A Longitudinal Study of Big Picture School Graduates
What becomes of Big Picture Learning (BPL) graduates in their transition from high school to college and from college to adult life? Is there a connection between the Big Picture experience and postsecondary success? Do the hallmarks of a Big Picture education—self-knowledge, motivation, passionate learning, and resourcefulness—endure into adulthood? In short, is Big Picture really making a difference in the lives of its students, especially when it comes to underserved urban students, the vast majority of our student body—many of whom are the first in their families to attend college?
Click here for a full prospectus.
The Big Picture school design is unconventional, and we define success as a wider array of quantitative and qualitative information beyond typical NCLB, state, or district requirements. For this reason, Big Picture is using a longitudinal study in order to document student outcomes, understand the conditions for successful transitions to college and careers, inform school improvement, and support the continued personal and professional development of alumni.
The mission of the Big Picture Learning Longitudinal Study is to tracks the lives of students from high school until age 30 in order to document their outcomes, understand the conditions for successful transitions to college and careers, inform school improvement, and support the continued personal and professional development of alumni. The study supports the Big Picture Company’s mission of reducing social inequality through a fundamental redesign of education that provides opportunities for social mobility and self-realization for socio-economically disadvantaged youth. Click here to view the pilot research design.
To this end, the study aims to influence secondary and postsecondary policy and practice by demonstrating how the Big Picture’s innovative design of personalized, relevant schools impacts student outcomes on a broad spectrum of adult personal, vocational, and relationship measures. At the core of the study is a commitment to employing both standard research methodologies and emerging technologies that engage contemporary high school graduates and making use of the continuing relationships between Big Picture staff and alumni to collect candid, in-depth information about graduates’ lives.
Goals and Objectives
The goals of this initiative are to enable ongoing contact between BPL and AHSI schools and their alumni, as well as provide school-specific and network-wide information about the adult lives of graduates of BPL schools.
To accomplish these goals, BPL will:
- Refine the longitudinal system data infrastructure and analysis system.
- Develop a training and support system in order to help all schools in the BPL network and AHSI networks participate in the longitudinal system by inputting data and maintaining contacts with their graduates.
Major Tasks
To accomplish these objectives, BPL will:
Refine the data collection and analysis system. We will streamline the data collection forms, update and enhance the Alumni Manager, and prepare several report generators that can be used by all of the schools participating in the study. Major attention will be given to systems for tracking and keeping in touch with graduates over several years. We intend to procure national tracking services to support this task.
Refine and expand training and support system. We will expand and refine the technical assistance we provide to school staff in using the Alumni Manager and in maintaining tracking and data collection systems for the graduates. We will provide a limited amount of direct technical assistance in helping schools establish these systems. We will develop an online and hotline capability for responding to technical assistance requests.
Expand national dissemination of the results of this study. It is important that schools that provide non-traditional approaches to curriculum and program structures as well as to teaching and learning document their success on a diverse set of respected indicators of success. To that end, we will prepare reports for national dissemination and assist our schools in preparing reports for local dissemination within their communities.
Our initial research findings: “The Summer Flood: The Gap between College Admission and Matriculation Among Low-income Students.”
Resources Required
BPL has already committed its own resources to this work in developing the Alumni Manager and in initiating data collection across the network. We have done some preliminary analyses of the data and have produced reports.
BPL needs additional resources in order to refine the data collection system, train and support our schools in collecting these data, and preparing reports that serve both school level and national level audiences. We estimate that this project will require about $.49 million over two years for the project. We believe that we can institutionalize this project at the end of that project period, relying on a small amount of funds for purchasing student tracking information and for producing local and national reports.
Big Picture Learning also arranges a college emergency fund to support Big Picture high school graduates who are currently enrolled in college and are in need of special assistance due to unforeseen financial hardship.
For more information about Big Picture’s Longitudinal Study, contact Mario De Anda.