Draft for discussion. Please do not quote or cite without permission.
Producing Opportunity: High School Reform for College Access and Success
A Paper Prepared for
Access and Opportunity in Higher Education.
A Conference in Memory of David E. Lavin
Friday November 1st 2013
Floyd M. Hammack
New York University
Perhaps the most frequently asked question in the sociology of education is how much do
schools independently contribute to their students’ life chances? We know that parental income/education/wealth have high correlations with school success, which, in turn, is strongly associated
with occupational success. These are far from perfect correlations; however, they are strong and have
taken a lead in efforts to elevate the payoff of education. In spite of parental disadvantage, schools are
expected to be able to intervene in the pathway to adult status for their students. At least as far back as
Horace Mann, education in the United States has been seen as “…a balance wheel of the social machinery—It prevents people becoming poor (Perkinson, 43).” More recently, the failure of many urban
schools to prepare their graduates for academic success, and, therefore, the ability to seize the opportunity for social mobility that education can provide, has become a centerpiece in calls for school reform. Some have argued that teachers and schools can trump social class (Fallon, 2000). While privileged students have long been able to exchange their educational credentials for labor market advantages, today the call is for students of all backgrounds to be able to do so.
As the opportunity for education expanded in the latter half of the nineteenth century and into
the twentieth century, it was accompanied by significant educational organizational differentiation. For
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example, the typical mid-nineteenth century high school existed only to prepare their students for college entrance examinations—and was often an extension of those colleges. There was virtually no reason to go to high school except to prepare for college and their enrollments demonstrated this fact—
they were a small fraction of the age cohort. By the end of that century, the comprehensive high school,
with several curricular tracks, only one of which was college preparatory (and that often enrolled a minority of students), had become the dominant high school form. High school was not a singular thing—it
had taken on several forms for different groups of students. The reasons to attend high school and to
graduate had grown to include opportunities in the labor force that had not previously existed, and high
school enrollments doubled every ten years until 1940 (Digest, Table 51). The value of the high school
credential was not only as a passport to college, but also to labor market advantages over those who did
not posses one.
The comprehensive form of secondary education remained dominant until well into the latter
half of the twentieth century. During the last twenty-five years or so, its domination has begun to weaken. It remains a common form, especially in suburbs and small towns and cities where economies of
scale are still important. But even in these settings, the tracks, as such, have begun to disappear (Lucas,
1999) in favor of a college prep curriculum for all. There may well be different levels of rigor represented
in this curriculum across schools and within them (advanced placement and dual enrollment options
have exploded), but the idea of “college-for-all” (Rosenbaum, 2004) has had a pervasive effect on the
high school curriculum. The twenty-first century high school has more in common with mid-nineteenth
century high school than with the twentieth century one.
The evolution of our expectations for high schools has risen considerably, and today the goal is
for high schools to graduate all of their students ready for college and careers. In this paper I want to
focus on the reforms that have been proposed to get high schools to the place where they can be able
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to graduate all their students and to assure that they have college and career ready skills. We have never expected high schools to do this for all of their students and in many schools, we have a long way to
go; recent estimates are that less than a quarter of graduates of New York City’s high schools meet college and career ready standards, and many fewer Black and Hispanic graduates (Siskin, 2013; also see
Kemple, 2013, Ready, et. al, 2013 and Villavicencio, et.al, 2013).
Some schools seem to be able to reach this goal better than others, however, and have prominently figured in the reform literature as showing what is possible for all schools (Whitman, 2008). I will
examine what seems to set these schools apart and assess whether they really can be role models for
the typical school. Much research of late has focused on what schools and teachers can do to more effectively educate students at risk of dropping out, or not successfully passing state tests (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts 2008). Others have focused on how a “failing” school is defined and measured. (Downey,
Von Hippel & Hughes, 2008). To date, however, there has been little work on what these new expectations require of students and their families. This paper addresses this gap in our thinking about educational reform.
“The New Public Schools”
While the idea that schools should serve the social mobility ambitions of children and their parents is far from new, and the explicit goal of providing equality of educational opportunity has been in
vogue for many years, there is a new group of public schools which embraces this goal. These schools
take seriously the social mobility possibilities of schooling, embracing the adage, “stay in school and get
ahead.” Referred to as “no excuses” schools, “paternalistic schools,” or other such names, these schools
are mostly urban and serve minority and economically disadvantages populations. They are explicit in
seeking to move their students from lower socioeconomic rungs in the stratification ladder to middle
and upper-middle rungs through striking improvements in the students’ academic achievements and
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social and cultural orientations. They use a variety of strategies to accomplish this result, but many share
a set of characteristics and practices. Whitman (2008, 259), for example, identifies 20 “habits of highly
effective schools,” starting with “tell students exactly how to behave and tolerate no disorder; require a
rigorous, college-prep curriculum; align curriculum with state standards and specify performance outcomes; assess students regularly and use results to target struggling students; keep students busy in
class with a clear plan and a variety of assignments.”
