Educational options: the new tradition: no longer the stepchild of the K-12 system, educational options have become an integral part of the comprehensive high schools' array of school choices.

Educational options, formerly known as "alternative education," have long been a quietly unassuming part of public education. Often the stepchild of the K-12 system, continuation and independent studies schools--as well as an array of county schools, community day schools and others--were considered the home of "alternative" students taught by "alternative" teachers using "alternative" curriculum and materials.

Alternative because it was different; it was seen as less than deserving, less than professional and less than rigorous. All too often, alternative schools of the past lived down to their negative reputations.

After the last decade of standards-based reform in all public education, the perceptions--and realities--of alternative education have shifted. The role of educational options has become an integral part of a comprehensive school district's array of school choices.

The focus on small learning communities, long recognized as a key element of school success in terms of school climate and student achievement (Cushman, 1999), is a cornerstone of the philosophy that drives educational options. Individual student attention and more tailored standards-based instruction (differentiated, quality teaching) are the behaviors valued by successful educational options students and their teachers (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998).

In an era of school evaluation based on test scores and dropout rates, educational options are growing in importance. Savvy administrators are recognizing the need to address the individual needs of students whose academic testing performance could adversely affect the AYP and API scores of their traditional schools. They also can no longer afford to allow large numbers of students to drop out of school.

Educational options provide settings that prevent at-risk students from dropping out, or recover youth who have already dropped out of the traditional sites. Reducing dropout rates helps protect schools from performance sanctions while addressing the needs of students.

In this article, two administrators assigned to options schools--one to a continuation high school and one to an independent studies high school--define two common models and examine the effects of such schooling on individual students. To protect the students they feature in their work, names were changed and details that would identify specific individuals were deleted. What remains are the stories of students who could attend any options school.

What these administrators found, through an admittedly unscientific reflection, was not surprising or new. Smaller settings are better for students. Standards-based instruction is important in order for students to move beyond high school successfully.

Tailoring instruction for the individual works; differentiated instructional strategies increase achievement. Educational options schools are built on such assumptions. In addition to conditions schools can control, these students' stories seem to indicate that family support helps students develop necessary resilience and persistence in the face of challenges.

The continuation high school

Our school is the one no one in the district or community talks about. Many teachers at the comprehensive high school a half-mile away do not even know it exits. Our school does not have a library, gym, science labs or an athletic field. Ours is a highly qualified and supportive staff serving 135 students and creating a caring and cohesive campus community.

Continuation high schools were established in 1919 to provide a program that would accommodate the needs of students forced by economic conditions to work while going to school. Today, there are 521 continuation high schools in the state, with an enrollment of 64,000 of California's 2 million high school students. Continuation education is a high school diploma program serving at-risk students between the ages of 16 and 18 years old (California Department of Education, 2006).

In California, students are enrolled in a continuation high school program when they have fallen behind in course credits, need a shortened school day due to health or employment issues, require an alternative schedule because of family concerns, and/or need to leave their comprehensive high school for an assort-merit of other reasons. A minimum day of 180 minutes is required for attendance, which accommodates the many needs of students, though our school provides the option of a full seven-period school day.

Students often enter a continuation high school as juniors or seniors with as few as one high school semester's worth of credits. They often have a documented past of an accomplished level of truancy. Most continuation high schools in the state do not provide the A-G requirements needed to enter a four-year university. Graduates are encouraged to attend city college after high school.

Continuation high schools are successful because they are small learning communities. On our campus, every student has the support of our school counselor and a faculty advisor. Each teacher serves as a student advisor, monitoring attendance, often contacting parents daily, and advising students about their pace of course completion. Advisors conduct a homeroom where they set goals and discuss issues common to their advisees. At our site, every adult knows every student on campus. The class sizes range from five to 20 throughout our school day.

When students first enroll with us, they are often angry and defiant. After a month or two, they realize that there is very little to fight against, and they begin their journey toward completing graduation requirements and planning a life after high school.

Project-based student work is successful with students at our school. This allows students to explore an area of personal interest while completing course requirements that often will cross content areas and can be individualized for the learner. For instance, one student created a game that was focused on a period of history. She fulfilled requirements for an art course by designing the game board, player pieces and game cards; the research-based historical game action and play satisfied requirements of a U.S. history course.

Continuation high schools meet a very specific need. They can salvage a high school career and help students build the personal and academic skills needed for a successful future. Not all students thrive in a large comprehensive high school, just as not all of us as adults could work, day after day, in a factory setting.

When I first arrived at the continuation high school in the summer of 2004, there were two students on everyone's daily radar. They were incredibly adept at sneaking out through cracks in the schedule. They took breaks at will, but often returned to campus later in the school day. A year and a half later, one of this pair, Jeff, has dropped out after a disciplinary referral and placement in a community day school, while the other, Paul, is about to earn his diploma.

Paul entered our school at the end of his junior year when he was 17 years old. He had earned only 80 credits on his transcript; he would need 220 credits in order to graduate. Looking back now, as a potential graduate, he describes the younger Paul as needing negative attention, getting into fights, and not getting his work done.

Once he entered the continuation high school, notes from Paul's comprehensive file indicate he was constantly testing boundaries, bringing alcohol to school and ditching his obligations.

Paul is now a polite student who often helps answer office phones and runs the copier. He can be depended on to tell other students to get back to class and "stay on task." Outside of school, he is employed as a waiter in an upscale restaurant and is poised to enroll in a culinary program at the local art institute.

Paul says the change came for him because of the small class sizes and the easy atmosphere. "The staff weren't barking orders (at the continuation school) like they did (at his home high school)," Paul explains.

