In The Era of ESSA, What are Odds-beaters Doing to Prepare Students to Succeed in College or Career?
By Kristen Wilcox, Director of Research and Development for NYKids, and Catherine Kramer, Research Assistant for NYKids
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) underscores the imperative that each and every child be taught to high standards to prepare for college or career. Yet, this is no simple task for those educators in charge of the painstaking work to ensure every student gets access to classes that are the right level of challenge and receive academic support services when needed.
Odds-beating schools highlighted in the most recent College and Career Readiness study from NYKids offers a number of potential pathways and opportunities for learning about how to accomplish that.
While the seven odds-beating high schools in the study (two highlighted here) shared many common features, one of particular import is how they customize their program offerings and instructional practices in order to prepare each child they serve for college or career.
Highlight #1: At Malverne Senior High School the focus across the district (including the elementary, middle and high school) is making sure all students are able and ready for post-secondary education. Among other practices, educators accomplish this goal by engaging in ongoing curriculum revision with an eye toward the skills and knowledge demanded to achieve competitive scores on the SAT and Advanced Placement exams.
Staff also create new courses that are intended to scaffold the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in New York State Regents courses. This approach is particularly useful for English language learners, some of whom may have experienced interruptions in their formal education. One Malverne teacher claimed that these scaffolding courses, “build up [ELL students’] skills … so it is easier for them to pass [Regents] classes”.
Highlight #2: At Port Chester Senior High School, educators focus on ensuring that their curriculum is literacy-rich and relevant to all students. They specifically seek to offer more culturally diverse options from which students can choose rather than, as one teacher explained, more “dead white man” literature.
And each summer, English Language Arts teachers engage in curriculum mapping and reconsider their anchor texts by asking, “How do we make our texts more relatable?” This has led teachers to incorporate carefully chosen Young Adult literature into their curriculum.
To read more about how odds-beaters prepare their students for college or career, see the complete study report.
