A California High School That Values College, and the Real World
by Rachel Gross
June 23, 2010
Is the role of high school always to steer students toward a four-year university or even a two-year college? Or should today’s high schools also be considering vocational training and other alternative pathways?
Some educators believe students can have it both ways. In communities where students may rule out college before even applying, some high schools are employing more radical ways to keep students on the path to a higher education — while giving them the real-world skills they need to land a career if college doesn’t work out.
One is MetWest, a small, public high school in Oakland, Calif., that thrives on providing extraordinary opportunities to students who may get very few. In a district colored by poverty, gang violence and a high dropout rate (but also a dedication to conceiving new types of schools and ways to engage students), students at MetWest have customized schedules, and are given access to college classes and professional internships as part of their school curriculum. At MetWest, students work with adult mentors at local businesses and nonprofit organizations twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Since it opened in 2002, the school has allied with more than 400 organizations, including local hospitals, radio stations and restaurants to provide those internships.
While internships can serve as a viable route to a future career, students at MetWest are always trained to keep one eye toward college. They engage in mock college interviews, visit college campuses and are introduced to a college setting through classes they take across the street at a local community college that partners with the school.
The program can already point to some results: Each year, at least 90 percent of MetWest students have graduated and immediately gone on to two- or four-year colleges, compared with the 69 percent overall graduation rate of the Oakland Unified School District. MetWest is designed “to serve kids on the lower end of the achievement gap,” said Eve Gordon, the school’s principal — but its philosophy of individualized education and supportive relationships with adults (advisers often send text messages to students to remind them to come to class or turn in homework) could have broader applications. The 140-student school is about 45 percent black and 45 percent Latino; the vast majority of students are part of the first generation in their families to even contemplate college.
For students in Oakland, the idea of college isn’t always automatic.
“The problem is it’s such an abstract notion,” said Jeannie Johnson, director of the district’s College and Career Readiness Office. “We’re saying they should go to college, and they kind of nod their heads, but they don’t really know what that means.”
Tele’jon Quinn, a 15-year-old sophomore at MetWest who goes by “T”, got his first taste of college last year through an internship helping a professor in the University of California at Berkeley’s geography department. Tele′jon had a hard time his first year at the school, after his father was killed in a shooting. He says he still has trouble completing homework because of emotional and financial stress at home. But he’s also gone on to pursue leadership roles at MetWest, including representing the school at an international school safety conference in April. Though his mother did not graduate high school, Tele’jon says he is confident higher education is for him. “Me wanting to have a better life than what I grew up in — that’s a big part of it,” he said.
MetWest is an affiliate of a nonprofit organization called Big Picture Learning, which has helped create more than 60 individualized schools that have been integrated into districts in the United States (and 40 more abroad). Big Picture schools strive to work “in tandem with the real world” to foster “relationships, relevance and rigor,” said Briana Masterson, a spokeswoman.
Big Picture says it considers MetWest a model for its aspirations, and the school has already attracted some attention, including for its graduation rate and approach. “In addition to preparing our kids for higher education, we’re trying to prepare them to have successful, satisfying lives,” Ms. Gordon said. “It’s not just about kids getting diplomas.”