What is interesting in this list is that it includes both traditional academic aims with others that
widen the concerns of the school. For example, in explaining the first characteristic, Whitman asserts:
The overarching trait of successful schools is that they are, well, paternalistic. They are
highly prescriptive institutions that assert their moral authority both to define good
character and to teach adolescents how to behave, much like a firm but loving father.
These schools go several steps further than the many schools that purport to teach
“values;” they unapologetically preempt misbehavior by obliging students to live up to a
detailed code of conduct based on middle-class values and the Protestant work ethic.
Unlike most inner-city schools, the new paternalistic schools have little tolerance for
disorder—they sweat the small stuff. (260)
Without addressing here the question of the empirical validity of this statement (but see, for example, Macey, Decker, and Eckes, 2009; Tuttle, Teh, Nichols-Barrer, Gill and Gleason, 2010; and Berends, Goldring, Stein, and Carvens, 2010; Yeh, 2013), it seems fair to say that the expectations of students outlined in this description go well beyond the normative and behavioral expectations of typical
public schools, in inner-cities or elsewhere. It is not academic achievement alone that these schools
hope to foster among their students, but ways of behaving, interacting, and valuing (“middle-class val-
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ues” and a “Protestant work ethic”). What these schools seek to change is the academic achievement of
their students and their mode of conduct, their attitudes, and values.
The kind of schools that fit this description, KIPP schools, Aspire schools, Uncommon Schools,
Achievement First schools, GreenDot, and others, are a growing segment of mostly urban schools. Usually fairly small, and often charter schools, they are receiving wide attention among education advocates, reformers and politicians. The groups of schools mentioned above are all managed by charter
management organizations (CMOs; see Ferguson, et. al, 2012), the largest of which is the KIPP group of
schools with 141 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia and enrolling over 50,000 students
(http://www.kipp.org/about-kipp). This is not intended as an exhaustive list of such schools; there are
other CMO organizations whose educational philosophy is consistent with the social mobility aims identified here. There are other free standing public and charter schools that would qualify as well. It is the
purpose of this paper to identify the demands these new public schools place on students and their families.
Theoretical Framework
Human beings are social animals, taught how to interact in their social worlds by their family,
neighbors, and other agents of socialization, such as religious organizations, community organizations,
and schools. Becoming members of the groups to which we belong is a long and a complicated process
involving learning the language, patterns of social interaction, and skills of our group. There is not simply
one set of these interaction patterns; for example, the roles of men and of women are often different
and youth need to learn their appropriate gendered behaviors. Another dimension on which behavioral
expectations differ is socioeconomic; groups in different social positions in the status hierarchy develop,
in various degrees, their own ways of interacting, behaving, and understanding the world. As youth enter their social worlds, they learn the social patterns expected among those in that world (Boocock and
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Scott, 2005; Corsaro, 2005; Lareau, 2011). Becoming a competent member of one’s social group means
becoming adept at the social patterns expected of its members.
Upward social mobility, then, refers to moving across hierarchical social boundaries; to becoming competent in a higher group’s patterns of behavior1. In a school setting, we can think of this as becoming competent in another group’s curriculum. One does not necessarily lose competence in the original group’s social patterns, but learning another group’s patterns requires one to maintain at least parallel repertories of behavior, and knowing when each is appropriate to exhibit. We sometimes refer to
this ability as “code switching,” especially when referring to language usage.
When might people desire upward social mobility? When they are dissatisfied with the conditions of their life; there needs to be a strong motivation in seeking to belong to another social group,
whose patterns of behavior are not those of one’s group of origin (and of course these patterns of behavior are not static). Generally speaking, one cannot learn these behaviors from one’s parents, other
family members or from community organizations. They must be learned elsewhere—in Mann’s conception, in school, in the military (officer candidate school, ROTC), or other organizations chartered by the
higher group to prepare new members (Meyer,1970). But schools, as often conceived, aim at preparing
children for their local communities, for competence in the child’s own group’s patterns of behavior—its
curriculum (Anyon, 1997). For middle-class children, that means attending a school that emphasizes
middle-class norms and expectations; for upper-middle class or upper class children, it means attending
a school that will prepare them for power (Cookson and Persell, 1987). When schools are in conflict
with community standards, regarding literature, ideas, practices (such as those taught in health courses), the schools can often be understood to be seeking to prepare their students for life beyond the local
context—for horizontal, if not upward, social mobility. To educate a student to be able to leave their
1
Downward social mobility is not usually sought by individuals, though it too may require learning new patterns of
behavior.
