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WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE ABOUT ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS?
A COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOLS
TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS
By

John L. Cook

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Educational Administration

2003

ABSTRACT
WHAT IS ALTERNATIVE ABOUT ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS?
A COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOLS
TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS
By

John L. Cook

My purpose in this study was to describe and explain how alternative high schools
in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum,
organization, and pedagogy. I ﬁrst examined the literature dealing with the curriculum,
organization, and pedagogy of traditional high schools. This literature served as the basis
for contrasting alternative high schools with traditional high schools. Speciﬁc areas for
comparison included the nature of teaching, processes for curriculum development,
organizational processes, indicators of student success, student-teacher relationships, and
student-to-student relationships.

Four alternative high schools in Michigan were included in this study. By
interviewing students and staff, observing classes, and studying the schools’ materials, I
attempted to determine the differences between the four alternative high schools and
traditional high schools. Forty-one individuals (an administrator, staff members, and
students at each school) were interviewed. All interviews were taped and transcribed.
Using the techniques of theoretical sampling outlined by Glaser and Strauss (1967), I
collected, coded, and analyzed the data to reach conclusions concerning differences

between alternative high schools and traditional high schools.

The data indicated that each of the four alternative high schools included in this
study followed the same basic logic of accommodation characteristic of traditional high
schools. However, these alternative high schools took that logic to new lengths to
promote the success of their students. These alternative high schools went as far as
possible, within limits, to keep students coming and to interest them, if not in academic
learning, then in the behaviors necessary to complete the required credits and earn an
approved diploma. Therefore, for the schools included in this study, the answer to the
question “What is alternative about alternative schools?” is that alternative high schools
are less an alternative to traditional high schools than they are a more ﬂexible and
permissive extension of the logic and actions that govern the organization, pedagogy, and
curriculum of traditional high schools.

There are many different types of alternative high schools. Studies focusing on
different types of schools from those included in this study could make a signiﬁcant
contribution to the discourse concerning the nature and effectiveness of alternative
schools. Furthermore, studies concentrating on students who are unsuccessful in

alternative high schools could provide yet another perspective on these institutions.

The assistance, support, and patience of two
people made this volume possible.
I dedicate this work to them:
my wife, Beth, and my friend, Philip Cusick.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study would not have been possible without the guidance and assistance of
numerous individuals.

I ﬁrst express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Philip Cusick. His expertise,
questions, and kind critiques gave me direction and the will to “keep on keeping on.”

I am indebted to the members of my committee, Dr. Brian Delany, Dr. Gary
Sykes, and Dr. Suzanne Wilson. I thank them for their encouragement and suggestions,
and the time they shared from busy schedules.

Thanks also to the members of the “Saturday Morning Group” hosted by Dr.
Cusick for nearly three years. These sessions provided the forum and incentive to write
and then rewrite (and to commiseratel).

To transcribers, Kelly Jones, Micki Evans, and Sandy Lindsey, who listened to
hours of tapes and prepared many pages of transcriptions, thank you. To the editor of this
volume, Susan Cooley Miller, who expertly put the work into proper dissertation format,
special thanks.

I also appreciate, and thank, the alternative high school educators and students
who willingly agreed to participate in this study and then so candidly answered all of my
questions. I appreciate your cooperation and honesty very much indeed.

Finally, the completion of this project provides a time to remember, with respect
and gratitude, my ﬁrst advisor, Dr. Samuel Moore, now deceased. Dr. Moore was a
scholar, an excellent teacher, and a ﬁne man. I am grateful for his advice and

encouragement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM .................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction and Purpose of the Study .......................................................................... 1
Conceptual Framework .................................................................................................. 2
Initial Exploratory Questions ......................................................................................... 6
Methodology .................................................................................................................. 7
Signiﬁcance of the Study ............................................................................................... 9
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE ............................................................................................ 11
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 11
The Curriculum of Traditional High Schools: A Historical Perspective .................... 12
The Organization of Traditional High Schools ............................................................ 23
The Traditional High School: Batches, Bits, and Slices ....................................... 24
Teachers in Traditional American High Schools: On Their Own ........................ 31
Interactions Between Students and Teachers ......................................................... 35
Summary ................................................................................................................ 37
The Pedagogy of Traditional High Schools ................................................................. 38
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................ 45
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 45
Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................ 45
Initial Exploratory Questions ....................................................................................... 49
Sampling Strategies ..................................................................................................... 51
Data Collection ............................................................................................................ 53
The Interview Process .................................................................................................. 55
Initial Interview Protocol ............................................................................................. 57
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 59
CHAPTER IV
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA .................................................... 60
Research Procedure ...................................................................................................... 63
The Setting ................................................................................................................... 65
Mapleton Alternative High School ........................................................................ 65
New Century Academy .......................................................................................... 67
Northshore Alternative High School ..................................................................... 69
Westerby High School ........................................................................................... 71
Perceptions of Traditional High Schools ..................................................................... 72

vi

A Weird Way to Learn ........................................................................................... 74

Small Groups at Traditional High Schools ............................................................ 79
Perceptions of Student Relationships and Behaviors at Alternative
High Schools .......................................................................................................... 83
Perceptions of Student-Teacher Relationships ............................................................ 90
Perceptions Concerning Instruction and Pedagogy ..................................................... 94
Teaching As “Doing Stuff” .................................................................................... 95
Teacher Interactions: Getting Together and Talking ............................................ 97
Becoming an “Alternative Ed. Type” Teacher ...................................................... 98
Summary .............................................................................................................. 101
Perceptions Related to Student Success and Schooling ............................................. 103
Goals for Alternative High School Students ........................................................ 103
Measures of Behaviors and Achievement ............................................................ 108
The Admission Process ........................................................................................ 112
Attendance Requirements .................................................................................... 113
Earning Credits .................................................................................................... 115
Always Welcomed Back ...................................................................................... 119
Testing Out ........................................................................................................... 120
Summary .............................................................................................................. 122
Perceptions Concerning the Curriculum .................................................................... 122
A “Loosely Aligned” Curriculum ........................................................................ 123
Perceptions of a “Watered-Down” Curriculum ................................................... 126
The Curriculum Reﬂects the Teachers ................................................................ 127
Summary .............................................................................................................. 128
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................................. 130
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 130
What Is Alternative About the Curriculum of Alternative High Schools? ................ 130
What Is Alternative About the Organization and Structure of
Alternative High Schools? ................................................................................... 133
What Is Alternative About the Pedagogy of Alternative High Schools? .................. 139
The Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 142
Reﬂections ................................................................................................................. 143
Other Explanations ..................................................................................................... 147
The Potential for Additional Research ....................................................................... 149
Signiﬁcance of the Findings ...................................................................................... 150
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 153

vii

LIST OF TABLES

. Number of Persons Interviewed, by Category .............................................................. 63
. Characteristics of Communities and School Districts .................................................. 66
. ACT WorkKeys—Reading for Information (Level 3) ............................................... 111

. Required Units for Credit at Alternative High Schools Included
in This Study ........................................................................................................ 116

. Comse Offerings at Northshore Alternative High School, by
Instructor, Third Quarter, January 21 to March 22, 2002 .................................... 124

viii

CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM

Introduction and Purpose of the Study

Many educators believe alternative high schools provide a viable choice for
students. They View such schools as distinctly different from and more innovative than
traditional high schools. But do these alternative schools truly provide different options
for students? Or, in key areas related to schooling, curriculum, and teaching, are they
basically the same as traditional secondary schools? In this study, I explored that issue.
The purpose of this study was to describe and explain how alternative high schools in
Michigan compare with traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum, organization,
and pedagogy.

A Michigan Department of Education (1998) Administrative Guidebook broadly
deﬁned “alternative education” as programs operated as a subdivision of the regular K—12
school system, “designed for students who can be better served in an alternative delivery
system” (p. C-S). Geik and Walsh (1999) indicated that alternative high schools were
designed for “preventing at-risk adolescents (or recovering them) from dropping out of
the K-12 system and completing the requirements for a high school diploma” (p. 2).
Who enrolls in alternative high schools? A website from one alternative high school,
Foley Alternative High School in Foley, Minnesota, provided a comprehensive
“eligibility list.” Eligible students for that high school, the web site stated, included
individuals

performing substantially below average on a local achievement test
at least one year behind in satisfactorily completing a course of work
pregnant or a parent

assessed as chemically dependent

l

who have been physically or sexually abused

who have experienced mental health problems

who have been homeless sometime in the last six months

with limited English proﬁciency or speaking English as a second language
referred by a school district for enrollment in an eligible nontraditional
program

0 excluded or expelled (Available: www.5tcloud.k12.mm.us)

Many alternative high schools also allow individuals who have already dropped out of
school to return and complete high school graduation requirements. Some alternative
high schools are “schools of choice,” and students are enrolled based solely on parental
choice.

Although the number of alternative high schools throughout the United States is
growing, these places still do not seem like “real schools” to many people. Raywid
(1998) concluded that alternative educational programs were “somewhat marginal to the
educational mainstream and a fringe rather than a fully accepted member of the
educational establishment. As a result, even after decades, and even when providing
accepted leadership for others, they have never achieved institutional legitimacy” (p. 12).
The present study offered an opportunity to contribute to the conversation about what is
generally known about alternative high schools and whether or not these schools are, in

fact, part of the educational mainstream.

Conceptual Framework

If I was to understand whether or how alternative high schools differed from
mainstream secondary institutions, I ﬁrst needed to understand the traditional high school
as the basis for comparison. A large body of literature has dealt with the nature and
development of the traditional high school. This literature provided considerable insight
into what happens in traditional high schools and analyzed the evolution of this

institution during the last century. I looked to the literature dealing with the nature and
2

development of traditional high schools to understand the differences between traditional
and alternative high schools. I identiﬁed concepts related to the curricula, organization,
and pedagogy of traditional high schools and used these concepts as a framework to
analyze similar aspects of alternative high schools.

First, I examined the literature dealing with the curricula of traditional high
schools. I considered the history of the American high school during the last century and
found an almost constant debate concerning the intellectual content of high school
curricula in the United States: Should high schools emphasize academically rigorous
courses, or, instead, should priority be given to practical course work that interests
students? Educators’ solution to these contrasting points of view illustrate an important
pattern inﬂuencing the development of secondary education in this country. Faced with
difﬁcult choices between contrasting approaches, educators have made room for both.
The curriculum was expanded dramatically, and the result was diversiﬁcation. The
American high school became a buffet of educational choices (Powell, F arrar, & Cohen,
1985). There were courses that were demanding, and some that were not. For some
students, the path through high school was academically challenging. Other students “got
by” in classes that provided passing grades for minimal effort.

This pattern has special signiﬁcance when considered in relation to alternative
high schools. Where and how do “new” alternative high schools ﬁt into the conversation
regarding the intellectual content of secondary schools? Are alternative education high
schools one more example in a long, familiar pattern of repeatedly expanding what is
taught in American high schools in order to ensure students’ success? These are the

questions that were considered in this study.

Second, I examined what the literature has said about the organization of
traditional high schools. Again, my purpose was to devise a framework that could be
used to compare alternative high schools to traditional American high schools. I
considered three areas related to the organization of traditional high schools: the
bureaucracy of these institutions, the role of teachers, and informal things that students do
(with particular attention to the way students interact with their instructors). I found that
many scholars have agreed about the nature of the bureaucracy in traditional high
schools. These schools, they noted, are designed primarily to provide direct,
uncomplicated ways to maintain control and promote orderliness (Sizer, 1984). Subject
areas are divided into classes; students are batched together in groups and assigned to
classes. The school day is divided into periods, and the clock regulates students’ and
teachers’ lives inside a high school (Cusick, 1973). The layout and design of the school
are designed to promote efﬁcient education of batches of students, in an economical
manner. Many “do’s and don’ts” regulate the behaviors of both students and teachers.
There are all sorts of rules for all sorts of things: smoking, drinking soda, being tardy,
walking through the halls during class times, swearing, and skipping school. The
traditional American high school, the literature reviewed for this study revealed, is clearly
a well-regulated institution (Cuban, 1984). Students do not come and go as they please.
To survive in traditional high schools, students—and teachers—have to behave within the
limitations established by a complex bureaucracy.

When considering what the literature said about the organization of traditional
high schools, I also examined the role of teachers and the interactions of students. I
found that the conventional American high school is a place where teachers often operate

in isolation. Teachers often do not have the time or inclination to collaborate on a

schoolwide curriculum with a uniﬁed sense of purpose (Cusick, 1973). And these are
also places where students and teachers do not seem to interact all that much. Instead,
students spend a lot of time waiting and watching, and talking with other students.

This was the mirror I held up to alternative high schools. I asked, Do alternative
high schools reﬂect the same organizational characteristics as traditional high schools?
Do alternative high schools have a complex, well-deﬁned bureaucracy with lists of do’s
and don’ts? Do teachers in alternative high schools indicate that they operate in
isolation? Do students say that they have meaningful interactions with their instructors?
These were some of the questions addressed in this analysis of the organizational
characteristics of alternative high schools.

My examination of the literature dealing with traditional American high schools
concluded with a look at pedagogy. This analysis was considered within the context of
the theoretical orientation of epistemology—the study of human knowledge. For more
than 25 centuries, philosophers have debated questions related to “knowing.” What can
we know? I explored the historical evolution of epistemology and then considered the
connection between philosophical approaches to knowledge and the way teachers
approach teaching. If knowledge is a priori (that is to say, not based on experience), the
teacher would be considered an expert who explains what he or she knows to be true:
Read this. Memorize this. Learn this. On the other hand, if humans construct
knowledge (using either reason or the experiences of the senses), then the teacher is a
guide developing the students’ intellect.

The literature noted that, in traditional American high schools, there is creative
teaching that encourages students to use reason and experimentation to learn and

discover. However, there is more “telling.” This epistemological approach is an obvious

and pervasive feature of the current traditional high school. The literature indicated that
traditional high school teachers often View knowledge as something that is known,
something that can be revealed to others. They are the holders of knowledge, and it is
their task to share that knowledge with their students. What about alternative high
schools? Is it the same in these places? Do alternative high school teachers see teaching

as “telling”? These were matters examined in this study.

Initial Exploratory Questions

The initial exploratory questions for this study ﬂowed from the purpose for this
inquiry, as well as from what I learned from the literature about the development and
nature of traditional American high schools. Three primary exploratory questions formed
the ﬁamework that I used in assessing ways alternative high schools compare with what
the literature said about traditional high schools. These three questions are as follows:

1. What is alternative about the curriculum of alternative high schools? Speciﬁc,
additional questions addressed teacher collaboration, elective classes, curriculum
development, curriculum implementation, and who had responsibility for selecting the
curriculum materials used by students.

2. What is alternative about the organization and structure of alternative high
schools? Speciﬁc, additional questions dealt with the bureaucracy, the role of the
teacher, interactions between students and teachers, interactions between teachers, rules
that governed the behavior of both students and teachers, and the extent to which
instructional activity at alternative high schools was student centered.

3. What is alternative about the pedagogy of alternative high schools? Speciﬁc,

additional questions focused on the epistemological approach of alternative high school

teachers, individualized instructional programs, student assessments, and the content

required of students to complete requirements for a class.

Methodology

The primary data-collection method selected for this study was the interview.
Secondary methods of inquiry included a limited amount of observation on my part and
collection of selected cultural products and artifacts. The interview is a qualitative,
ethnographic approach well suited to addressing the complex issues associated with this
inquiry. Seidman (1998) noted that the behaviors of individuals becomes meaningful and
understandable for the researcher when placed in the context of their lives and the world
around them. The exploratory questions for this study included many issues related to
complex perceptions held by individuals. It was necessary to use an approach that
allowed me to probe for broader, deeper understandings; therefore, a qualitative approach
made good sense.