Giving students the help they need

At the traditional high school, Paul didn't get help to catch up when he fell behind, but he probably didn't ask for it. In fact, he said no one seemed to notice when he wasn't doing well. If he did not take class notes accurately or do well on a test, he fell behind and couldn't bring his work up to match that of his classmates.

At the continuation high school, teachers always have time to help Paul. He can work on fewer classes at a time in order to focus on them more fully. He says he likes "the way the teachers deal with kids on a one-to-one (basis). They know how do deal with kids differently."

The school offers a variety of support materials in addition to the state adopted textbooks. This, plus easier access to computers, has made learning move more smoothly, Paul explains.

Paul also has a supportive family. They were disappointed when he transferred from the large traditional high school to the continuation high school, but now they are grateful that he has almost finished and will graduate with a high school diploma.

What makes a positive change in one student and not another? It is hard to know. Jeff describes a home that is not loving or supportive. He lives in a trailer behind a gas station where his father works, although his father doesn't live with him. Jeff calls his mother weekly, but is not allowed to visit the home where his younger half-siblings live because of his temper.

Jeff did get placed in a residential program during the fall semester, which helped him address his drug abuse and look to the future. But his future is now discouraging. At the age of 18, he has earned only 55 of the required 220 credits for graduation. He returns to our staff for help, even though he is no longer our student. We are counseling Jeff to take the GED through the adult school on our campus and enroll in the nearby city college. Whether or not he will do this remains to be seen.

Independent studies high school

Independent study is an alternative to classroom instruction consistent with a school district's course of study. It is not an alternative curriculum. It provides students with a choice of ways to acquire the values, skills and knowledge all students should gain, as verified in a written agreement. Independent study can be part of, separate from or in addition to a regular classroom program (California Department of Education, 2000).

Because independent studies is designed as an alternative instructional strategy, models and designs for delivery vary from district to district and site to site depending upon student, school and district need. Such programs or schools are guided by local board policy.

For example, one traditional school might offer independent studies as an option for a few extremely high-functioning molecular biology students. Another might offer independent studies for credit-deficient students. A continuation school might augment its offerings by allowing students to work in an independent studies setting for part, or all, of their required coursework. In all, 78,802 California high school students are enrolled in independent studies (CDE, 2006).

Multiple store-front school sites

The independent studies school highlighted here is unusual in that it is a large, 1,000-student, stand-alone high school. The climate remains cozy and familial, however, because the school is housed in multiple store-front sites throughout the urban school district's boundaries.

Each site is run by two to four credentialed teachers and two or three teachers' aides. Instructors present differentiated, standards-based contracts developed by teachers at the school, using the same district-adopted textbooks as the traditional schools. Teachers meet individually with their students twice a week in order to check work in progress, administer assessments and assign new contracts. Instructors serve as counselors and primary student contacts; they are responsible for teaching all subject areas.

Most students at this independent studies high school are credit deficient and/or need more flexible schedules that allow them to work, care for their infants or pursue other goals and interests. There is a sprinkling of performers (athletes, actors, singers, and dancers) among the student body. Others are merely disaffected by the small-city climates of their traditional, 4,000-student high schools.

Flexibility for working students, parents

Some of the independent studies school's most fragile students are pregnant and parenting girls. Susan never re ally enjoyed or excelled in school, but her love of soccer kept her coming to school and attending class ... most of the time. In a school with a student body of more than 4,000 students, Susan found it easy to slip through the cracks, and by the end of her sophomore year, even playing on the school's soccer team was not enough to keep her from spending more time with friends than books or cleats, and she found herself pregnant.

"I really felt I had let my dad down," she said of the man who was her first coach. Still, her family encouraged her to stay in school, if not for her sake, for her baby's. Susan came to us pregnant, embarrassed, disappointed in herself, and despairing of a future without soccer. Still, with the encouragement of her teacher/counselor, she picked up her studies and began to do well.

When the baby was born, Susan started working out at the local park's soccer field. Family members would watch her baby while she went to school or to work out, and she became more hopeful. Her father began coaching her again; she was asked to join a traveling team, which she did. Her family fills in when necessary as loving babysitters.

Meanwhile, Susan has worked with her teacher and taken advantage of her flexible schedule. She is near graduation, on track to earn her diploma only two months after her traditional school classmates, and in time to begin classes at the local community college next fall. She is planning to major in physical education and become a teacher after her competitive soccer days are over.

"I am so grateful that I can live my dream," she says, "and I am so grateful to my family."

One question remains

Every student has a story. The student stories at options schools seem more extreme and jarring than those told at traditional schools. Or is it that some students from similar backgrounds and situations are more resilient than others in constitution and temperament, allowing them to be successful in the larger traditional high schools?

Of those students who transfer to options schools, students who are successful there tell us what works for them: smaller, more informal settings; tailored and differentiated instructional strategies to help them reach subject-area standards; and supportive families. The majority of students are successful in a traditional setting; others do well in options schools.

The question remains: What can we do for the rest?

References

California Department of Education (2000). Independent study operations manual. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Education.

California Department of Education (1897). Continuation education programs in California public schools. Sacramento.

Cushman, K. (1999). "How small schools increase student learning (and what large schools can do about it)." Principal Magazine. Alexandria, VA: National Association of Elementary School Principals.

Fisher, Dennis (2006). Five-stage model of achievement. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Education.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Janie Yuguchi Gates is principal of Olympic High School in the Santa Monica-Malibu USD. A my Colcord Stuht is assistant principal of Educational Partnership High School, Long Beach USD.