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community of origin, to go to college when very few of one’s own group have gone or will go to college,
is an obvious example. Of course, if parents seek a different life for their children, such school efforts are
not perceived as in conflict with parental expectations. Even if parents are vaguely indifferent to the opportunities available for their children, conflict may not be present.
Thus, schooling for upward social mobility needs supporting parents and community members;
people who want to leave their current circumstances (or have their children leave) and see schools as
the means by which they can engineer this escape. This leads us to the question: what are the organizational characteristics of schools that are successful in offering students passage to a new status? Are
they different from those of schools that are successful in maintaining group membership?
The sociological literature contains a number of potential lines of investigation here, but I want
to concentrate on the work of Erving Goffman, who initiated the study of organizations aimed explicitly
at changing their members’ status, organizations he called “total institutions.” Goffman identifies a central feature of these organizations as breaking down the normal barriers to separating various spheres
of life, which are normally under the auspices of several different authorities; thus the “total” nature of
the institution:
In these organizations all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the
same single authority. Second, each phase of the member’s daily activity is carried on in the
immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do
the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day’s activities are tightly scheduled with one
activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to
fulfill the official aims of the institution (1961, 6).
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Total institutions are “the forcing houses for changing persons; each is a natural experiment on
what can be done to the self” (1961, 12). Each total institution seeks to make a clean break with the individual’s past; old roles and relationships are broken as new identities are established. “…being
squared away the new arrival allows himself to be shaped and coded into an object that can be fed into
the administrative machinery of the establishment, to be worked on smoothly by routine operations”
(1961, 12).
While Goffman frequently illustrated his work on total institutions with examples from prisons,
labor camps, and other involuntary organizations, many of his ideas are useful in understanding what I
have termed the “new public schools” are trying to do and how they are trying to achieve it. He asserts
that “when entrance is voluntary [such as in a monastery], the recruit has already partially withdrawn
from his home world” (15). Students and their families must desire the transformation of self that these
schools seek to achieve. There must be an agreement between them that what the school is asking of
the student and his or her parents is likely to produce the end they both desire—college admission, college success and occupational placement appropriate to a college graduate.
Among the characteristics of these “new public schools” that Whitman describes, several are
important in this context. In addition to those mentioned above, “build a culture of achievement and
college-going,” “reject the culture of the street,” “be vigilant about maintaining school culture,” and “extend the school day and/or year,” highlight orientations that strongly connect with the social mobility
aims of the schools. They make clear the new lessons the schools seek to teach in contrast to the lessons
the students would likely learn if they were in their “natural” environment. Preventing those lessons
from being learned is as important as are the new lessons. “Keep the school small,” is a technique used
to increase the ability of the school to control its lessons and improve the probability that they will be
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learned. Breaking students from past associations and patterns of behavior, or avoiding patterns of the
local community, is central to the project of these schools.
Practices of the “New Public Schools”
Given the objective of breaking students from their local community and preparing them for entry into groups whose social patterns are largely unknown to them, we now turn to an explicit investigation of the practices these schools employ to achieve their objectives. First we start with the procedures
used to bring students into the schools.
Entrance Procedures
Since most of these schools are charter schools, and do not simply admit students according to
their place of residence, we need to look at how students and their families enter into the schools. Virtually all of these schools require an application, often separate from the one used for other public
schools. North Star Academy Charter school, in Newark, NJ, for example, notes that among its eligibility
requirements children “must be motivated to begin preparing for college now by working harder than
they’ve ever worked before….” The school requires that parents attend an open house in order to fill out
an application. They need to sign up their child for a “simulated school day,” where students can experience what the school is “really like.” After the child’s visit, parents can obtain an official application
which must be filed by a due date. From the eligible applications, the school conducts a lottery.
This rather elaborate application process is demanding of both parental time and effort. It affords the school the opportunity to make its objectives explicit to parents and to make clear its expectations of the child and of the parent. Only those parents whose educational and social mobility desires
are consonant with the school are likely to follow through all the steps in the application process. Those
who do not have the time or inclination are unlikely to be included in the lottery. The school does not
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select students on the basis of prior academic achievement or testing, but clearly selects on the basis of
parent and child motivation and ability to follow through in the application process. Such parents have
demonstrated that they have already begun the attempt to withdraw their children from the parents
home world.