In conducting this study, I used the process of theoretical sampling. Glaser and
Strauss (1967) described this technique:

Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory

whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes this data and decides

what data to collect next and where to ﬁnd them, in order to develop his theory as

it emerges. This process of data collection is controlled by the emerging theory,

whether substantive or formal. (p. 105)
With theoretical sampling, early decisions made by the researcher are based on general
perspective. Then, as data are collected, the process becomes more challenging, and
more a matter of insight and intuition. Creswell (1994) noted that “data analysis requires
that the researcher be comfortable with developing categories and making comparisons

and contrasts. It also requires that the researcher be open to possibilities and see contrary

or alternative explanations for the ﬁndings” (p. 153). With theoretical sampling, the
7

anticipation is that patterns will appear, additional data will conﬁrm early suppositions,
categories will come together, and a theory will emerge.

The ﬁrst interviews conducted for this study were guided by the initial
exploratory questions. Before the interviews, I met with each school’s administrator to
explain the nature of this study. We looked for potential respondents with at least one
full year of experience in that particular alternative high school. I informed respondents
about the nature and purposes of the study, and obtained a consent form from all subjects
whom I interviewed. The names of all respondents and all schools included in this
research were kept conﬁdential. All interviews were tape-recorded. The tapes were
transcribed and the resulting protocols typed, read, and reread. Most interviews lasted
approximately one to one and one-half hours.

The study was limited to alternative high schools with an enrollment of at least 40
students. The limitation of an enrollment of at least 40 students was established to
ensure that the alternative program being studied was a separate school and not a program
with a single classroom, supervised by one professional. There were no other limitations
to the scope of the study.

Data for this study were collected from four alternative high schools. These
schools were selected, in part, because it was possible to gain access to them. (My recent
experiences as a school administrator in Michigan provided the opportunity for access to
several alternative high school programs.) Another factor in the selection of schools was
geographical location. My goal was to select alternative high schools from different
regions of the state.

Forty-one individuals were interviewed. At each site, interviews were conducted

with an administrator, teachers, and students. The administrators were interviewed

individually. Teachers were interviewed individually or in groups of two or three.
Students were interviewed individually or in small groups. At one school, students were
interviewed ﬁrst in a group setting; then students from that group were interviewed again
individually or in pairs.

Cultural products and artifacts also informed this research. Cultural products and
artifacts help reveal the nature of a complex situation. Geertz (1983) indicated that such
products and artifacts are physical manifestations of culture; indeed, they are part of the
culture itself. Examples of products and artifacts considered in this study included:

Records summarizing student attendance

Student handbooks

Tests and assessment instruments

School policy statements

Student progress reports

Information presented to students upon admission to the school
Information for students and parents indicating course offerings
Class lists and schedules

Descriptions of the physical setting

Sigr_ri_ﬁgmce of the Study

This study is signiﬁcant because it addressed a component of the secondary
educational system that is growing in scope and importance. Educators throughout
America have turned to alternative programs for a number of reasons: to prevent students
from dropping out, to reduce delinquency, to help problem students, to provide an
innovative education, and to promote change in traditional high schools. In Michigan,
the number of alternative high schools more than tripled in two decades. In 1978, there
were 99 alternative high schools (Gray, 1978). By 1998, there were 369 alternative high
schools in Michigan. These 369 schools had an enrollment of 23,200 full-time-

equivalent students—5% of all Michigan secondary school pupils (Geik & Walsh, 1999).

 

However, despite their growing popularity, there is considerable mystery
surrounding alternative schools. Relatively little research has been conducted concerning
the nature and effectiveness of high school alternative education programs. Geik and
Walsh (1999) observed, “There remains an array of questions regarding the relationship
between program effectiveness and program resources, components, structures, and
philosophies” (p. 5). This study, therefore, is signiﬁcant because it addressed a part of
the educational enterprise that is growing in scope and importance. Moreover, because
relatively few research studies have dealt with this topic, an opportunity existed to add

new information to the conversation about this aspect of secondary education.

10

 

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Introduction

A large body of literature concerns the nature and development of the traditional
high school. This literature provides considerable insight into what happens in the
traditional high school and analyzes the evolution of this institution during the last
century. I looked to this material to provide the foundation for comparing alternative
high schools to mainstream secondary institutions. In this chapter, I summarize key
points made by several scholars concerning the curriculum, organization, and pedagogy
of traditional American high schools. I begin by examining the curriculum of traditional
high schools from a historical perspective. The development of education in America
during the 20th century is considered within the context of a nearly constant debate
concerning the intellectual content of high school curricula in the United States. Should
these schools emphasize academically rigorous courses, or, instead, should priority be
given to practical course work that interests students? Educators’ solution to these
contrasting points of View illustrates an important pattern inﬂuencing the development of
secondary education in this country. Faced with difﬁcult choices between contrasting
approaches, educators made room for both. The curriculum was expanded dramatically.

Second, I examine the organization of the traditional high school. I begin by
looking at the bureaucracy of the traditional American high school and consider key
questions: How do educators allocate and arrange time during the school day? How are
content and students organized? What are the rules that govern the behavior of both

teachers and students? What is the effect of the need to keep order? I next consider the

11

isolation of teachers in the classroom and the autonomy of teachers to make decisions
that chart the course of both their classroom activities and the curriculum of the entire
school. Finally, the informal things students do that inﬂuence the organization and
structure of traditional high schools are analyzed, with particular attention to the way
students interact with their instructors.

I conclude the discussion about “the way things are” in traditional high schools
with a look at pedagogy in these places. Literature related to pedagogy is considered
within the context of a specific theoretical orientation—the study of human knowledge,
epistemology. A number of questions are considered: What is epistemology? What is
the history of epistemology, and how did it develop as a philosophy? What do teachers
in traditional high schools assume about knowing and learning, and how does that seem
to inﬂuence their pedagogical approach to instruction?

In summary, the purpose of this study was to describe and explain how alternative
high schools in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of
curriculum, organization, and pedagogy. I reviewed the literature to learn about the
nature and historical development of traditional high schools, examining the curriculum
of those schools from a historical perspective, considering characteristics of their
organizational structure, and exploring the pedagogical approach of traditional high
school teachers. The review of literature was used as a basis for comparison when
considering what is happening in alternative high schools. In other words, if alternative

schools are indeed alternative, they will be alternative to these things.

The Curriculum of Traditional High Schools: A Historical Persaective
Many threads run through the history of American education in the 20th century.

One of the most persistent is the debate concerning the primary focus of high schools:

12

Should these institutions provide intellectually serious programs and establish rigorous
academic requirements? Or, instead, should high schools provide practical courses that
interest students—programs that, because they are less demanding, greatly enhance
students’ chances for success in their high school studies? In this section, the
development of the curriculum of American high schools during the 20th century is
considered within the context of this crucial and nearly constant debate. What happened
to the American high school curriculum between the 18905 and the present day is deﬁned
and documented. The goal was to spell out some basic characteristics of the development
of curriculum in traditional high schools. Then I use such conclusions as a templatehas
a guide—when I examine patterns of curriculum development in alternative high schools.
The discussion concerning the nature of American high school curriculum began
in earnest in 1893 with a report issued by a group of scholars called the Committee of
Ten. The Committee of Ten was composed largely of college presidents and was chaired
by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot. At a time when only about 8% of the eligible
youth group was enrolled in high school, the committee concluded that every American
high school student should have a rigorous academic education and proposed what
amounted to a national high school curriculum. Core courses, they said, should include
traditional studies like Latin, Greek, and mathematics, as well as modern subjects such as
English, foreign languages, natural history, physical science, geography, history, civil
government, and political economy. (Including these modern subjects, by the way,
angered the traditionalists, who were devoted to the established classical curriculum.)
Standards should be high; the emphasis should be placed on mental discipline. Every
subject should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil. The

Committee of Ten disapproved of high school students selecting courses such as

13

bookkeeping or stenography. The best preparation for life, they said, was preparation for
higher education.

A few years following the report of the Committee of Ten, G. Stanley Hall
presented a decidedly different point of View. According to Hall, most high school
students had little interest in the classics and other such academic programs. Because
most students were not going on to college, it would be much better to focus on the needs
and interests of the maj ority—those planning to join the work force immediately aﬁer
high school. Hall argued for a high school curriculum that would prepare students for life
and not cause them to become disenchanted by difﬁculty or aridity (Powell et al., 1985).

It seems that Hall’s position eventually triumphed when, in 1918, the Commission
on Reorganization of Secondary Education published Cardinal Principles of Education.
Five years earlier, the National Education Association had established the commission.
The seven major objectives of education identiﬁed in Cardinal Principles were intended
to do much more than prepare students for higher education. Included in these principles
were (a) health, (b) command of fundamental processes, (0) worthy home membership,
(d) vocation, (e) citizenship, (f) worthy use of leisure time, and (g) ethical character. The
commission urged that homemaking be considered of equal value to other schoolwork.
Clearly, the emphasis was not on rigorous academic course work. In fact, Ravitch (1983)
noted, “80 little did the commission think of traditional, school-bound knowledge that the
original draft of the report failed to include a command of ﬁindamental processes (its
only reference to intellectual development) as a main objective” (p. 48).

In spite of this emphasis on practical and vocational education, specialized
vocational training schools did not become as popular in America as in European

countries. Some vocational schools were created in cities, but for the most part

14

Americans responded to the demand for a more practical curriculum with a practice
destined to be repeated oﬁen in the years ahead. Faced with competing demands between
an intellectually serious curriculum and practical course work geared to students’
interests, a solution evolved that was particularly American. It was decided to do it all.
Both were included in the curriculum. As a result, most high schools added courses in
vocational classes such as stenography, agriculture, and mechanical arts and revised the
older, more traditional classes to make them “ﬁt” the new ideas (Clark, Klein, & Burks,
1964). In The Shopping Mall High School, Cohen (1985) provided insight into why
educators chose to add—and not subtract—programs:

Mass enrollment and unselective admissions meant that schools had to do what

students and their families wanted. These were not selective private schools that

could admit the students they wished, to ﬁt the institution’s taste for academic
work or for students’ manners; rather they were public schools that had to take
what they got, and work with it. . . . The high schools were doing what comes

naturally in a popular democracy: paying attention to their constituents. (p. 239)
It seems clear that for many, if not most, Americans, providing intellectually challenging
course work was not as important as creating schools where students had plenty of
choices. They wanted schools where students were happy, successful, and felt “at
home.”

Early in the 1900s another movement was taking root that stood in opposition to
the “strictly academic” approach of Elliot and the Committee of Ten. This approach,
scientiﬁc in orientation, came to be called the progressive movement. It was, at least
initially, based largely on the ideas of philosopher John Dewey. Dewey (1899)
maintained that the responsibility of schools was to educate the whole child. “What the
best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of

its children” (p. 19). Progressivism was a pragmatic approach. Education was,

progressivists maintained, a part of living, and subject matter was only a means to an end.

15

What was important was not the subject material to be learned, but the learner and
learning. The intention was a curriculum that focused on students’ lives. Franklin Bobbit
added to this theme with the introduction of a new branch of educational science called
curriculum making. In The Curriculum, published in 1918, Bobbit identiﬁed 821
objectives to be used in constructing a school’s curriculum, all based on life activities
connected with things such as language, health, leisure, parenting, and vocational pursuits
(Ravitch, 1983).

These initiatives to make school relevant to the lives of students had an impact.
By the mid-19305, most high schools had eased their academic demands and given
considerable attention to vocational training. Of course, this trend was also inﬂuenced by
rapidly growing enrollments. High school enrollments doubled during each of the ﬁrst
three decades of the 20th century. By the mid-19305, about half of the eligible age group
attended secondary schools (Boyer, 1983). Grant (1988) reported that educators
“desperately wanted their new students to get by” and devised approaches to promote
success:

In 1933, a federal survey of high school grading practices revealed that most high

schools made “strenuous efforts” to avoid failing students. Performance

standards were low, and half the schools reported that even when students failed
they were still promoted. The practice of social promotion had been invented,
although it had not been given a name yet, and course offerings were watered

down as student choices expanded. (p. 211)

In the 1940s, the mission to de-emphasize rigorous academic education and,
instead, embrace a more “student-centered” approach took another turn, this time under
the name of “Education for Life Adjustment.” In 1947, the federal Ofﬁce of Education
established the Commission on Life Adjustment for Youth, with Charles Prosser as its

chief spokesperson. According to Prosser’s calculations, only about 40% of high school

seniors went on either to college or into skilled trades. That meant 60% of the students
16

left school without being prepared for much of anything. Better, Prosser said, that these
pupils learn something connected to the real demands of living. So advocates of
Education for Life Adjustment proposed lessons dealing with practical things like
choosing a mate, shopping, home repair, ﬁiendship, and recreation. In effect, the Life
Adjustment advocates seemed to be saying, the problem was the students, and not the
school and its curriculum. In The Last Little Citadel, Hampel (1986) noted,

In one sense, high schools had to belittle their students in order to elevate

themselves. . . . Previous reformers had also espoused child-centered schooling

premised on low estimates of the students’ appetite and ability for academic work,
but no one before had stated the case so frankly and merrily, and thus so foolishly.

(pp. 46-47)

The Life Adjustment movement never did seem to make much of an impact, and by the
mid-19505 it had disappeared as a formal movement (Hampel, 1986). Life Adjustment
had been an easy mark for critics. In the early 19505, books like Bestor’s (1953)
Educational Wastelands ridiculed the movement. Bestor, a professor of history at the
University of Illinois, asked whether the American people had lost their common sense
and native wit “so that now they have to be taught in school to blow their noses and
button their pants” (p. 64).

That was just the beginning of the criticism. The progressive, child-centered
education that provided “something for everyone” began to come under ﬁre from
educators, citizens, and scholars. Negative response to the “watering down” of the
American high school grew louder and louder during the early and mid-19505. After all,
the dilution was easy to document. For example, a total of 83.3% of high school students
studied a foreign language in 1910, compared with 20.6% in 1955 (Ravitch, 1983, p. 68).

Latin is of particular interest. In 1910, 49% of high school students were enrolled in

Latin classes; by 1949, students taking Latin classes had dropped to 8%, and to 1% by

17

1982. In the area of mathematics, 57% of high school students were enrolled in algebra
in 1910, compared to 29.5% in 1982. In 1910, 31% took geometry, compared to 11% in
1983. By contrast, in 1910 only 11% of high school students enrolled in business
education courses. That number increased to 59% by 1949. There were no physical
education courses in 1910, but, in 1949, 69% of high school students were enrolled in
these programs, and, in 1982, 59% were taking physical education classes (Murphy,
Beck, Crawford, Hodges, & McGaughy, 1999, pp. 91-93).

Besides Bestor, other vociferous critics emerged: Clifton F adiman, Admiral
Hyman Rickover, and Rudolph Flesch. Hollingshead’s (1949) Elmtown ’s Youth
provided ﬁrst-hand documentation that academic demands on students were minimal.
Then came an explosion, both literally and ﬁguratively. On October 4, 1957, Russia
successfully launched Sputnik. The reaction was loud and immediate. Russian schools,
many reasoned, had obviously done what American schools had failed to do: They had
prepared scientists capable of taking people into space (a cOnclusion, by the way, that
ignored German rocket scientists spirited into the Soviet Union at the end of World War
II).

