C. Program Identity and School Choice

Previous | Table of Contents | Next

C. Program Identity and School Choice

All programs will have a strong identity and a well-defined mission that they use to attract students. Programs that share facilities with other programs will interact with them in meaningful and productive ways. The programs are of a size such that every student is individually known and nurtured from kindergarten through grade 12.

Recommendation 7: A diversity of programs exists within the school district. Within this range of diversity, some programs are geographically based and have a mission to serve a particular neighborhood, although they can accept students from elsewhere in the district. Others are chartered on a particular program, and accept students who enroll from anywhere in the district.

The current labels (neighborhood school and alternative school) are associated with what is currently perceived as a two-tier educational system. The School Choice Task Group finds data to support that perception of two tiers, and strongly believes that major changes must be made to respond to that perception and reality.

While abandoning the labels won't solve all problems, it is an important consideration as the district discusses new, more equitable models of school diversity and school choice. It seeks to move the emphasis away from what type a "school" is (alternative, neighborhood, or independent) toward what the unique, desirable qualities a program will use to attract students, families, and teachers. In some cases, one of the qualities of a program will be the geographical area that it serves, in addition to other special program elements, and we may choose to continue to call these "neighborhood programs". In other cases, the special properties may be based entirely on the curriculum without any geographical basis to their enrollment. The task group proposes that these be called "magnet programs," and that the programs be named descriptively.

Recommendation 7 responds to the following Schools of the Future Guiding Principles:

2. We believe that education must be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of students, the community, and society.

Recommendation 8: Both program diversity (providing each student a broad range of offerings) and intimacy of setting is available to all students.

This could be achieved in one of several different ways:

A school could educate enough students to have the resources to deliver the central services and quality special programs.

Ways are found to allow a program in a small building to provide services and diverse high-quality offerings without excessive cost. A smaller setting automat-ically provides intimacy and identity for each student.

A larger school building could contain multiple programs, which are made up of small learning communities of students, teachers, and families. These smaller groups give every student a unique identity in the school and the opportunity to create personal relationships with teachers and other students.

Other programs are dispersed in the community, and may not even have a single, distinct physical location. In these cases, diversity and identity are provided at the various sites, many of which occur at a scale that promotes individual attention for each student.

Members of the task group recognize that cost efficiency can work counter to providing a wide range of choices. If cost efficiency were the main criteria in school planning, all schools of similar grade level would be of the same size and, to a certain extent, offer similar programs. This task group opposes that approach.

One concept for obtaining most or all of the efficiency of a larger school facility is to create smaller groupings within a school through schools or learning communities within schools. However, District 4J's experience with this type of sharing is quite varied. In some cases, two or more programs work well together and strengthen each other. In other cases, one program is more attractive and cannibalizes students, teachers, and other resources from the other program, further reinforcing the two-tier system that we identify as a major problem that needs solving. The task group strongly recommends that 4J study this issue and identify successful models of programs sharing a single facility to inform the development of future policies for schools-within-schools and other programs that may share one facility.

District 4J should encourage other models that can deliver a broad range of programs in smaller environments in order to maintain diversity and choice. For example, cross training of elementary teachers to be generalists as well as having a specialty (such as special education, music, art, or foreign language) could allow a small-population school to offer programs as diverse as a larger school. This could be reinforced with creative involvement of parent volunteers. At the extreme, a program might be very small, employing a few teachers whose training is very diverse in a variation of the two-room schoolhouse model, or might be dispersed across multiple sites in the community. Within the principle of quality and reasonable equity of funding, this diversity of choice should be encouraged.

Recommendation 8 responds to the following Schools of the Future Guiding Principles:

1. We believe that education must provide an environment in which all students are respected and have equal access and opportunity.

3. We believe that schools must provide a comprehensive, focused education, which challenges the whole student.

Recommendation 9: There is a great deal of integration between programs sharing the same building.

This is an important element of ensuring equal strength among programs. Magnet programs with a special identity should normally (but not necessarily in every case) share a school building with another program. Within that context, interaction and sharing among students should occur in ways meaningful to the education of the students rather than having programs simply share a roof and a principal. This could occur in many different ways. For example, sharing might occur in physical education, lunch, recess, music, athletic teams, and other activities not part of a core curriculum. It could also occur through choice classes designed to blend the two core curriculums or other combining opportunities that happen on a daily, weekly, or other regular basis. The programs could share site-councils.

At the secondary level, blending and sharing could occur in some program areas while individual program identity is maintained in the curriculum that relates to the program mission and charter. This is the current pattern for many of the current secondary alternative programs (e.g., International High School, language immersion programs, and Family School).