Student, Parent, and School Commitments
KIPP schools require a contract to be signed by students, their parents, and by a teacher. A recent version of the parents’/guardians’ contract includes the following statements:
“We will make sure our child arrives at KIPP by 7:25 am (Monday-Friday), or boards a KIPP bus at
the scheduled time. We will make arrangements so our child can remain at KIPP until 5:00pm
(Monday-Thursday) and 4:00pm on Friday. ..We will always help our child in the best way we
know how and we will do whatever it takes for him/her to learn. This also means that we will
check our child’s homework every night, let him/her call the teacher if there is a problem with
the homework, and try to read with him/her every night….We understand that our child must
follow the KIPP rules so as to protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the
classroom. We, not the school, are responsible for the behavior and actions of our child. Failure
to adhere to these commitments can cause my child to lose various KIPP privileges and can lead
to my child returning to his/her home school.”
The student contract parallels the parents, and teachers are required, among others things, to
“always make ourselves available to students and parents, and to address any concerns they may have.”
At Achievement First schools, “students, parents and school leaders all sign a contract that outlines their shared commitment to hard work and consistent support of one another.” The Aspire Public
Schools have all parties sign a “compact: To underscore that a mutual commitment is needed to pro-
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mote academic success, the teacher, parent(s), and student all sign a compact during a three-way conference at the beginning of the school year. The compact outlines the rights and responsibilities of each
stakeholder, and affirms the three parties’ mutual accountability for the success of all students, staff
development, and parent satisfaction.”
At North Star Academy, a recent “parent-school covenant” includes 27 separate obligations of
parents. Among them are: “We will pick up our child’s report card on each Report Card Night between
the hours of 3:30pm and 7:00pm and will attend all parent-teacher conferences. We understand that if
the report card is not picked up one day after the report card night that our child will not be allowed to
attend classes until it is picked up.”
The formal commitment of students, parents, and school officials to the demands of the school
goes well beyond the expectations of most public schools for the behavior of their students and their
parents. The threat of expulsion made in some of these “contracts” further highlights the stakes of attending these schools: they claim to offer extraordinary opportunity to students and families who, in
exchange, promise to expend extraordinary levels of personal and familial resources to master the middle and upper-middle class lessons the school offers. Data from the Lynn KIPP study (Angrist, Dynarski,
Kane, Pathak and Walters, 2010, 4) show that while 69% of the lottery sample were offered admissions,
54% enrolled, a difference of 15%. Thus, some lottery winners decide not to enroll; signing the contract
and showing up for class is an opportunity to “close the deal” that some decline. The characteristics of
those who accept and those who reject the offer would be useful information.
School Day, Week, and Year
It is typical of these schools to start the day earlier than most public schools. KIPP schools, for
example, require students to arrive at school by 7:25am and to remain until 5pm. On Saturdays when
the school is in session, students must arrive by 9:15am and remain until 1:05pm. There are required
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summer sessions as well. North Star High School’s year is 11 months long, and is mandatory for all students. These longer periods keep children out of their local environments for longer periods than a typical school, thus facilitating the break with that local environment. The longer days and terms gives these
schools the time to offer classes in subjects that other schools would be hard pressed to offer, such as
music for every student, as KIPP schools usually require, and to assure that regular subjects receive the
time necessary for students to master the content. The most extreme example of a school with extended time is The SEED Public Charter School in Washington D. C., which is a boarding school from Sunday
evening through Friday afternoon (Jones, 2010).
A recent report of an evaluation of charter and other public schools in Boston highlights the importance of time:
The most critical finding of this study is the difference in the amount of time charter school
teachers and students spend in school every year when compared to traditional and pilot
schools and how that additional time is used. This finding is significant, in that it not only means
that students and teachers spend more than 378 hours—or roughly 62 traditional schooldays
worth—of additional instruction every year when compared with traditional schools students
and teachers…. (Therriault, Gandhi, Casasanto, and Carney, 2010, p23).
These extended days, weeks, and years require parents to accommodate the schools’ demands.
Schedules of other brothers and sisters may need to be adjusted, and the parental work schedules may
be jeopardized. This requirement affects the day-to-day life of a family and may well require sacrifices
from parents and other children that some may find hard to accommodate. As these requirements increase the parental stake in having a child attend these schools, only parents who strongly value the
mobility promise of these schools are likely to conform to their demands. Otherwise the challenges are
not acceptable.