Critics condemned America’s ineffective “new education” and urged a return to
traditional subjects and rigorous academic training. In 1958, the Rockefeller brothers
funded the report Pursuit of Excellence, an urgent call to add rigor to education. Then
Harvard President James B. Conant wrote The American High School Today. Published
in 1959, the book became an immediate best seller. Conant proposed a blueprint for the
improvement of American education. His plan addressed the old debate framed by Elliot

and Hall half a century before: Should American high schools emphasize academic or

18

 

practical course work? The response proposed by Conant was familiar: We should, in
effect, do it all. Grant (1988) wrote:

Conant’s widely inﬂuential report was an attempt at compromising these two

positions. . . . He championed the comprehensive high school with a variety of

offerings but opposed rigidly tracking students into precollege or vocational
curriculum. He favored ability grouping, however, so that students would be

challenged at an appropriate level. (p. 214)

Conant became the champion of the comprehensive high school. His goal was to
promise a design that would provide a general, required education for all future citizens.
In addition, there would be appropriate course work for those not continuing their
education beyond high school, as well as challenging academic course work for students
who did plan to attend a college or university.

America responded. Curriculum innovation and “excellence” became the goals
during the late 19505 and 19605. Educational leaders emphasized educating the talented,
individualizing education, increasing expectations, and providing rigorous academic
instruction. Calculus was moved from the collegiate level to the senior year of high
school. Subjects normally taught in high school were moved to the elementary school
level (Clark et al., 1964). A national survey of changes in high school curriculum
conﬁrmed that there were signiﬁcant increases in students enrolling in academically
rigorous courses. High school pupils in advanced mathematics, physics, and chemistry
courses increased by almost 2,000% (Grant, 1988, p. 215).

The 19505 and 19605 (and the early 19705) brought other signiﬁcant changes to
American schools. These were years of dramatic growth in student enrollment and
school programs. Hampel (1986) noted that “coping with growth was the foremost

achievement of those years” (p. 137). Nationally, student enrollment grew by about 20%

between 1949 and 1961. In 1949, 36,000 students were enrolled in high school remedial

l9

 

classes in English and reading; that number increased to 276,000 by the early 19605
(Grant, 1988, p. 215). In the decade of the 19605, the number of teachers rose from
575,000 to about 1 million (Grant, 1988, p. 150). Schools and schooling were ﬁrrther
inﬂuenced by the civil rights revolution that took place during this period. In 1954, the
United States Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, outlawed the practice of
“separate but equal” schools, a decision that had a profound, although not immediate,
effect on American schools. During the 19605, there was also a signiﬁcant rise in the
number and aggressiveness of teacher unions across America. During the 10-year period
from 1955 to 1965, there were only 35 teacher strikes. In the 1968-69 school year alone,
there were 131 strikes (Hampel, 1986, p. 97). Aggressive unionism redeﬁned the terms
and conditions of teachers’ employment.

Then came the 19705. During this decade, there was a liberal backlash to the
strident demands for “excellence” and higher standards. There was concern for the
disadvantaged. Egalitarian reforms were introduced. Emphasis was placed on
humanizing and creating curriculum relevant to the lives of students. Hampel (1986)
noted:

In 1965, high school principals ranked “development of positive self-concept and

good human relations” seventh of eight educational goals; by 197 7, that same

objective was second often. The new prominence of feelings and emotions went
hand in hand with the heightened responsiveness to the rights of the
disenfranchised. There was less regimentation and more choice, both academic

and personal. Getting a hall pass became easier. (pp. 137-138)

Students and teachers seemed considerably more open about drugs and sex during the
mid- and late 19705, and both students and teachers gained due process rights. In 1979,

the Supreme Court (in Tinker v. Des Moines) upheld the right of students to wear black

arrnbands protesting the Vietnam War. The Warren Court ruled that neither “students nor

20

teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression at the
schoolhouse gate.”

Eventually, however, it became obvious to educators that the American people
were alarmed by what they perceived to be the excesses of the 19705. During the 19705
and into the 19805, Gallup polls indicated that American schools (especially high
schools) were deteriorating. In poll after poll during the 19705 and 19805, “lack of
discipline” was consistently ranked as the top problem of American schools. Private
school enrollments grew. Citizens voted “no” more frequently on school ﬁnance issues.
“If the sixties and the seventies were in some respect an analogue for the thirties and
forties, the eighties became an echo of the ﬁfties with a renewal of calls for excellence,
for quality, and for equality” (Grant, 1988, p. 216).

Four major reports were issued in 1983 that sounded the alarm. The report
receiving the most attention came from the Commission on Educational Excellence
appointed by President Ronald Reagan, entitled A Nation at Risk. The report warned that
America’s preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technology was being
overtaken by competitors (principally Japan). As a result of “the mediocre educational
performance that exists today,” the Commission concluded, our nation is at risk. The
other reports completed in 1983 included America ’s Competitive Challenge from the
Business-Higher Education Task Force, Action for Excellence from the Education
Commission of the States, and the Twentieth Century Fund’s Making the Grade.

The debate concerning the nature and purpose of the American high school
curriculum continues to the present day. Contrasting points of view are still evident.
There are those who favor a more practical education, on one hand, and those promoting

“quality” and a rigorous academic experience on the other. We have seen that, faced

21

with difﬁcult choices between these two disparate, strongly held approaches, American
educators often make room for both. The curriculum is expanded. The result is the
diversiﬁed high school. The American high school today is a buffet of educational
choices. If students plan to continue their education at a postsecondary institution, they
often enroll in high school courses that are demanding. The opposite is also true. Some
course work at the high school level seems undemanding. The goal seems to be student
success, with minimal effort on the part of that student. This discussion has special
signiﬁcance when considered in relation to alternative high schools.

Because the purpose of this study was to describe and explain how alternative
high schools in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of
curriculum, organization, and pedagogy, it is ﬁtting to ask where and how “new”
alternative high schools ﬁt into the conversation regarding the intellectual content of
secondary schools. Are alternative education high schools one more example in a long,
familiar pattem—the pattern of again and again expanding and diluting what was taught
in American high schools in order to ensure student success? Or, instead, do alternative
high schools ﬁnally legitirnatize an educational process that puts students’ needs and
interests ahead of intellectual requirements unrelated to “real life”? In other words, are
alternative schools—like traditional high schools—highly diversiﬁed and willing (in
response to popular demand) to design programs and courses that encourage student
success? Or do these second-chance institutions have a more focused curriculum
approach designed to meet speciﬁc objectives? (And, if that is the case, are those

objectives deﬁned or undeﬁned?)

22

The Organization of Traditional High Schools

Suppose for a moment that you are a high school student. Midway through four
years of study, your family moves. You begin your junior year in a new school. What do
you ﬁnd? Are the structure and organization of this new high school signiﬁcantly
different from your previous school? Will the school day and calendar be similar? Will
the classrooms look the same? What courses will be offered, and how will grades and
credits be computed? And what about what goes on in the classroom? Will teachers face
the same challenges in your new school that they confronted in your old high school? It
is probably, in fact, almost certain, that you will recognize much of what you see in your
new high school. Traditional American high schools are more alike than they are
different. Of course, many of these similarities are superﬁcial: the gym with its
basketball backboards and bleachers, long rows of lockers, cafeterias ﬁlled with rows of
tables, handbooks listing rules distributed at the start of the school year, the assistant
principal’s base of operations in “the ofﬁce” (a destination students will usually avoid, if
possible). However, many other things common to the organization and structure of
traditional high schools are far from superﬁcial. Instead, these relationships, strategies,
and patterns of behavior are deeply embedded in the fabric of the traditional American
high school. Some of these complex organizational characteristics have evolved over
decades and are deeply rooted in a uniquely American experience. Others, equally
powerful, are relatively new and sometimes surprise educators with their impact.

Many of the organizational attributes of traditional high schools have been studied
extensively by scholars. I have drawn from this literature to describe and explain key
organizational characteristics of the traditional American high school. Again, my

purpose was to devise a framework that can be used to compare second-chance

23

alternative high schools to traditional, or mainstream, American high schools. I begin by
looking at how students and teachers in traditional high schools spend their time. How
do educators allocate and arrange time during the school day? How are students
organized? How is school space arranged? What rules govern the behavior of both
teachers and students? I also consider the isolation of teachers in the classroom and the
autonomy of teachers to make decisions that chart the course of both their own classroom
activities and the curriculum of the entire school. Finally, I examine informal things that
students do that inﬂuence the organization and structure of traditional high schools, with

particular attention to the way students interact with their instructors.

Thalraditional High School: Batches. Bits. and Slices

Consider for a moment that a typical traditional high school is like a small town,
only “within walls.” Small towns are complex places, with all sorts of organizational
requirements and challenges. As one would expect, the same is true for high schools.
We will ﬁnd that high schools have developed highly structured strategies to deal with
such requirements and challenges. And throughout this discussion there is a common
threat: compartrnentalization. The American high school is a conglomerate of batches,
bits, and slices. This discussion of the organization of traditional high schools ﬁrst
examines how the curriculum is sliced into discrete subjects and, in turn, how those
subjects are compartmentalized into classes. I consider the power of “the clock” and
outline how time is allocated during the school day. Next, the arrangement of school
space to promote orderliness is reviewed. Finally, I consider some of the “do’s and
don’ts” that saturate the environment and discuss the critical need for educators to

maintain order in the American high school.

24

 

At the very heart of the organization of the traditional American high school are
“subjects” and “classes.” As noted earlier, the general public understands this very well.
Students “take subjects.” Teachers “teach subjects.” The subjects include things like
English, mathematics, social studies, physical education, foreign language, wood shop,
computer programming, creative writing, and much more. Students enroll in these
classes in “batches,” with about 25 students in each group. Teachers, in turn, are often
grouped into “departments,” depending on the subject matter they teach. Usually there
are 6 to 10 departments in a high school, each with a department chairperson who gets a
small monetary stipend and a little additional noninstructional time to handle the
requirements of the position.

Students are required to complete a certain number of classes to earn a high
school diploma. It is common for each semester (or half-year long) class to earn one half
of a “credit,” with about 18 credits needed to complete the graduation requirements of a
three-year high school and about 24 credits necessary to earn a diploma in a four-year
high school. Students are also required to take a certain number of classes from each of
several subject areas. For example, high school students usually are required to complete
at least four credits (eight semester-long classes) of English, one credit of physical
education, three credits of mathematics, three credits of social science, and so on. There
is often, then, a sequence to classes within a department; a student completes Algebra 1
before becoming eligible for Algebra 2.

In general, students are grouped by age, especially for required classes. Most
advanced classes (like French 3) will include mostly older students. Beginning classes
(like Spanish 1) will be made up predominantly of freshmen and sophomores. The job of

the teacher, many would say, is to “cover” the subject-area content for a particular class.

25

In turn, students are tested to see whether they mastered the material covered by the
teacher. Based primarily in students’ success on such assessments, teachers give students
numerical grades for each class. These grades are compiled into a composite score,
called the grade point average (GPA). This GPA is then used to determine the student’s
rank among all members of an entire class (i.e., within the 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade).

The clock regulates the length of class periods. Clocks seem to be everywhere in
high schools, and for good reason. The ebb and ﬂow of the school day is regulated down
to the minute. Sizer (1984) wrote, “The school schedule is a series of units of time: the
clock is king” (p. 79). The day is divided into periods, usually six or seven, lasting from
40 to 60 minutes each. Each period equals one class and earns one half credit. More and
more, high schools throughout America are grouping some of these periods together into
“blocks,” which allow more time for classes like science labs and hands-on vocational
courses. (In such cases, these blocks might not meet every day; or perhaps they will be
earning more than the traditional one half credit.)

The student’s day seems to have the feel of a workday in a highly structured
industry. Sizer (1984) saw the high school as the workplace of young people:

School is to be like a job: you start in the morning and end in the afternoon, ﬁve

days a week. You don’t get much of a lunch hour, so you go home early, unless

you are an athlete or are involved in some special school or extracurricular

activity. School is conceived of as the children’s workplace, and it takes young

people off parents’ hands and out of the labor market during prime-time work

hours. (p. 79)

Each period or block is separated by short “passing time” periods, usually about
ﬁve minutes long. Bells (or sometimes tones) sound to announce the end of a class
period. Students empty into hallways and head for their next class. The bell--or, more

commonly now, a toneusounds again and the next class begins. Cusick (1973) reﬂected

that few people regard this fragmentation as anything out of the ordinary:
26

No one ﬁnds this odd. Since the school is divided into rectangular rooms and the
curriculum into clearly delineated fragments, it is only logical that the day should
be similarly divided to create an integrated whole. In sum, the building, the
organizational structure, and the day are all carefully structured to facilitate the
process of the teacher passing on his particular specialty to batches of students.

(p. 17)

Finally, just as minutes and periods become days, days join to make a school year.
A school year also looks much the same from school to school across America. The
school year begins in late August or early September and continues until about mid-June.
There are vacation breaks sometime in December and sometime in the early spring. The
total days of student instruction usually number somewhere between 180 and 190.
Teachers usually work about 5 or 10 additional days. It is traditional for both teachers
and students to “get the summer of .” During the summer months, however, activities
usually continue at the high school. Many high schools offer summer school classes in
June and July. Athletic practices begin in August, and throughout the summer months,
classes are offered in the one high school subject area that consistently has 100% of its
students highly motivated: drivers education.

In the physical setting of the school, like the organization of time and subject
matter, one again ﬁnds compartmentalization. Students and teachers come together in
rectangular rooms. Like the compartments of an egg carton, the rooms face each other
along long, locker-lined hallways. At the end of one of these hallways is the ofﬁce area.
Here are found the workplaces of a principal, one or two assistant principals, secretaries,
guidance counselors, and other support staff. At another location in the building, there is
a media center ﬁlled with books, magazines, and computers, and an entire wing of the
building is devoted to a large gymnasium and locker rooms. There is a cafeteria where
students come together for lunch. Students often use this same area as a place to meet

friends and do homework before and after school. There are larger classrooms for art and
27

 

music programs. Some schools also have vocational classrooms, for classes like wood
shop, metals, and graphics.

Such designs have the same purpose as many of the rules and regulations that
govern life within the walls of a high school: to maintain control and promote
orderliness. Look at the rules and regulations—the do’s and don’ts—in just about any
high school’s student handbook, and you will ﬁnd common features. The handbook
addresses things like appropriate dress, use of lockers, swearing, skipping class, and
being tardy for class. There may be regulations for drinking soda and eating in class.
There certainly will be rules dealing with the use of alcohol and drugs, and smoking.
However, there are many important and universally understood behaviors and routines
connnon to traditional high schools that are not found in the handbook. This is especially
true of classroom behavior. Cuban (1984) noted some common expectations for
students:

Class routines for students raising their hands to answer questions, to speak only

when recognized by the teacher, and to speak when no one else is talking—the

principle of turn-taking—establishes an orderly framework for instruction when it
is delivered to groups. Students asking permission to go to the pencil sharpener
or to leave the room reafﬁrm the teacher’s control over student mobility and the

imperative of orderliness. (p. 242)

Cuban also considered the alternative. Organizing a classroom so that it is
student-centered instead of teacher centered presents challenges. Small-group
instruction, increased student expressiveness, and a higher degree of interaction among
students all could “generate noise, movement, a muted View of teacher authority, and
make a shambles of routines geared to handling batches of students” (p. 243). So,
instead, most teachers opt for a teacher-centered classroom approach. For educators,

keeping the peaCe is essential. In Inside High School, Cusick (1973) described what the

community expected of Mr. Vincent and Mr. Rossi, the principal and vice-principal of

28

Horatio Gates High School: “What the community wanted was an orderly, well run,
clean school, one that was free of controversy, student unrest, or anything that could be
called ‘trouble.’ As long as the administrators maintained that kind of school, they were
secure” (p. 39).

