each student is expected to earn a job credential as well as New York’s Regents Diploma.”

Academic Skills Through Blended Learning: I was worried that Vertus was relying way too much on adaptive software and wasn’t going to have adequate inquiry-based learning. However, it’s tucked away in their approach to character education. According to their website, “Daily seminars teach character, literacy, critical thinking and presentation skills to prepare students for the workplace and for life.”

Year-Round Schooling: VCS clams they are adding 30% more learning time, using a quarterly schedule with 205 instructional days and a 7.5-hour school day. I’m not sure how they are doing that, but it sounds great if they can finance it.

I’ll be keeping an eye on VCS. I hope Rochester School District is, as well. However, one of the problems with charters is that they don’t necessarily leverage change in districts. Certainly they can help expand the portfolio of schools, but it’s way too easy for the districts to just keep doing what they are doing. A glance at Rochester’s strategic plan shows they are making inroads by reducing suspensions and expulsions and starting to overhaul special education. However, their inability to educate boys of color is totally masked by a rising graduation rate. If they are going to demonstrate that they can educate African-American and Latino boys and youth, they are going to need to get intentional.