Western High School And Our Formative Experiment

By Author: Alex Armas
Total Articles: 74
Comment this article

Western High School (pseudonym) educates over 2,000 students, 60% of whom qualify for free lunch. Western is somewhat unique in that it is geographically isolated from any major city, yet it educates a diverse student population with over 40% of the students homeless and living in cars, tents, or on the street; 23% of them identified as having a disability; and 93% of them identified as Latino, African American, Asian/ Pacific Islander, or Native Peoples. In the nearby town, people talk negatively about the school's population because it is known for its violence, illicit drug use, gang activity, pregnancy rates, and other indicators of urban stress. In 2002, only 12% of the Western students scored proficient or advanced on the state Replica Tag Heuer assessment in reading. As a result, the school was in program improvement level 5, the highest level, when we began our work. The graduation rate for Western during that year was 67%.

For the two years before our visit, Western focused on creating small learning communities (SLCs) in specific career ...
... pathways (business, tourism, health, etc). This initiative was brought to the school by the district as a result of federal grant support. The principal reported spending nearly every professional development minute on this initiative "debating about who goes where." Yet, as a history teacher told us after the meeting, "We've spent the last two years rearranging the Titanic deck chairs." Western had career academies in place, but this effort in and of itself had not resulted in improved student achievement. Prior to our visit, teachers were told that the school faced state sanctions, including an imposed curriculum and regular classroom monitoring.

Unlike our previous work with neighborhood schools, visiting Western required a six-to-seven hour commute. This posed a unique opportunity to test our ideas about the establishment of a school wide literacy plan based on the local capacity building necessary for long-term change. Given that we would be involved in ongoing professional development, coaching, and technical assistance designed to improve student achievement and that we would naturally make midcourse corrections in our recommendations with this school, the most appropriate methodology for this study was a formative experiment (Reinking & Bradley, 2007).

Formative experiments have been used to study engagement in reading of beginning English language learners (Ivey & Broaddus, 2007), the use of computers to affect reading and writing (Reinking & Pickle, 1993), vocabulary learning (Baumann, Ware, & Edwards, 2007), and the effectiveness of cognitive Omega Replica Watches strategy instruction for Latina/o readers (Jimenez, 1997). Western High School provided a unique opportunity to document and studies a whole school change as teachers attempted to increase student achievement.

Formative experiments allow for inquiry and investigation using both qualitative and quantitative traditions. Formative experiments focus on what it takes to achieve a pedagogical goal as well as the factors that inhibit or enhance the effectiveness of the intervention. Our study borrows from the procedures as outlined by Reinking and Watkins (1998) in our attempt to develop, refine, and confirm an intervention designed to increase student achievement in an underperforming school. These six procedures are as follows.