Keeping order in a traditional American high school, however, is no small
accomplishment. Among the greatest challenges is the potential for what Powell et a1.
(1985) termed “educational purposelessness” among students. Go to any high school in
America and you will ﬁnd students who share a basic attitude—a common dislike for
school and impatience with rigorous study. They do not want be in school. They would
rather be someplace else. So, then, why do they decide to come to school? They come
because there is no other place for them to go, because high schools are a convenient
place to get needed classes like drivers education, because of extracurricular activities,
because this is where their friends are. Not on the list, you might have noticed, is “love
of learning” or “learning skills for a job.” Students realize that, with just a high school
diploma, it will be almost impossible to get one of the “good jobs” in America. The kind
of job they will be able to get with a high school diploma generally requires only minimal
skills or knowledge. Such realities do not contribute to interested, motivated students.

Sizer (1984) also talked about the realities facing high school teachers when
educationally purposeless students ﬁll their classes. He described the teaching of Martha
Shiffe, and her students’ indifference:

Shiffe restarted her teaching, working through lists on the blackboard. Phylum

chordata. . . . Subphulum gnathostomata. . . . Superclass pisces. . . . Superclass

tetrapoda. . . . The students paid her little attention. . . . Even while the names of
living things poured out of Shiffe’s lecture, no one was taking any notes. She
wanted the students to know these names. They did not want to know them and
were not going to learn them. Apparently no kind of outside threat—ﬂunking, for

example—affected the students. Shiffe did her thing, the students chattered on,
even in the presence of a visitor. (p. 157)

29

Sizer observed that individual teachers need to get agreement—to negotiate agreement—
with each class. “Getting agreement takes persuasiveness, ﬂexibility, trust, and time.
Failing to get agreement, and agreement on ends and means that forward serious
intellectual activity, however painful, results in an empty school” (p. 160).

A signiﬁcant challenge facing educators, then, is keeping order in spite of the lack
of motivation of many students. But why do we expend so much energy dealing with
these students? Why put up with them? It sounds obvious that it would be easier to keep
the peace if indifferent students were “weeded out.” To answer, we need to point to
fundamental American values. Americans value education and the important component
of good citizenship. Moreover, education has almost always been seen as “the way up”
for a nation of immigrants. In the 18405, a system of compulsory education was begun to
ensure a free education for children who would not otherwise be able to afford such
school. Cusick (1983) added:

The importance of maintaining order and attendance is not simply because state

funds may be lost, the community dismayed, bond issues defeated in election, or

the bureaucratic processes upset. All of those are important, but beyond all of
them, the very legitimacy of the school rests with the obligation to preserve the
egalitarian ideal. That means getting all students to come, even those that don’t
want to, getting them to stay, and attend class regularly, even if they would rather
be somewhere else, getting those that are repeatedly disorderly to try again to see

if they can complete the required work. (p. 111)

In America, then, schools take them all and then work to keep them all there, regardless
of the difﬁculties connected with this egalitarian ideal.

In summary, the bureaucracies of the American high schools have been designed
primarily to provide direct, uncomplicated ways to maintain control and promote
orderliness. Subject areas are divided into classes. Students are batched together in

groups and assigned to classes. The school day is divided into periods, and the clock

regulates the lives of students, and teachers, inside a traditional high school. The layout
30

and design of the school are designed to promote efﬁcient education of batches of
students, in an economical manner. There are many do’s and don’ts that regulate the
behaviors of both students and teachers. There are all sorts of rules for all sorts of things:
smoking, drinking soda, being tardy, walking through the halls during class times,
swearing, and skipping school. The traditional American high school is clearly a well-
regulated institution. Students do not come and go as they please. To survive in
traditional high schools. students, and teachers, must behave within the limitations
established by a complex bureaucracy. Is the same true in alternative high schools? Or,
instead, are alternative high schools simpler places, places where both teachers and
students have fewer regulations and a wider range of acceptable behaviors? Are
classrooms more student centered? Or are many of the same organizational
characteristics present in an alternative high school classroom as are common in
traditional high school classes? In this research project, I considered these questions.
Teachers in Traditional American High Schools:
On Their Own

Another key characteristic of the organization of the traditional American high
school is the largely autonomous role of teachers in these institutions. Teachers are, in
many ways, on their own in the classroom. This could be seen as a sign of respect. The
teacher is a professional pursuing a vocation that is largely a solitary effort—one teacher
in charge of one group of students. Teachers are trusted “subcontractors” who know
what to do to accomplish their mission. Sizer (1984), however, suggested a different
conclusion:

In one sense, high school teachers should feel that they are greatly respected,

since they are allowed to teach in remarkable privacy. However, this privacy may

be less the result of social respect than of indifference. One can read some
parents’ minds: Our kids’ll learn that history stuff on their own, and it really

31

doesn’t matter if they don’t learn it at all, because they’ll never actually use it

much. But be nice to our kids. Give them good grades. Many teachers hear this

quiet signal, with or without cynicism. Undoubtedly it is there. Thus, the privacy
of the classroom is not always the honored badge of the professional but an
indication that what happens there is thought to be of relatively little importance.

(pp. 183-184)

Moreover, teachers only rarely talk to other teachers about what is happening in
their classrooms or engage in spirited discussions about effective approaches to teaching.
Powell et a1. (1985) pointed out that every teacher, therefore, has to develop his or her
own approach to the craft of teaching. This means that experienced teachers often do not
help new teachers develop their skills, validate good teaching, or help them improve
when their teaching is not good enough. “This is an unfortunate list, one that many
teachers regret. For every teacher must solve the problem of how to teach” (p. 308).

Many teachers also are trapped by their heavy teaching schedules. The heavy
workloads began in the ﬁrst half of the 20th century, partly in response to exploding
enrollments. In 1910, 915,000 pupils were enrolled in high schools in America. That
was only about 10% of those old enough to attend high school. The growth in the
numbers of students during the next three decades was remarkable: 2,200,000 by 1920
and 4,399,000 by 1930. In 1940, 6,601,000 young Americans attended high school,
about two thirds of those who were old enough to attend. Powell et al. (1985) noted that
American high schools “were fast approaching universal coverage. . . . Thousands of high
schools had been erected, many more thousands of teachers had been educated and
employed, and millions of students had been schooled and graduated—all in four or ﬁve
decades . . . the accomplishments were impressive” (p. 276).

Lightfoot (1983) also commented on this growth and pointed to signiﬁcant

changes in the nature of America’s schools caused by increased numbers:

32

An average of more than one new high school was built for each day of each year
between 1890 and 1918. Not only did the students increase dramatically in
numbers but the kinds of students changed profoundly as well. Especially in
urban schools, the overwhelming predominance of white Anglo-Saxon middle-
class youngsters disappeared. Just as the inﬂux of poor rural families and even
more destitute European immigrants had changed the character of urban
populations, so too the enforcement of compulsory education and the institution

of child-labor laws markedly altered the population of urban schools. By 1909,

58 percent of the students in thirty-seven of the nation’s largest cities were of

foreign-born parentage. (p. 20)

McNeil (1986), too, saw this period as critical for the development of the current
organization of American high schools. “It was during this time, when the school was
being directly used as an agency of social control, that our present forms of high school
organization were being established” (p. 6). McNeil listed a number of characteristics of
high schools that were established in this period, including administrators who function
as business managers, curriculum differentiated by track, and an emphasis on “outputs”
rather than longer-term learning.

The student population leveled off during the 19405 and then began its signiﬁcant
climb again in the 19505 and 19605. By 1960, the enrollment of American secondary
schools had nearly doubled from 1940 levels, with a total of 8,485,000 students, and by
1970, the total student population was 13,327,000. In 1990, it was 11,336,000 (Murphy
etaL,1999)

Another result of this growth was that, by the early 19305, two thirds of all high
school teachers faced ﬁve or more classes a day, ﬁve days a week. That meant teaching
about 150 students each day. Moreover, two out of three teachers had to teach at least
two subjects, so they had the added burden of “additional preps.” Powell et a1. (1985)
noted that “these were extraordinary teaching loads, many times the size of those in

elementary schools or universities” (p. 272). The result is obvious. There is only so

much time. Much of that time must be used to deal with the tasks associated with so
33

many students and so many different assignments: learning names, preparing for class
presentations, grading papers, and writing tests, as well as the bookkeeping duties that are
part of every day, such as taking attendance, completing forms, and keeping a contained
classroom area attractive (or at least presentable). Boyer (1983) summarized the
problem:

The combination of the self-contained classroom and a heavy teaching schedule

gives teachers few opportunities to share common problems or sustain an

intellectual life. One teacher describes it this way: “I don’t know how friendly
co-workers are, how honest they are. It just seems that in teaching . . . you do
your thing in class, and you leave, and you don’t talk about it.” Another teacher,

when asked with whom he discussed his teaching, responded, “My wife.” (p. 158)

Given this situation, it seems clear that teachers in traditional American high
schools will ﬁnd it difﬁcult to magically collaborate to develop curriculum for their
schools, or even agree to a common, well-articulated purpose for the school. As a result,
there is no planned curriculum. Cusick (1983) noted:

I found that the staff did not process the curriculum through their interactions.

Rather each person was allowed, even encouraged, to develop his or her own

content and approach to subject matter, and was then allowed to deliver that

curriculum to the students in ways that he or she deemed appropriate. . . . What
one decided to do or not to do in the classroom seemed to emanate not from
consensually based, school-wide norms, but rather from how each individual,

following his or her inclinations and predilections, decided to behave. (p. 3)

And where does administrative leadership enter into the portrait of schools
without a clearly articulated curriculum or sense of purpose? Again, it is important to
realize that the organizational characteristics of traditional American high schools are
interrelated. The administrator is keeping order. The administrator is worried about
community relations and is the “cheerleader” for the positive things happening at schools,
and the teacher who can help her or him do that is praised and appreciated. Cusick

(1983) told an interesting story of a superintendent who permitted a biology teacher, who

was not all that interested in biology but loved hunting and ﬁshing, to start an “outdoor
34

education” class. According to the superintendent, the class was “good for kids,” and
that was enough. There was no worry here about where the class ﬁt into the overall plan
for the school. “From the organizational perspective, it did not matter what was taught or
even what was learned as long as there was some ‘liking of the kids’ on the part of the
teachers and some ‘interest in something’ on the part of the students” (p. 70).

What about alternative high schools? A host of questions emerge: Do alternative
high school teachers talk to one another about educational matters? Do they collaborate
on schoolwide curriculum? Is there dialogue on the content of courses taught by
instructors—and their approaches to teaching? What is the teaching load of each
instructor? How does it compare to the class load of regular high school teachers? In
this study, I looked at these questions and others as I sought to describe and explain how
alternative high schools compare with traditional high schools in the organization of

teaching for learning.

Interactions Between Students and Teachers

In this section, the organizational structure of the traditional high school is
considered from the perspective of what students do and how they interact with teachers.
In the discussions on keeping order and teacher autonomy, it was seen that the challenges
facing the teacher are formidable. The teacher must deal with educationally purposeless
students who have no motivation to be attentive and engaged in class. The teacher is
relatively isolated and often has no well-deﬁned, overall purpose or curriculum for
classroom instruction. Moreover, he or she is busy. Most high school teachers have to
deal with ﬁve or six classes a day, each containing 25 or 30 students. Do such challenges
inﬂuence student-teacher interactions? Of course they do. Moreover, the pedagogy of

the teachers is also inﬂuenced by such organizational realities. In this section, we will

35

see that much interaction between teachers and students involves giving and getting
information; the teacher directs the instruction and gives, and the student (it is hoped)
gets.

So the typical teacher in a traditional American high school does not have a great
deal of time for interactions with individual students. Workloads prohibit that. However,
it is important to recognize from the start of this discussion that there are many positive
interactions between teachers and groups of students in the traditional American high
school. Such group interactions can be very effective. Lightfoot (1983), for example,
talked about intellectual play. The interactions between a teacher and students when they
are caught up in the intellectual play are, she noted, impressive:

Intellectual play is rare but very visible. The pleasure of inspired exchange is

obvious to any visitor. . . . Students appear alert, engaged, and responsive. . . . At

Kennedy, 1 saw intellectual play in an early morning Latin class primarily

inhabited by Black and Hispanic students. The teacher, an intense and dynamic

Italian with a lingering musical accent, made the rehearsal of vocabulary and the

lessons of conjugation feel like an adventure. . . . Most students showed intense

interest, hands were waving in the air as they clamored to speak, and smiles of
satisfaction spread on their faces when the smooth and quick exchanges began to

feel like a well-oiled machine. (p. 367)

Much student time, however, is not spent so productively. A large part of
students’ day is spent as spectators. The students watch and wait. First, there is a
homeroom period. Then there are the ﬁve-minute periods between classes and a 35- or
40-minute lunch break. Add to that the time spent in each class involved with things like
taking attendance, collecting papers, and passing out worksheets, and it is quickly
apparent that students’ instructional day probably amounts to only about half the time

they spend in school. It follows, then, that a substantial part of students’ day is not spent

with matters related to instruction or with interaction with teachers. Instead, much of

36

their day is spent in small groups. Cusick (1973) said that, for students, a substantial part
of the day consists of conversations in small groups:

More and more as I continued in the school, I saw that the students’ most active

and alive moments, and indeed the great majority of their school time, was spent

not with teachers and subject-matter affairs, but in their own small-group
interactions which they carried on simultaneously with their class work. . . . While
the teacher’s attention was diverted to some maintenance or procedural detail, or
while he was interacting with one to the exclusion of others, there was this
breaking up into dyads, tryads, or groups and this activity paralleled the subject-

matter interactions. (p. 58)

Student-to-student interactions, then, inﬂuence the organizational characteristics
of traditional American high schools. These are places where students interact with other
students freely and often, even during class time. However, interactions with teachers
are, for the most part, limited. Is this also true in alternative high schools? 15 there more
interaction with teachers in these schools, or, like traditional high schools, do students
spend most of their time waiting for something to happen, or watching, or listening? Do
students in alternative high schools, like those in traditional high schools, interact
primarily with other students? Or do they talk freely with teachers—teachers who are a

part of the students’ discussions and interactions? Such questions were considered in this

study.

Summag

I reviewed the literature to explore three aspects of the organization of the
traditional American high school. The resulting portrait presented an image that does not
mesh with the idealized image that many citizens have of the all-American high school.
Instead, we see a place where teachers and administrators struggle——and make
compromises—to keep order. It is a place with a complex bureaucracy designed to

maintain control and promote orderliness. In traditional high schools, teachers often

37

operate in isolation, and they do not seem to have the time or inclination to collaborate on
schoolwide curriculum and a uniﬁed sense of purpose. We see schools where students
and teachers do not seem to interact all that much. Instead, students spend a lot of time
waiting and watching, and talking with other students. This is the mirror that was held up
to second-chance alternative high schools in this study when considering organizational

characteristics of these places.