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Curriculum
As noted above, these schools aim to prepare their students for college, and four-year colleges
are stressed. Achievement First schools assert that “…ALL students are going to college.” Their classrooms are named after universities, and students write research papers on colleges. Students are identified by their year of expected college graduation—current kindergartners are known as the class of
2027. The Aspire Public Schools promote the slogan “College for Certain.” The idea of preparation for
college permeates these schools, which often decorate their walls with college posters and banners.
College is not seen as optional but the entire reason these schools exist. Trips to local colleges are common, as are visits from graduates attending colleges and staff from admissions offices. Colleges attended by graduates are celebrated, and the scholarships and financial aid they have received are proudly
announced.
These schools’ curricula are often pegged to state standards, and assessments are linked to
those standards. But state standards are often identified as the minimum level of acceptable performance; the schools seek to prepare students for success in college. The range of courses offered is often
limited, both by their size, and by the college preparatory focus.
Believe Charter High School, in Brooklyn, NY, requires its students to take four years of English:
“Explorations of both English literature and American literature ensure a broad literary foundation and
range from works such as Beowolf, Pride and Prejudice, Catcher in the Rye, to The Great Gatsby….” Four
years of math are required as well, through geometry and trigonometry, and pre-calculus and calculus
are also offered. Four years of science are required: “Students learn the basics of lab procedures, writing
lab reports, and analyzing data, as well as the more elusive skills of logic, reasoning, and scientific observation.” Four years of history, including global studies as well as American history are taken in the first
three years. Government and economics classes as well as some Advanced Placement offerings fill the
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last year. Two years of arts are required, including dance, music, theater and chorus classes. In addition
to physical education requirements, all students are required to prepare a Demonstrating Mastery Conference, described as a “portfolio defense and oral presentation showing thorough understanding of
material covered during the course of their high school career.”
These curricula aim to prepare students for state examinations (in New York, the Regents Examinations), Advanced Placement examinations, and the SAT and ACT tests. These are gateway tests, important for the next level of the educational system, higher education, and the occupations dependent
upon them. That students are expected to succeed on these tests is the proof of the schools’ extraordinary efforts on their behalf. These schools do not offer vocational or occupationally relevant curricula;
such options limit the social mobility potential that college preparatory curricula offer. They do not seek
general educational standards leading to GED diplomas or other alternative to college-ready certification.
The practices of these schools are consistent with their objectives—focus on the students (and
their parents) who seek to achieve social mobility through educational achievement. These achievements are as much, and perhaps more, social than they are academic. But they are academic so students must learn the reading, writing, math, and science skills required to excel in college; a standard
irrelevant to their non-college going peers (and their teachers).
Conclusions
What the new public schools require are high levels of motivation and commitment from students and their parents to succeed. It is not simply their behavioral expectations of students—though
that matters. It is not simply their college preparatory curricula—though that matters. As this review of
the practices of the “new public schools” demonstrates, their ability to move students from low to higher levels of academic achievement is embedded in their expectations of student and parental behavior,
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combined with their power to shape students after they have been admitted. This ability mirrors that
possessed by total institutions: these schools have created for themselves an organizational niche that
gives them more leverage over students and their families than “regular” public schools have a chance
to develop. All activities of these schools contribute to deepening and strengthening the break with the
past for their students—to paving the way to belonging to another social group. While they are not
24/7 total institutions (excluding examples such as the SEED boarding school), it is clear that they extend
their concerns beyond the traditional school boundaries and seek to emulate totality in their dealings
with students and their families. These result in strong demands on students and their families, who
self-select accordingly. Attrition rates have been high in some studies of these schools (Woodworth,
2008).
As we continue to study school reform, then, it is important to pay attention to the variety of
demands schools place on their students. Schools that differ widely in these expectations are likely to
differ in their ability to help students transform their accomplishments into their aspirations. What
makes these new public schools effective, to the degree that they are, is their power over willing students and their parents. What helps the schools to elicit the continuing effort and commitment from
students and their parents is the promise for opportunity for upward social mobility the schools emphasize. This promise is most importantly evidenced by the high school graduation rates of their students
and their college admissions success. Social mobility is a long road, and college acceptance by no means
guarantees its achievement, but without college, the likelihood of ending up in a social and economic
place above one’s parents is dimmed. While some schools may be attractive to parents because they
provide a safe and student oriented environment, their graduation, exam results, and college admissions will ultimately be the index of their success. Those schools with good records on these measures
will be more powerful in affecting the behavior and achievements of their students. But it is their students and parents who must muster the wherewithal necessary to accomplish the change in their lives,
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in their own orientations and behaviors that social mobility requires. The production of opportunity is
not a technical matter, but a deeply social and complicated one.
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