Classroom III

Small Schools With a Big Vision

Urban is not alone in its commitment to what is termed performance assessment. It’s part of a coalition of 32 small public high schools that comprise the New York Performance Standards Consortium. Like Urban, these schools serve diverse students in diverse communities throughout the state. And they share a commitment to providing an individualized approach to teaching, learning, and assessment.

Although their procedures may vary, all consortium schools have adopted a system of assessment that is aligned to state standards and based on a series of well-defined rubrics, so both the student and the teacher clearly understand the criteria upon which work is evaluated. They share a common approach to teaching and learning that is inquiry-based and affords students multiple ways of expressing and exhibiting what they know. And they share a commitment to what Dr. Michelle Fine, a professor in the Social/Personality Psychology Program at City University of New York and a member of the Urban Academy Board of Advisors, calls “a culture of mastery and revision.”

“You go in those schools and you’ll see mock trials, or you’ll see student writing, but you won’t see the first draft,” continues Fine. “You’ll see young people who understand that you write and you edit and you write and you edit. They learn the kind of ethic and intellectual capital associated with persistence, mastery, analysis, and revision.”

Such a format takes a tremendous amount of time on the part of students and their teachers. A single paper, for example, may end up being reviewed by several teachers several times before it is considered complete. But the results speak for themselves: Ninety-one percent of all students at consortium schools are accepted to college, compared to a citywide average of just 62 percent.

Three of Jane Hirschmann’s children have graduated from Urban, and a fourth is a current student there. She’s seen firsthand the benefits of the school’s individualized approach to learning and assessment. From the written narrative and parent-teacher-student conferences at the end of each term to the care that is taken to meet the needs of students with different learning styles, abilities, and previous educational opportunities, Hirschmann is convinced that Urban and the other consortium schools “serve children well.” By Roberta Furger read more…

This is something we need to know more about in our schools. Nice article.