The Pedagogy of Traditioaal High Schools

In the traditional American high school, teachers and students often see
instruction as a matter of giving and getting the right answers. Teaching becomes
“knowledge telling,” and effective teaching is seen as didactic, tightly designed with step-
by-step rationality (Cohen & Barnes, 1993). Sizer (1984) wrote:

The pedagogy here is telling. Teachers explain things; they, textbooks, ﬁlms, and

analogous paraphernalia furnish information. If students are interested and

orderly (often a tall order for adolescents), many can be taught at once, in lecture
theaters. Telling is cost effective, far more so than coaching. That is why it is so

popular in schools. (p. 109)

The classroom in the traditional high school is often teacher centered. Teachers
control what is taught, when, and under what conditions in their classrooms (Cuban,
1984). Teachers focus on deﬁnable skills and facts students can master. Knowledge is
broken up into manageable units and presented bit by bit. Standardized tests assess
students’ mastery of these bits of knowledge. Oakes and Lipton (1990) noted that adults
usually do not see children as their own meaning-makers, but instead as sponges who
need to sop up knowledge quickly and efﬁciently. The typical school curriculum,

therefore, favors learning about over learning to do. People like this approach, said

Oakes and Lipton, because it is tidy:

38

Much about this approach is satisfying. It explains learning by means of a tidy
cause-and-effect equation. The effects are behaviors, which are, by deﬁnition,
observable and measurable. This view of learning and treatment of knowledge
ﬁts the schools’ and society’s notion of how to educate large numbers of children
efﬁciently. Aptitude, achievement, and classroom tests produce an abundance of
numbers for educators and parents to use in ranking, sorting, and measuring
children’s learning. In the process they deﬁne learning as behaving correctly—
getting the right answer. (p. 84)

Cusick (1973) described teacher behaviors that result ﬁ'om their role as experts.
Teachers set up the class interactions so that they are on one side, students on the other.
They then lecture, pass out assignments, question, call on students to answer, and then
criticize and discuss the responses of these students. Usually, there is little room for
students’ speculation or reﬂection. “Occasionally a ‘discussion’ will take place,” Cusick
added, “but these are more often cases of the teacher manipulating students’ responses to
illustrate his planned conclusion” (p. 26).

Lightfoot (1983) took readers inside a high school classroom in Highland Park, a
suburb of Chicago, to illustrate this sort of behavior by teachers. With detailed
descriptions of classroom situations, Lightfoot documented the experiences of numerous
teachers, including Ms. Wood, “a short curly-haired woman with a wry wit and an
intense love of literature.” A passage describing one of Ms. Wood’s class sessions
demonstrates that both teachers and students had “bought into” the importance of
reaching planned conclusions:

With book in hand, she [Ms. Wood] stands and leans casually against the front of

her desk as she thoughtfully and carefully forms her ﬁrst comments. The class

seems to anticipate and enjoy her reﬂective, rurninative style. . . . The discussion
centers on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle T cm 's Cabin, a book the class has been
reading and analyzing for the past two weeks. . . . The discussion focuses on
attitudes towards slavery as Wood asks students to contrast Stowe with Frederick

Douglass, an autobiography they have recently read. The class is silent and

attentive, so the teacher leaps in and says, “Stowe mitigates—aha! One of your

vocabulary words from last week—the horror of slavery, but Douglass’ book is

too extreme . . . it makes people feel uncomfortable. . . . Some students—all of
them girls—are listening and taking notes, others are yawning and clearly bored

39

by the esoteric distinctions. The interest of all students becomes suddenly
charged when Wood says, I’ll give you a clue . . . in fact, I ’1] tell you one of the
questions on the next exam. . . . On the basis of your reading of The Jungle, The
Grapes of Wrath, Frederick Douglass, and Uncle T am '5 Cabin, which would you
rather be, a slave or an English laborer? . . . Hands are immediately raised and
responses come from all corners. As students struggle for “the right answer,”
they do not seem to totally believe Ms. Wood when she claims there is no correct
response. She is looking for a reasoned argument, a thoughtful interpretation, and
creative insight. They are trying to come up with what she wants to hear.

(pp. 144-145)

McNeil (1986) explained that teachers use the technique of “telling” for good
reason. Teachers are rewarded more for their ability to control students than for their
ability “really to teach.” Lectures and a “telling” approach to teaching are “an
accommodation to a complex organization which embodied conﬂicting goals and gave
powerless teachers the responsibility of resolving the conﬂicts” (p. 211). McNeil talked
about experienced teachers who control classroom behavior through pedagogy and
treatment of course content. In Contradictions of Control, she wrote:

According to the teachers themselves, the techniques they used to convey course

content to their students had to fulﬁll two goals: they had to give the information

about American history and economics; and, at the same time, they had to impose
ﬁrm limits on the complexity and topicality of class discussions, and on the
efﬁciency of presentation. Most of the teachers resolved this tension by
maintaining tight control over course work, eliminating almost all reading
assignments or written work. Information related to the course came to students
through lectures and teacher-selected ﬁlms. . . . Students rarely spoke . . . and
when they did it was to ask the teacher a question rather than discuss the topic

with each other. (p. 166)

Lightfoot (1983) made another important point about teachers who talk and
dominate classroom discussions. This pedagogy can be effective. She told ﬁrst about
Mr. Clifford, a “forceful and erudite teacher.” She described in detail his lecture on
Aristotle and Greek tragedy. Lightfoot concluded:

The students’ queries sound simple, almost pedestrian, against the elaborate

language of Clifford. Yet they do not seem disturbed by the dissonance. Perhaps

they do not hear it. Mostly they appear to appreciate the way he vigorously seizes
their questions and launches into a poetic, embellished response. Despite the fact

40

that Clifford’s voice dominates and students are in the listening mode most of the

time, the class seems to see him as responsive. A willowy girl with sandy hair

and a studious gaze offers a paradoxical view. “He talks a lot . . . but he’s the best

listener.” (p. 107)

Lightfoot then described the impressive teacher-led discussion by Ms. Shelley, who
proves that not all teachers are pushing students toward predetermined conclusions. This
teacher leads a discussion of Death of a Salesman that is “energetic and fast-paced.” The
discussion is argumentative, but not hostile. Writing about the students’ involvement in
the interchange, Lightfoot said, “The teacher does not direct them towards a tidy
conclusion. They are struggling with unanswerable questions, profound dilemmas, and
she wants to encourage them in the struggle” (p. 206).

So there are exceptions. A great deal of creative teaching is happening in
traditional American high schools. However, the dominant pedagogy is “telling.”
Teachers hold and distribute the knowledge. They are the experts. This view of
knowledge as something that can be known, and revealed to others in an orderly way, has
deep roots. The historical development of how humans have thought about knowledge,
the branch of philosophy called epistemology, is long and complex. For more than 25
centuries, philosophers have debated questions related to “knowing.” What can we
know? Can we know anything? If we can know, how is it we learn something?

Greeks such as Socrates and Plato were among the ﬁrst to address these questions
from the perspective of a priori truths. Knowledge, they said, can be known
independently of reasoning or experience, and such realities are unchanging. For these
Greek philosophers, the basis of what we can know is founded on absolute “F orms” or
truths. The Greek Aristotle expanded on this point of view. He agreed with the basic

premise, but added that time makes a difference. The truth is there, but in an

undeveloped form: In time, the acorn can become a tree. Christian philosophers like

41

Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with the central theme of Platonian and
Aristotelian epistemology, but with a signiﬁcant difference. The Forms of Plato become
connected with knowledge of God, and with truths held in the mind of God. We can
have knowledge of God, then, based on certain revealed truths, such as the trinity and
incarnation.

Then came the Enlightenment, and with it a revolution in how philosophers
regard the theory of knowledge. Many philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that it
was no longer possible to rely on absolute truths (the Forms of Plato), truths that are in us
and waiting to be revealed. Instead, these philosophers said knowledge is based on either
what humans can experience or what they can learn through reasoning. Knowledge that
comes from the experiences of the senses is called empiricism. Knowledge that comes
from reason is called rationalism. Most historians give Descartes credit for beginning
this shift in thinking about knowledge. Descartes started with what we seem to know. In
his case, it was “I am a philosopher, I have a body, I am sitting by the ﬁre.” Bit by bit he
showed that we do not know any of that for sure—it could, for example, all be a dream.
He concluded, however, that in the ﬁnal analysis one can know “I exist.” (“I think,
therefore I am.”) Beginning with that basic element of reason, Descartes took it all the
way back to a lmowledge of the existence of God. He reasoned. He knew. That is
rationalism. Other philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Locke and Berkeley, took
a somewhat different point of View. They said we know because of what we
experience—what we learn through our senses. That is empiricism. Philosophers like
Hume and Kant expanded on this basic premise of empiricism.

My purpose in this study was to describe and explain how alternative high schools

in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum,

42

organization, and pedagogy. With that in mind, let us consider the connection between
philosophical approaches to knowledge and the way teachers approach teaching. If
teachers believe that knowledge is based on “eternal truths” (a priori truths), then their
approach toward students will be different than if they believe it is something to be
constructed, to be discovered. If knowledge is a priori (that is to say, not based on
experience), teachers are experts who explain what they know to be true to another: Read
this. Memorize this. Learn this. On the other hand, if humans construct knowledge
using either reason or the experiences of the senses, then teachers are guides developing
students’ intellect. Teachers enable students to make something from nothing. In one
case, students are given knowledge; they are told what to think and believe. In the other
case, students are taught how to think—or use their senses—so that they themselves can
ﬁnd knowledge.

In traditional American high schools, there is a considerable amount of creative
teaching that encourages students to use reason and experimentation to learn and
discover. However, there is more “telling.” This epistemological approach is an obvious
and pervasive feature of the current traditional high school. Teachers see knowledge as
something that is known, something that can be revealed to others. They are the holders
of knowledge, and it is their task to share that knowledge with their students. However,
in this study I asked, What about alternative high schools? 15 it the same in these
schools? Do alternative high school teachers also see teaching and learning as “telling”
and “getting”? Do alternative high school students sit in classrooms listening and taking
notes? Do they “wake up” when a teachers says, “This will be on the test”? And what
about tests? Are there tests? What material is tested, and how is it tested? Finally, and

signiﬁcantly, do teachers in alternative schools practice what McNeil (1986) called

43

“defensive teaching?” Do they design strategies for teaching presenting content so they
are able to keep control? Or, instead, can these teachers “really teach”? These are all
important questions, and each will play a role in helping to describe and explain what, if

anything, is alternative about alternative education.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

“A well-written editorial is a good thing—but it’s not
what I’m out to do.”
John McPhee,

As quoted in Hamilton, 1990, p. 54
Introduction
The purpose of this study was to describe and explain how alternative high
schools in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum,
organization, and pedagogy. In this section, I explain the method and theoretical
framework used in this study and describe the exploratory questions that guided the
research. I also consider sampling strategies, review information related to data
collection, explain the process used for interviewing, and present the preliminary

interview protocol.

Theoretical Framework

The primary method selected for this study was the interview. Other background
or supplemental sources of data included structured observation and examination of
selected cultural products and artifacts. Interviewing is a qualitative, ethnographic
approach well suited to addressing the complex issues associated with this inquiry. The
exploratory questions for this study, presented in Chapter I, address many issues related
to complex perceptions held by individuals. It is necessary to use an approach that
probes for broader, deeper understandings; therefore, a qualitative approach makes good
sense. Qualitative research is concerned with process, rather than cataloging outcomes or

products. Qualitative researchers are interested in how people make sense of their lives

45

and experiences (Creswell, 1994). The qualitative researcher physically goes to the
people involved and collects, absorbs, analyzes, and sorts information—and ultimately
derives meaning and understanding from a process that builds theories from countless
details that have been absorbed by observing and listening. The ethnographer, then, is
more a reporter than an editorial writer. Geertz (1988) noted, “What a proper
ethnographer ought properly to be doing is going out to places, coming back with
information about how people live there, and making that information available to the
professional community in practical form” (p. 1).

The process here is inductive. It is important to remember that the primary
instrument for data collection is the researcher herself or himself, and not inventories,
instruments, or questionnaires. The researcher ﬁlters the data that have been collected
and builds abstractions, concepts, and theories from details. Theory emerges. Glaser and
Strauss (1967) called this process theoretical sampling:

Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory

whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes this data and decides

what data to collect next and where to ﬁnd them, in order to develop his theory as
it emerges. This process of data collection is controlled by the emerging theory,

whether substantive or formal. (p. 105)

In the beginning, the decisions of the researcher are based on general perspective.
Then, as data are collected, the process becomes more challenging, and more a matter of
insight and intuition. Creswell (1994) noted that “data analysis requires that the
researcher be comfortable with developing categories and making comparisons and
contrasts. It also requires that the researcher be open to possibilities and see contrary or
alternative explanations for the ﬁndings” (p. 15 3). The anticipation—the hope—is that

there will be moments of illumination. Patterns will appear, additional data will conﬁrm

early suppositions, categories will “come together,” and a theory will emerge.

46

 

Another challenge for the qualitative researcher is to present the ﬁndings in a
convincing, authentic manner. Geertz (1988) considered the difﬁculties facing the
ethnographer, both in “being there” and then writing about “being there”:

The capacity to persuade readers . . . that what they are reading is an authentic

account by someone personally acquainted with how life proceeds in some place,

at some time, among some group, is the basis upon which anything else
ethnography seeks to do—analyze, explain, amuse, disconcert, celebrate, edify,

excuse, astonish, subvert—ﬁnally rests. (pp. 143-144)

The ethnographer as qualitative researcher, then, not only has to have truly “been there,”
but must also convince us that if we had been there and saw and heard and felt the same
things, we would have concluded what he or she concluded.

Final topics that need to be discussed here concern generalizability, reliability,
and validity—the indicators that have long been considered as measures of scientiﬁc
evidence for a scholarly study. Generalizability means that a relationship that holds for
one group under certain conditions will probably hold true for other groups under the
same conditions. It is usually not the intention of qualitative research to generalize
ﬁndings, and some scholars point to this as a serious shortcoming of qualitative research.
However, other scholars present a different point of view. Generalization of qualitative
results is possible when the reader is convinced that (as Geertz noted in the passage
quoted above) the qualitative account is authentic, and that reader feels that he or she also
has “been there.” Such mutually agreed upon conclusions produce generalizability.
However, it needs to be emphasized that such generalization comes from the reader and
not the researcher. Cusick (1983) concluded, “It is the obligation of the reader to

determine if the descriptions presented in the account match his experiences in similar

places” (p. 134). If there is a “match,” there is a generalizability to be had from one-of-a-

47

kind studies, but it is not the responsibility of the researcher to argue for such abstracted
generalizability.

My goal for this study, then, was to construct this account of what happens in
alternative high schools 50 as to allow a potential for generalizability. That required
constructing a narrative rich in detail. I have described circumstances surrounding
events, and provided thorough and accurate descriptions of what took place. It was my
intention to portray what Weber (1949) termed “the richness of reality” in a convincing
manner.

Two other topics that need to be addressed are reliability and validity. Reliability
is concerned with the consistency or repeatability of the study. Would another researcher
ﬁnd the same results if he or she used the same methods? Validity answers the question,
“Is this explanation plausible?” Or, stated another way, “Did it happen the way I said it
did?” Scholars favoring quantitative methods have objected to lack of standardized tests
when qualitative methods are used. However, qualitative researchers respond by saying
it is the method that produces a measure of reliability. Another researcher using this
same method would obtain similar results. In this study, I enhanced reliability and
validity by thoroughly explaining the method (to maximize the opportunity for accurate
replication), by carefully designing initial protocols for interviews, and by using
structured observation, along with analysis of cultural products and artifacts, as
supplemental sources of information. I also tape-recorded and transcribed the interviews.