Magnet programs that do share a school site with other programs must take proactive cooperative measures to keep both programs healthy and attractive to students, parents, and teachers. Programs that do not share a school site must find other measures that promote integration with the rest of 4J. This might include community involvement (in the school or in the community) or events with other schools, or other measures of their own design that will meet this goal. The task group once again strongly recommends that 4J study this issue and identify successful models of programs sharing a single facility to inform the development of future policies for schools-within-schools and other programs that may share one facility.

It is also desirable to integrate regular school district programs with private alternative education options that exist within the community.

Recommendation 9 responds to the following Schools of the Future Guiding Principles:

1. We believe that education must provide an environment in which all students are respected and have equal access and opportunity.

Recommendation 10: Any publicly-funded school is held accountable to its own mission as contracted or chartered.

The public needs to require that schools meet their expressed goals. At the same time, the task group believes that schools based on educational philosophies and curricula other than traditional ones should be encouraged. These schools need to be accountable, but their success needs to be measured in terms of their goals and mission.

The task group wishes to state explicitly that its members believe the state assessments and the CIM/CAM are only one way of measuring the success of schools. The district needs to be able to determine by other means whether a school is accomplishing its mission.

Recommendation 10 responds to the following Schools of the Future Guiding Principles:

2. We believe that education must be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of students, the community, and society.

4. We believe that schools must be accountable to the public, providing a quality education while making efficient use of public resources.

Recommendation 11: The school district provides comprehensive information for students and parents about all schools and programs that are publicly funded.

This simply means that District 4J brochures and other publicity (including electronic formats such as web sites) about its programs include all of the programs that it supports financially, even independent schools that are publicly funded but not operated by the school district. Information can also be made available during registration and to preschool programs such as Head Start. Besides providing information to students and parents, the intention of this recommendation is to create an atmosphere of fairness and equity among the public and publicly-funded programs.

Recommendation 11 responds to the following Schools of the Future Guiding Principles:

1. We believe that education must provide an environment in which all students are respected and have equal access and opportunity.

4. We believe that schools must be accountable to the public, providing a quality education while making efficient use of public resources.

A consideration from the committee regarding neighborhood schools.

The task group had general support for the following statement regarding the relationship between neighborhood, magnet, and independent schools, but is not forwarding it as a recommendation.
Neighborhood elementary schools form the core of the district’s education program:

Neighborhood schools have geographically based attendance areas, but the specific mission of each is defined by the school itself. Within general guidelines set by the district, each school, under the guidance of its site council, develops its own curriculum. The curriculum may be similar to or very different from other neighborhood schools.

Neighborhood schools have a series of school-linked community services designed to improve learning and to strengthen the tie between school and neighborhood.

Neighborhood schools have a place for all students in the attendance area. However, children have the opportunity to transfer to other neighborhood schools on a space-available basis.

The district follows a comprehensive set of policies supporting neighborhood schools that prevents recreation of the two-tiered system that once existed.

Charter schools and publicly-funded independent schools augment neighborhood schools by providing learning programs that are based on non-mainstream teaching methods or philosophies and curricula that are radically different from neighbor-hood schools.

Alternative or magnet schools are restricted to programs that are significantly different from neighborhood schools. Consequently, district-sponsored alternative schools are less common than in the past. Alternative schools that did not provide a materially different teaching philosophy or curriculum than neighborhood schools were phased out or integrated into a neighborhood school.

This statement is based on two principles:

Neighborhood schools are important to the fabric of the community; and

The district has a responsibility to work with other public agencies to support overall community goals.

Neighborhood schools are part of the public infrastructure that binds the community together. Particularly at the elementary level, neighborhood schools provide a benefit to the community that extends beyond the learning that occurs in the classroom. These schools foster neighborhood stability, help neighbor meet neighbor, and provide a focal point for neighborhood activities. They support the greater community goals of promoting strong neighborhood and reduced transportation trip-making.

The district’s policy decisions on school choice should be made in the context of the school’s role in the community at large, and in fulfillment of overall community goals and values, not on school issues alone. Because of the value of neighborhood schools to the community, the district should do what is necessary to ensure a strong, vibrant, and diverse elementary neighborhood school program. The community loses with the demise of neighborhood schools.

The success of neighborhood-centered elementary programs depends on implemen-tation of a number of the recommendations in this report, particularly those related to equity.

Previous | Table of Contents | Next

| Schools of the Future | Site Map | Search

Eugene School District 4J