Method also can enhance validity. Cusick (1966) cited the six indices of
subjective adequacy stated by Homans. This framework was presented to address the
method of participant observation, but it also holds meaning for other forms of qualitative

research. These indices are time, place, social circumstances, language, intimacy, and

48

consensus. If the researcher spends adequate time in a place close to the people he or she
studies, validity will be enhanced. The researcher also needs to have an adequate number
and variety of encounters within the social structure of the community being studied.

The researcher and his or her subjects should also share a common language, and
accuracy will increase as the researcher achieves a greater degree of intimacy with the
subjects of the research. Finally, Homans noted that consensus promotes and conﬁrms
validation. Consensus is a conﬁrmation that the meanings identiﬁed by the researcher are
“on target” (Cusick, 1966, p. 232). When the researcher carefully considers each of these
areas and also provides a narrative rich in detail as described above, it is possible to

achieve an acceptable degree of validity.

Initial Exploratory Ouestion_s

The initial exploratory questions for this study ﬂowed from the purpose for this
inquiry and from what I had learned from the literature about the development and nature
of traditional American high schools. These three initial exploratory questions formed
the ﬁamework used in this assessment of how alternative high schools compare with
what I had discovered about traditional high schools. These initial questions were
introduced in Chapter I and are described below in more detail. The questions were
ampliﬁed with several additional probes, some of which were related to what was learned
from the literature concerning the nature and development of traditional high schools.

1. What is alternative about the curriculum of alternative high schools? The
additional questions below address the issues of teacher collaboration for curriculum
development, and curriculum implementation.

Who has the major responsibility for determining what curriculum topics will be
covered in alternative high school classes during the year?

49

 

Who has the major responsibility for determining basic content materials to be
used by students during the year?

Are curriculum guidelines available and used?

Is there oversight? Is the instructional process monitored to ensure that the
curriculum is implemented?

What process is used to add an elective class?

2. What is alternative about the organization and structure of alternative
high schools? The additional questions below deal with the bureaucracy, the role of the
teacher, and interactions between students and teachers in alternative high schools.

What are the “do’s and don’ts,” the rules that govern the behavior of both students
and teachers?

What is the class load of alternative education teachers?
Do alternative high school students talk freely with teachers?

To what extent is the instructional activity in an alternative high school student
centered?

How is time allocated for tasks?

How is the school space arranged?

Are students organized into discrete groups?

15 content organized into discrete classes?

3. What is alternative about the pedagogy of alternative high schools? The
additional questions below focus on “teaching as telling” and the epistemological
approach of alternative high school teachers.

What portion of the alternative high school teacher’s day is spent presenting
material that students are expected to learn?

How much time do alternative high school students spend doing group projects,
or in other types of instruction that require collaboration with other students?

Do alternative high school students work on individualized instructional
programs?
50

What types Of student assessments do alternative high school teachers use?

Do alternative high school teachers have a clear notion of a body of information
that students must “get” before completing the requirements for a class?

Do teachers work “by themselves” in alternative high schools?

Do alternative high school teachers talk with other teachers about teaching

strategies?

Sampling Strategies

First, it needs to be noted that, because I used theoretical sampling, it was not
necessary to use random or stratiﬁed sampling. A researcher who generates theory is
establishing an instance of the case and makes no claim as to magnitude of scope. The
goal of theoretical sampling, or grounded theory, is to identify categories and their
properties, and to suggest a theory based on interrelationships. On the other hand, the
goal of statistical sampling is generality of scope. Statistical sampling looks for evidence
on distributions among categories, based on the premise of generalization that was noted
above—that relationships that hold true for one group under certain conditions will
probably hold true for other groups under the same conditions. This is a presumption of
persistence (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, pp. 106-107). Stated another way, with statistical
sampling the categories being studied are deﬁned from the beginning, and from there it is
a matter of determining the distribution of people among these categories to verify
magnitude and establish persistence. Theoretical sampling, on the other hand, is more
akin to a process of revelation. The researcher discovers categories and generates theory
as she or he collects, codes, and analyzes data.

The preliminary plan for this study called for data to be collected from at least
four alternative high schools. A minimum of one administrator, two staff members, and

three students were to be interviewed at each school. The scope of the study was limited
51

 

to alternative high schools with enrollments of at least 40 students. A Michigan
Department of Education (1998) Administrative Guidebook broadly deﬁnes “alternative
education” as programs operated as a subdivision of the regular K-12 school system
“designed for students who can be better served in an alternative delivery system” (p.
C-5). Geik and Walsh (1999) indicated that second-chance alternative high schools are
designed for “preventing at-risk adolescents (or recovering them) from dropping out of
the K-12 system and completing the requirements for a high school diploma” (p. 2). The
limitation of an enrollment of at least 40 students was established to ensure that the
alternative program being studied was a separate school and not a program with a single
class, supervised by just one or two professionals. There were no other limitations to the
scope of the study.

Not all four alternative high schools were identiﬁed at the beginning of the study.
Instead, I began by visiting one school and identiﬁed the other three schools to be
included while in the process of interviewing teachers at each subsequent site. The initial
task, then, was to select the ﬁrst school to be visited ﬁrst. This school was selected, in
part, because it was possible to gain access. My recent experiences as a school
administrator in Michigan, and school administrators’ being familiar with my advisor,
provided access to several alternative high school programs. Additional sites were
selected, in part, based on experiences in the initial school selected for this study.

Coding and analysis of data for one alternative high school took place before and
during research at the next site. Enough time was allowed between schools to permit this
analysis. Glaser and Strauss (1967) were clear about the advantages of collecting,
coding, and analyzing data simultaneously. They noted that, in the case of conventional

statistical sampling, collecting, coding, and analyzing data can be divided into separate

52

 

periods of work. “Research aimed at discovering theory, however,” they added, “requires
that all three procedures go on simultaneously to the fullest extent possible; for this, as
we have said, is the underlying operation when generating theory” (p. 113). Glaser and
Strauss concluded by noting that it is impossible to engage in theoretical sampling

without coding and analyzing at the same time.

Data Collection

The primary method used in this study was the in-depth interview. There are
signiﬁcant advantages to the use of this method. Face-to—face interviews provide more
ﬂexibility than other methods. The researcher is able to follow up on responses and to
explore relevant issues that arise from the comments of the respondent. The interview is
more “personal” than questionnaires and written inventories, and allows the researcher to
control the dialogue. Moreover, the interview allows the researcher to watch nonverbal
signals from the respondent, which provides an opportunity to assess the validity of the
information provided.

However, there are also problems with the use of interviewing as a method of
research. Respondents can distort or exaggerate facts, and their memory of events that
occurred in the past might not be accurate. Moreover, they are likely to present data from
a biased, self-serving point of view. That said, the interviewer can guard against such
obstacles in a number of ways. For example, questions can be structured to minimize and
discourage distortions. The interviewer can probe using additional questions or restating
questions asked previously. More than one person can be asked about the same issue or
event. Responses of all respondents can be compared to check for consistency. Finally,
respondents can be interviewed in groups, thereby causing each person to serve as a

check on the others.

53

 

Other background or supplemental sources of data also informed this research,
including structured observation and examination of cultural products and artifacts.
Gordon (1969) noted that various methods provide totally different kinds of information
and can supplement each other. He used the example of a community study to illustrate
the advantages of a multimethod approach:

Community studies must triangulate information from public records, personal
documents, newspapers, direct interviews with the focal person, interviews with
others about the focal person, participant observation and pure observation merely
to obtain the many types of information needed to cover the complex
phenomenon we call a community. (p. 40)

Cultural products and artifacts also help reveal the nature of a complex situation.
Geertz (1983) indicated that such products and artifacts are physical manifestations of
culture and, indeed, are part of the culture itself. Products and artifacts collected in this
study included:

Records summarizing student attendance

Student handbooks

Tests and assessment instruments

School policy statements

Student progress reports

Information presented to students upon admission to the school
Information for students and parents indicating course offerings
Class lists and schedules

Descriptions of the physical setting

Structured observation also provided supplemental information for this study.
Structured observation is not as intensive as participant observation; instead, it targets
speciﬁc areas to be observed that will inform speciﬁc research questions. Merriam
(1988) noted:

What to observe is somewhat a function of how structured the observer wants to

be. Just as there is a range of structure in interviewing, there is also a range of

structure in observation. One can decide ahead of time to concentrate on
observing certain events, behaviors or persons. . . . Less structured observation

can be compared to a television camera scanning the area. (pp. 90-91)

54

One concern with observation is the inﬂuence of the researcher’s perspective. This
perspective, according to Schatzman and Strauss (1973), is the “angle of observation.”
The researcher observes from the vantage point of his own biases, history, and attitudes
and beliefs. Gordon (1969) explained that the research is affected by the “profound fact
that empathy enters into not only the way we participate or observe as part of the
information-gathering activity, but also into the way we interpret and analyze the
information and the application of the results to future situations” (p. 40). A goal, then, is
for the researcher to minimize his angle of observation—his perspective—and to the
extent possible look at situations from the angle of observation of the participants. For
this study, structured observation included sitting in on class sessions, talking with
teachers during breaks and lunch periods in teachers’ rooms, visiting child care centers
and talking with staff, observing and talking with students in hallways before school and
between classes, and sitting in “the ofﬁce” (observing and talking with the secretary and

school administrator).

The Interview Process

Interviews were conducted with an administrator, staff members, and students at
each alternative high school. The administrator was interviewed individually. Teachers
were interviewed individually or in groups of two or three. Students were interviewed
individually, in groups of two or three, and in focus groups with more than three (usually
ﬁve or six) students. The lengths of interviews varied. Most were approximately an hour
long.

All interviews were tape-recorded. The tapes were transcribed and the resulting

protocols typed, read, and reread. Briggs (1986) noted that tape recording is important

55

and outlined the advantages of this technique, including the ability to revisit the
recordings as the researcher’s skills and understanding increase:

[Tape recordings] can be reviewed from time to time, transcribed closely, and can

be presented to one’s consultants for comment. Tape recordings are also

interpretively open-ended, like any text in the native language. As the
researcher’s social-cultural and linguistic competence grows, new dimensions
become apparent. New theoretical understandings can similarly be applied to the

original recordings to see if they can resolve persistent problems. (p. 99)

Interviews were conducted in the alternative high school building. Before starting
any interviews, I met with an appropriate school administrator to explain the nature of the
study. I sought teachers to interview who had at least one full year (or nearly one full
year) of teaching experience in that particular alternative high school. I looked for
students to interview who had attended the alternative high school for at least one
semester. I informed respondents about the nature and purpose of the study, and I
obtained consent forms from all administrators, teachers, and students above the age of
majority. I obtained a consent form from parents or guardians of minor students. The
consent form explained that the respondents were under no obligation to participate and
could, if they chose, withdraw from the study at any time for any reason whatsoever. I
explained that anonymity was guaranteed to the extent possible and that the names of all
respondents (and all schools) would be kept anonymous.

Initial questions for the interviews are included in the following section. Because
of the qualitative nature of the study, this protocol was designed to guide the initial
interview, with the expectation that other topics might be addressed as they arose. These
initial interview questions were reﬁned and expanded throughout the process of

interviewing, as responses ﬁ'om participants suggested additional probes. Structured

observations conducted at each site also generated questions for the interviews.

56

Initial Interview Protocol

The initial interview protocol called for each interviewee to be assigned a

pseudonym. The date and time of the interview were noted. I greeted the participant and

began the interview with questions related to the participant’s relationship with the

alternative high school.

Questions related to the subject’s association with the school:

a. How long have you worked/been a student at this school?

b. Talk a bit about your work/school experience before coming to this school.

In the remainder of the ﬁrst interview, the following questions were used as guides for

the discussion:

Questions related to curriculum:

l-A

2-A

3-A

4-A

5-A

1 O-A

What texts are used?

Does the teacher follow the text closely?

Who decides what content the teacher will teach?

What “outside” pressure inﬂuences what the teacher decides to teach?
Do teachers meet to plan the content of instruction in this school?

Do students have a say in what content will be taught?

When a new student enrolls, what educational choices does he or she have
at this school?

15 a student able to get extra instructional help if he or she needs it—say,
in reading, writing, or mathematics?

Would you describe the educational emphasis of this school as “academic”
or “practical?”

If a teacher wanted to see a new elective class added, or substituted for
another elective, how would he or she go about making that happen?

57

Questions related to organization:

l-B

2-B

3-B

4-B

5-B

6-B

7-B

8-B

9-B

1 0-8

How many students are in a class?

When choices are possible, what criteria are used to decide which students
go in which classes?

How are classroom space and fumiture arranged?
When do students get to talk during class time?
How do you get students to talk?

Do you talk much with teachers?

What does the organization of the school day look like? (For example, is
the day divided into “periods” or “blocks” of time?)

What does the report card look like?
What standardized tests are given?

To what extent do teachers talk with other teachers about students—and
what is happening in their classrooms?

Questions related to pedagogy:

l-C

2-C

4-c

S-C

How much of a teacher’s day is spent presenting material a student is
“supposed to learn”?

Think about a typical day. What proportion of the day does the teacher
spend:

a. standing and explaining?

b. sitting with students having a discussion?

c. walking around talking with students?

(Which does he/she do the most? Which the least?)

How much time do students spend in class doing group projects, instead
of working on their own on things like worksheets and reports?

Does the teacher have a clear notion of a body of information that a
student “must get” before completing the requirements for a class?

How many students participate in for-credit individualized classes—
classes custom designed for just that one student?

58

6-C How often do students have quizzes and tests?

7-C What “outside” pressures inﬂuence how the teacher decides to teach?

M

This research project relied on interviews as the primary method of data
collection. Other sources of data that informed this research included structured
observation and examination of cultural products and artifacts. F ace-to-face interviews
were conducted with an administrator, teachers, and students at four alternative high
schools. Most interviews were approximately 60 minutes long. The interviews were
tape-recorded and transcribed. An initial interview protocol guided the ﬁrst interviews.
This protocol was expanded and reﬁned as subjects’ responses shaped the focus of the

research.

59

CHAPTER IV

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DATA

In this chapter, I present and analyze the data collected to describe and explain
how alternative high schools in Michigan compare to traditional high schools in the areas
of curriculum, organization, and pedagogy. Persons interviewed for this research project
were very willing to give their perceptions of both traditional and alternative high
schools. Their responses were almost always incisive and candid. When students had
previously attended traditional high schools, they shared, often in rich detail, their
experiences at and opinions about those schools. The students also gave detailed
descriptions of what it was like to attend alternative high schools.

Common sets of beliefs emerged from the data. In this chapter, after ﬁrst
presenting research procedures and describing the setting for the study, I present and
analyze these areas of common beliefs. Some of the beliefs were directly related to the
previously stated research questions for this study. With other beliefs, the connection to
the original focus of the study (that is to say, the curriculum, organization, and pedagogy
of alternative high schools) was not so direct and obvious. The study was expanded to
include these areas because the data provide signiﬁcant insight concerning the ways that
alternative high schools in Michigan differ from traditional high schools.

The ﬁrst common set of beliefs outlined in this chapter deals with perceptions of
traditional high schools. Students generally viewed traditional high schools as cold,
impersonal, judgmental, and status-conscious places. At traditional high schools,
teachers lecture from the front of the classroom and do not willingly provide help to

students. Administrators and teachers, although generally not as critical of traditional
60

high schools as students were, nonetheless conﬁrmed many of the students’ impressions,
especially those dealing with the judgmental nature of these schools.

The second common set of beliefs described here deals with students’, teachers’,
and administrators’ general attitudes toward student relationships and behaviors at
alternative high schools. Alternative high schools generally were viewed as accepting,
family-like, and nonjudgmental.

A third set of beliefs deals with the perceptions of students and staff members
about student-teacher relationships at alternative high schools, and a fourth collection of
common beliefs concerns the relationships among teachers and what it means to be an
“alternative ed. type” teacher. Both students and staff indicated that there is a more
personal and productive relationship between students and teachers at alternative high
schools, and there was general consensus among teachers that a special sort of teaching
style is required at an alternative high school. New teachers need to learn the norms
necessary to become “alternative ed. type” teachers.

A ﬁfth set of beliefs explored in this chapter deals with institutional demands and
student success at alternative high schools. Most of those interviewed for this study
shared a common view of the primary objective of alternative high schools and the means
to accomplish this objective. The mission of alternative high schools, they agreed, is to
“get them through.” Alternative high schools enable students who would not otherwise
graduate from high school to get their diplomas. And what do students have to do to “get
through?” Students need to master certain fundamental institutional requirements——
speciﬁc, well-articulated requirements dealing with things like attendance, earning

credits, independent studies, and basic behavioral standards. These requirements varied

61

from school to school, but everyone seemed to know what the requirements were for their
school.

At alternative high schools, then, students succeed by mastering institutional
demands that have been reduced to a set of “bottom-line” requirements. These
requirements concentrate on the forms of schooling and not academic achievement.
Moreover, staffs shape these requirements to maximize opportunities for success by
students. The same is true for curricula, which is the topic for the sixth and ﬁnal set of
beliefs outlined in this chapter. The data indicated that the curriculum of alternative high
schools is creatively designed with an eye toward maximizing opportunities for student
success. The data ﬁrrther revealed that “ﬂexibility and freedom” were common traits of
curriculum in the alternative high schools included in this study.

To summarize, this chapter is divided into eight sections. In the ﬁrst section, the
research procedures for this study are reviewed. The setting for the project is described
in the second section, and the four alternative high schools included in the study are
introduced. The third portion of this chapter includes data regarding perceptions of
traditional high schools held by the alternative high school students and staff members
interviewed for this study. The next three sections present data related to perceptions of
students and staff members related to alternative high schools. The fourth section
outlines general perceptions about student relationships and behaviors at alternative high
schools. The ﬁfth section deals with student-teacher relationships at alternative high
schools, and the sixth considers the nature of teaching in these schools. The seventh
section of this chapter contains data related to perceptions of student success in
alternative high schools and examines institutional demands necessary to achieve such

success. In this section I also outline key organizational and institutional characteristics

62

of alternative high schools. Finally, the chapter concludes with a presentation of data

related to the curriculum of these institutions.

Research Procedure
Interviews were conducted with 41 individuals in four alternative high schools.

The distribution, by category, of those interviewed is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Number of persons interviewed, by category.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category Number
Administrators 5
Teachers or counselors 10
Students 25
Secretaries 1
Total persons interviewed 41

 

The interviews spanned a 14-month period, beginning in April 2001 and
continuing through May 2002. As discussed in Chapter 111, one of the ﬁrst tasks for this
study was to select the four research sites. A number of considerations inﬂuenced the
selection process. First, I wanted to visit sites where I was unknown. As a former school
administrator, I had been indirectly connected with several alternative high schools in
districts throughout Michigan. None of these schools were considered as research sites
for this study. Second, I wanted to select alternative high schools that were of similar
size (based on student enrollment) but located in different sizes of communities and in
different regions of the state. I believed such diversity would add interest and depth to
the study. I wondered whether I would discover commonalities among the alternative
high schools visited, despite obvious differences in locations and types of communities.

Finally, site selection was inﬂuenced by practical considerations. In the case of

each research site selected, the district’s superintendent or high school principal was well

63

known to my advisor, a close friend, or myself. Such familiarity opened doors. Further,
these administrators often introduced me (either personally or by prior conversation) to
the administrator of the alternative high school. These introductions, it seemed to me,
increased the level of my acceptance. I was often introduced by the alternative high
school administrator as “the guy from Michigan State University doing research on
alternative high schools who knows Jim” (or whoever was the superintendent or high
school principal).

Once the site had been selected, I worked out a schedule for visits with the
school’s administrator. I visited the ﬁrst and second sites more frequently than the third
and fourth sites. I visited the ﬁrst site ﬁve times, the second site four times. The third
and fourth sites I visited two times and three times, respectively. As the study
progressed, it became clear that fewer visits of longer duration made more efﬁcient use of
time (especially considering that travel to these sites took longer. In the case of the third
site, travel time was approximately ﬁve hours one way; in the case of the fourth site, it
was approximately three hours one way).

Initially, interviewing for this study was guided and informed by three research
questions:

1. What is alternative about the curriculum of alternative high schools?

2. What is alternative about the organization and structure of alternative high
schools?

3. What is alternative about the pedagogy of alternative high schools?

During the course of the investigation, tentative conclusions were reached
concerning these research questions. Data gathered in the interviews also suggested new

questions concerning speciﬁc differences between alternative and traditional high

64

schools. For example, when students discussed previous experiences in traditional high
schools and their current situations in alternative high schools, commonalities emerged. I
began hearing similar things from a number Of different students and staff members. For
example, they discussed things like attendance issues, creative ways to earn credits,
smoking, and relationships in alternative high schools. Such common responses, along
with the tentative conclusions reached concerning the research questions, shaped and
guided the remaining interviews and observations. Therefore, both speciﬁc points of

inquiry and the focus of this research evolved as the project progressed.

The Setting

For purposes of conﬁdentiality, the names of schools, school districts, and
communities included in this study are pseudonyms. The names of administrators,
teachers, and students also are pseudonyms. The names and selected basic characteristics

related to the four alternative high schools researched in this study are shown in Table 2.

Mapleton Alternative High School

Mapleton Alternative High School has an enrollment of approximately 90
students. The school is located in a single-story brick building located on a narrow
country road. The building, which at one time was a small elementary school, sits alone
at the top of a small hill on a site of approximately three to four acres. No other buildings
or homes are near the school. Inside, a hallway runs through the center of the building,
with double exit doors at each end of the corridor. On one side of the hallway are three
classrooms; one is the childcare center for Mapleton (as the school is commonly called).
On the other side of the hallway there are two classrooms (one of which doubles as a

teachers’ room), ofﬁces for the principal and secretary, restrooms, and a storage area that

65

Table'2. Characteristics of communities and school districts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alternative High School
. . Mapleton Northshore .
Characteristic Alternative Nivzgzrrrntury Alternative Wesgzribgolirgh
High School y High School
Apple Valley
. . Eastwood Northshore Blue Harbor
SChOOl drstrrct School Public Schools Area Schools Schools
rstrrct

Communi Hanes, Eastwood, Cedar Bay, Blue Harbor,

ty Michigan Michigan Michigan Michigan
Type(s) of Rural/small . Small city/ Small city/
community city/suburban Urban ﬁmge rural rural
Population 13,500 32,000 22,500 36,500
Per pupil
foundation grant
(2001/02) $6,300 $6,700 $6,300 $6,931
Total student
enrollment of
district @001 /02) 3,000 4,300 3,100 6,200
Percentage
economically o o o 0
disadvantage d“ 26/o 13 /0 37/0 16/0
Media“ h°“s.,e' $47,275 $42,992 $31,683 $53,793
hold Income

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Census of Population and Housing (2000).

'Source: Standard and Poor’s School Evaluation Services, 2001,
www.5es.standardand poors.com. (percentage of student enrollment receiving free and
reduced-price lunches. State average = 45.2%).

bSource: Standard and Poor’s School Evaluation Services, 2001.

66

also serves as the serving area for student lunches. At the end of the hallway, there are
juice and Coca-Cola vending machines. About half way down the hallway, another large
vending machine stands against the wall. This machine dispenses candy, gum, and chips.
(The candy machine, students told me, is temperamental. Between class periods, students
crowd around it, spending considerable time thumping it, talking to it, and complaining
bitterly when it fails to deliver.)

Mapleton is located in the Apple Valley School District, about ﬁve miles from the
town of Haynes. It is an older, well-established community with a number of new
businesses (such as fast-food restaurants) on the fringe of town. In the area surrounding
the community there are farms (many of them fruit farms) and a growing number of new
subdivisions. It is about a 20-minute drive to the large city near Haynes, and many
people choose to live in the Apple Valley School District and make the commute. As a
result, the school district has been growing steadily, and the district’s character is now
part rural, part small town, and part suburban. Ninety-six percent of the students of
Apple Valley Schools are white, with 3% Hispanic, 1% black, and 1% Native American
and Asian/Paciﬁc Islander. A number of the schools in the Apple Valley School District
are newly constructed or recently remodeled. The district’s facilities include an 850-
student high school, an 850-student middle school (for grades 5 through 8), and two

elementary schools. None of the buildings are located near Mapleton.

New Century Acaﬁcmy

The setting for Eastwood Public Schools’ New Century Academy is much
different. Positioned between two busy, four-lane streets in the Detroit metropolitan area,
New Century Academy is located in the district’s Churchill Adult and Community

Education Center. The alternative high school has an enrollment of approximately 125

67

students. The stylish one-story building housing the school is set back from the street on
a large, pleasant, park-like site. Eastwood is an older Detroit urban-fringe community.
Many of the homes and businesses in Eastwood Public Schools appear to have been
constructed in the 19405 and 19505. Much of the architecture has a one-story, no-
nonsense look. Drive off one of the trafﬁc-ﬁlled four-lane arteries, and you ﬁnd rows of
relatively small, solidly built brick homes, most looking very much alike. (Built in the
19505 and 19605, these homes must have once held a sea of young baby-boomers.) That
said, there is also new construction under way in Eastwood, and there are a number of
newly remodeled buildings and shopping areas. Eastwood does not appear to be
experiencing urban decline. Rather, it has the look of a generally unpretentious and
stable community.

The Churchill Adult and Community Education Center building is clean and well
maintained. Classrooms and offices are clustered about an all-purpose room and
courtyard. There often seems to be something happening in the all-purpose room. The
room is used for basketball and other activities, and small groups of students often sit on
the ﬂoor and talk. (The most unique use of this space I observed was a Junior R.O.T.C.
drilling team marching briskly back and forth across the space, an instructor shouting
commands and instructions.) There are four classroom “pods,” each containing four
classroom areas. The hallways are wide, and artful use of wood and glass throughout the
building adds a touch of class. The building, far from being new, reﬂects the open-
classroom designs common in the 19605. However, there is not a make-do, second-use
feel to this facility. The building ﬁts its function. It looks like it was designed to be a

community education center.

68

The Churchill Adult and Community Education Center also houses an extensive
after-school education and enrichment program. Besides the 125 students attending New
Century Academy’s daytime alternative high school classes, approximately 376 16- to
19-year-olds attend evening high school completion classes. Another 700 people, aged
20 or older, attend evening high school completion classes. Enrichment and latch-key
childcare programs for Eastwood Public Schools also are located in the Churchill Adult
and Community Education Center, as is an English as Second Language program with an
enrolhnent of approximately 180 students from more than 30 countries.

Eastwood Public Schools has an enrollment of approximately 6,220 students. Of
these students, 90.8% are white, 4.3% are Hispanic, 1.9% are Native American, 1.6% are
black, and 1.4% are Asian/Paciﬁc Islander. Districts of similar geographic size and
similar enrollment surround it. The district contains a 1,000-student high school building
for grades 10 through 12, a 700-student school for students in grades 8 and 9, a building

housing 700 students in grades 6 and 7, and ﬁve elementary schools.

North_s_hore Alterraative High School

Northshore Alternative High School has an enrollment of approximately 115
students and is located in the business district of Cedar Bay, a city with a population of
about 15,000 located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The historic three-story building
that houses the school has a distinctive red stone and red brick facade. Located in the
middle of a block-long expanse of storefronts, the building was a “downtown” bank for
many years. There is no doubt that this is a converted business structure. The large,
omately trimmed windows at the front of the building are now boarded over with

grooved cedar siding (painted gray, so at ﬁrst glance these spaces still look like

69

windows). A yellow sign with blue lettering hangs above the entry and reads
“Northshore Alternative Education Center.”

The downtown setting causes some difﬁculties for the staff. Parking is difﬁcult to
ﬁnd, so some staff members and students park on the street in ﬁ'ont of the school. There
are no parking meters on the street, but there is a three-hour parking limit. Parking
attendants regularly go down the street marking tires with yellow chalk, and if a car has
not been moved in three hours, a ticket goes on the windshield. Many staff and students
seemed to have internal clocks set to three-hour intervals, and they were frequently seen
heading for the door saying, “I gotta move my car.”

There is a well-wom but comfortable look to the facilities of Northshore
Alternative High School. When you enter through the front door, the principal’s ofﬁce is
located to the left; the secretary’s ofﬁce is straight ahead. Both small rooms are crammed
with desks, telephones, ﬁling cabinets, chairs, and supplies. Next to the secretary’s ofﬁce
is an “options room,” which provides a space for students to complete independent
studies or stay during suspensions from their regular classes. A hallway to the right
winds around to the back of the building, providing access to several classrooms and a
small cafeteria. A small room behind the secretary’s ofﬁce contains a coffee maker and
serves as a small teachers’ room. There is a table in this room, and it was here that
interViewing took place for this study. A combination staff restroom and storage area is
located behind the teachers’ room.

This is the last year that Northshore Alternative High School will be located in
this building. Facilities and programs are being realigned in the district, and the school
will be moved to a former elementary school (currently the district’s administrative and

Board of Education ofﬁces).

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Northshore Public Schools includes a high school with an enrolhnent of
approximately 900 students, a 600-student middle school for sixth, seventh, and eighth
graders, and ﬁve elementary schools. The total student enrollment of the district is
approximately 3,100 students. The racial/ethnic composition of the district includes 71%
white, 27.8% Native American, with the remaining 1.2% black, Hispanic, and Asian/
Paciﬁc Islander. The racial/ethnic composition of Northshore Alternative High School,
as reported in Standard and Poor’s 2001 School Evaluation Services, is 56.8% Native

American, 37.8% white, 3.6 Hispanic, and 1.8% Asian/Paciﬁc Islander.

Westerby High School

Like Northshore Alternative High School, Westerby High School in Blue Harbor,
Michigan, will soon be moving to a larger, more modern building. At the time of this
research, Westerby (as it is commonly called by students and staff) was located a block
from a major highway in a single-story former elementary school constructed primarily
of cement blocks. Located in an older residential area, the school has a fenced
playground extending from the side of the building, and a portable classroom building
sits behind the school. Inside, the building is clean and functional. Near the ﬁ'ont entry,
the building has ofﬁces for the principal, secretary, and adult education coordinator.
Because the parking lot is located at the rear of the building, students and staff
infrequently use the ﬁ'ont entrance. Instead, they use the door at the back of the school,
which is closer to the parking lot. Inside the building, four classrooms surround an open
area that serves as a cafeteria and a congregating place for students. Another classroom
is located near the ofﬁces at the front of the building. One classroom houses a childcare

center, which connects to the outside playground.

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Like Eastwood Public Schools’ Churchill Center for Adult and Community
Education, Westerby High School has a large evening adult education program. In
addition to the 90 students attending alternative high school classes during “regular
school hours,” approximately 400 students participate in Westerby’s evening high school
completion program. The school is also a general education degree (GED) testing site.

The community of Blue Harbor, with a population of approximately 12,000, is a
picturesque Lake Michigan harbor town. It is currently a prosperous community, with an
economy based on manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism. Local industrial ﬁrms
manufacture automobile components and ofﬁce furniture, and work with plastics and
metal roll forming. A number of parks and tourist attractions are located within the
community or in the surrounding area. Within the city, there is a lighted musical water
fountain, elaborate children’s parks, and a 2.5-mile-long boardwalk lined with upscale
shops and restaurants.

The school district, called Blue Harbor Schools, has an enrolhnent of
approximately 6,000 students. There is one 9-12 high school containing approximately
1,700 students and two 6-8 middle schools, one with approximately 500 students and the
other with approximately 700 students. Blue Harbor Schools also has ﬁve K-5
elementary schools. With regard to race/ethnicity, the district is 93.6% white, 3.2%

Hispanic, 1.3% Asian/Paciﬁc Islander, .9% black, and .9% Native American.

Percaptions of Traditional High Schools

 

Some educators see alternative high schools as places where students are “ﬁxed”
so that they can then return to the district’s traditional high school. They see alternative
high schools as places students go when they do not succeed at a regular high school.

The goal of the alternative high school, they maintain, should be “rescue and return.”
72

The most important measure of success for an alternative high school, then, would be the
rate of repatriation. However, nearly all of the students and staff interviewed for this
study held a decidedly different point of View. Alternative high school students do not
want to go back to traditional high schools. Alternative high school staff members do not
want to see their students go back to traditional high schools, and, for the most part,
alternative high school teachers indicated they would not want to transfer to a traditional
high school. When asked whether anyone goes back to the traditional high school, New
Century Academy principal Dorothy White responded, “In my recollection we had one
person, and then he didn’t make it. He went back only so he could play hockey.”

For the most part, teachers and administrators were careful not to openly judge
traditional high schools too harshly. However, they still communicated negative
impressions of traditional high schools when they talked about the positive aspects of
alternative high schools. For example, when I asked Bill Chandler, the dedicated and
professional principal of Mapleton Alternative High School, whether he consciously tried
to make Mapleton Alternative High School different from a traditional high school, he
replied with obvious certainty: “Very, very much so! A very conscious effort! As it is
in most alternative high schools.”

Donald Ward, a teacher in his second year at Mapleton Alternative High School,
explained his reservations about moving to a traditional high school:

People always ask, “Are you ever going to go to a regular high school? At this

point, I don’t know if I really care to. I think it would be different in the fact—

how do I say it—I think everything would be different. I don’t think I would have
the relationship I have with the students to the extent we have here, at least not
with all of them. Also, I think the material would have to be taught differently.

The requirements might be a little higher, for the amount of material, not the level
of material. So there wouldn’t be as much freedom as there is here.

73

New Century Academy instructor Caroline Lorenz noted that many students
attending alternative high school had gone unnoticed at traditional high schools, but at
alternative high schools they are both notice and helped.

A lot of the kids are nice; 3 lot of the kids don’t even have behavior problems.

They just fell through the cracks. They are the kids that sit at the back of the

classroom [in a traditional high school] and maybe didn’t cause a big disruption;

they just didn’t stand out in any way. For teachers that have 150 kids a day,
somebody that is sitting at the back of the class, is not disruptive, but doesn’t get

their work done and isn’t going to pass—they are not necessarily considered a

behavior issue. . . . So some of those kids that we get have, for the past 9 or 10

years, sat at the back of the class and not done anything but sat back and watched.

And here they don’t get away with that as much. We know their names, we know

their parents, we know their situation.

Most other alternative high school teachers and administrators interviewed for this
study would agree that traditional high schools have serious shortcomings when it comes
to dealing with the “alternative high school type of student.” These staff members,
however, seemed careful in their criticism of “sister schools.” Yet when faced with
criticism of their own schools, they responded. Westerby High School principal Hal
Hoskins talked about “reversing the tables”:

Alternative ed. takes it on the chin quite a bit, but, hey, you know I could reverse

the tables and say, “I’ve got a kid here who’s passed, he’s a junior, he’s earned so

many credits by your accountability system there, and he can’t do this, this, and
this.”
“So a lot of times the ﬁnger is pointed at us,” Hoskins concluded, “but I could say, ‘Hey,

this last year he earned ﬁve credits in a regular high school but yet he can’t identify a

noun.’”

A Weird Way to Lem
Alternative high school students were more outspoken in their criticism of
traditional high schools. These students indicted traditional high schools in a number of

areas. Sam, a student at Mapleton Alternative High School, talked about the
74

unimaginative teaching style of traditional high school instructors. Sam indicated he had
attended Apple Valley Schools until he was suspended for “messing around and gooﬁng
around” in his eighth-grade year. He went to live with his father and attended Carlton
High School (a 1,300-student 9—12 school located in a nearby wealthy suburb) until the
end of the ﬁrst semester of his ninth-grade year. Noting that the move to Carlton “was
too hard 3 change for me,” he returned to Haynes and ﬁnished the year at Apple Valley
High School. Then in October of the following year he came to Mapleton. Sam
explained that he did not get along with one of the traditional high school teachers and
“that teacher got me sent here.” Sam’s opinion of teaching at Apple Valley High School
was concise: “From all the experience I had there, [traditional high school teachers]
stand up in front of the room and give the lesson the whole hour. That’s all it was.
Writing on the blackboard. Notes. All that was from the front of the room.” I asked,
“Was it any different at Carlton High School?” Sam responded,
Carlton High . . . that’s . . . I don’t know. . . . They stand up in front of the room
there, but their teaching is totally different as far as their study ways. They did a
lot of labs and stuff like that. But where at high school it’s more textbook and
here [at Mapleton] it’s more just class activities and stuff like that.
Max, another student attending Mapleton Alternative High School, agreed with
Sam on the nature of instruction (at least in history classes) in traditional high schools.
Max, who was in his second year at Mapleton, had attended Apple Valley High School
for two years before coming to the alternative high school.
History class at the high school is basically a teacher standing up in front of the
classroom lecturing, talking straight from the book with pages of notes. They
wouldn’t leave the blackboard. They would sit up at the blackboard; if they had
to read something to you, they would; but they would never leave the front of that
room.

Carissa, a 15-year-old student at Northshore who had been attending the

alternative high school for three years, viewed her experience at traditional high school as
75

stressful. “Like at the high school I was stressed out all the time so I couldn’t really do
anything.” When asked what was so stressful, she responded, “A lot of work, it was just
too much. Just way too much.”

Naomi, another 18-year-old in her third year at Northshore Alternative High
School, also indicated that traditional high school was “a lot harder.” A Native American
who had attended tribal school in Minnesota the previous year, Naomi pointed to “weird”
instructional practices of teachers as one reason schoolwork was difﬁcult. These
teaching practices puzzled her.

In all my classes [at Northshore High School], the teachers come in and most of

the time they don’t even read, or read the chapter. They just tell us, “Here is the

assignment and do it.” Sometimes they’ll just give us work to keep us busy for a

whole period. It’s not like we’re really learning anything; it’s just like deﬁnitions

or something like that. You know, write down the deﬁnition. Go back to the

chapter, ﬁnd the deﬁnition and write it down again. It’s kinda, I don’t know, a

weird way to learn.

I inquired, “Was it clear what they wanted you to learn?”

Not entirely. Sometimes I think, most kids, they only learn about the things they

want to know about. Like me, I could go through all my classes and not learn a

damn thing, ya know? Even if I do the work, I can just go through the whole

thing and come out and be like, ya know, “What the heck was that all about?”

Students also indicated it could be difﬁcult to get assistance from traditional high
school teachers. Teachers seemed preoccupied with other tasks and were difﬁcult to
approach when a student did not understand an assignment. Sometimes traditional high
school teachers made students “feel stupid.” Home schooled, Douglas only had attended
drivers’ education classes at a traditional high school. He admitted that, before coming to
Eastwood Public Schools’ New Century Academy, he had never learned to read. When

he arrived at New Century, he was reading at the second-grade level. After just a

semester at New Century, testing indicated his reading level to be “between 6.9 and 9.9.”

76

However, his experience in Eastwood High School’s driver training program was not so
positive.

I went to drivers training, and the teacher made everybody in that class feel so

low. He would point people out and say, “Didn’t you learn anything?” and just

yell at you, and it’s, like, how can teachers do this? I mean, people would say,

“Yeah, my one teacher at the other school would send me to the ofﬁce every

day.” These teachers here [at New Century Academy] won’t yell at you. They

might yell at you if you’re cussing, but they won’t sit there and degrade you like
that.

Melissa, a student at Mapleton Alternative High School, talked about the
difﬁculty of getting help in a traditional high school setting when a student has a reading
problem. Melissa did not attend Apple Valley High School; rather, she went to Gardner
High School, a newly constructed school located between Apple Valley Schools and the
city. Gardner High is located in a rapidly growing district. The high school is large, with
2,200 students attending grades 9 through 12. A shy person, Melissa remembered that
when she ﬁrst came to Mapleton, “I don’t think I talked for the ﬁrst week I was here.”
She had spent her ninth-grade year and two weeks of her tenth-grade year at Gardner
High School. According to Melissa, Gardner was “way too big.” She added, “They only
honor the people who are not so smart and the ones who are smart. If you’re in the
middle and need help, you don’t get it.” Asked whether she found that discouraging,
Melissa responded:

Yeah, ‘cause I’m not a very good reader. I can’t comprehend things very well.

To be in an English class with reading all this information and then you have to

do all this work and I don’t even remember what we read. It was very

discouraging to get bad grades and not have anyone to help you. I talked to my
mom and dad, and they went up there several times, and they just said they

couldn’t really help us out very much. I was stressed out and sick all the time. I

missed a lot of school.

Pam, a student at Mapleton, was interviewed with her younger sister, Sherri. Pam

was in her second year at Mapleton. Her younger sister was in her third year. Pam’s

77

experiences with teachers at Apple Valley High School were also generally not positive.

“At the high school, [teachers] just say ‘ﬁgure it out’ or ‘ask somebody else,’” she

explained. “They’re always in a big hurry and a big rush to get things done.” Pam was

speciﬁc about the teaching style of her math teacher at Apple Valley High School:

At the high school with math class, my math teacher she would put a big overhead
up and read to you what you had to do, give you one or two examples, and tell
you to go ﬁnd somebody else to go do your work. Then she’d sit up at the front
of the room and work on all this stuff. Somebody would ask her for help and she
would say, “Ask one of the other students or something. I’m busy right now.” . . .
The teachers at the high school don’t really explain things very well.

Daniel, who was interviewed as part of a small group of students at Westerby

High School, indicated he ﬁrst attended Blue Harbor High School and then “a couple of

months into my sophomore year I kinda quit and I just came here.” He talked about what

happened when assignments were not completed in traditional high schools:

Daniel:

Question:

Daniel:

Response:

Daniel:

Question:

Daniel:
Question:

Daniel:

Teachers at the high school, they . . . I don’t think they care enough
if you get it done. They don’t care.

So if you didn’t get an assignment done at the high school, what?
Do they hound you?

At the high school?

Yes, at the high school.

Well, they hound you in a bad way, kinda. They’re a lot tougher,
but . . . they never really get into you because it is just for a second.

It’s not like a . . . it’s not like they help you.

They want you to get your assignment in, but then eventually if
you don’t, then what happens?

They don’t pay attention.
You just get your failing grade and away you go?

Uh-huh.

78

Students, then, saw traditional high schools as places where instruction is teacher
centered. Teachers talk “at” students from the front of the classroom, and they give
assignments to keep students busy while they work at their desks. Teachers in traditional
high schools do not help you if you are having problems with academic assignments—or

lack basic skills. They just let you fail.

§r_n_all Groups at Traditional High Schools

Students attending alternative high schools also viewed traditional high schools as
judgmental places, where students are labeled and classiﬁed. Students at all four
alternative high schools in this study held common opinions concerning the existence and
impact of groups in traditional high schools. Students became animated when they talked
about the groups at traditional high schools, and the different “looks” associated with
these groups. They explained that what you wear, how you look, who you hang with,
whether you play sports or do drama or sing in the choir—all these things “put you in a
box.” Moreover, alternative high school students who were interviewed explained that
many traditional high school students spend a lot of time working on “the look” of their
particular group.

Allison, a Westerby High School student who had attended Blue Harbor High
School for her freshman year and part of her sophomore year, explained that students at
the high school dressed “for the look of who they hang outwith.” She added, “Like,
everybody at the high school gets up early in the morning, gets dressed up for school, you
know, and gets their hair perfect.” Naomi, from Northshore Alternative High School,
was precise in her descriptions of groups of girls at the traditional high school in Cedar

Bay:

79

There’s the preps, and they’re the girls who like to dress really nice. Kinda like,
most of them don’t swear but some of them do. And then there are the
schoolgirls, and they’re just kinda quiet, do all their work in every class, go home
right after school and don’t really hang out much. Then there’s the punks. Most
of them—I guess there are some that don’t—drink and do stuff like that. They
just dress weird, like either tight clothes or really tight pants, or really baggy
clothes and baggy pants. And the ﬁsh-net clothing, and different-colored hair,
weird haircuts. Piercing sometimes.

Carissa, also a student at Northshore, agreed that there were a lot of well-defmed
groups at Northshore High School. “They’re really ‘clique-ie’ over there. . . . There’s
major hicks over there . . . there’s the preps, the cheerleaders.” Toni, a 15-year-old in her
second year at Northshore Alternative High School, added to the list of groups at the high
school. “There is the drama club people, and the band people. They all stick together.
The art people. Then there are the hockey players and the puck bunnies.” (And what, I
asked, were puck bunnies? She paused and gave me a so-where-have-you-been look,
then said, “Girls that chase hockey players!”) She continued, “Then there’s the . . . I live
on a reservation and they call us the Res Rats, or anything they can think of. Then there
is the stoners and a ﬁeld of different cliques.”

Mapleton Alternative High School students also talked about groups at traditional
high school. During an interview session involving several students, opinions came
quickly and with certainty. “In high school, it really matters what group you’re in and
who you’re with,” Melissa noted. Max, another Mapleton student, agreed: “At the high
school you are classiﬁed into a group.” He added, “I was classiﬁed.” Ron, a Mapleton
student who had attended Apple Valley High School for only a short time after junior
high school, chimed in:

It’s not really good for a person’s self-esteem. When I was there at high school, a

lot of people looked down on me. . . . I was automatically put into a group that I

didn’t even know what was going on. People are very judgmental before they
even know you at the high school.

80

At New Century Academy in Eastwood, a student named Heather expressed a
similar point of View. In her second year at New Century, Heather previously had
attended nearby Bumington High School. Heather planned to graduate from New
Century Academy after one more year of attending classes. She was supposed to have
earned her high school diploma from Bumington during the current school year but
acknowledged that she would not have graduated if she had stayed there. “Regular high
schools, I would say, have cliques and everything, and that’s, like, really unfair,” she
said. Heather explained that, at New Century, “all the gothic people are still hanging out
with the regular people, but in the high school it’s like the gothics . . . and then you’ve
got the preps and you’ve got the gangs.” (Again, I needed a deﬁnition. “What are
gothics? “It’s like people who have black hair, black makeup, and black clothes,” she
responded.) Heather compared Bumington High School to New Century Academy:

That’s basically like stereotyping over there and not over here at all. I mean, it is

a little bit to a certain extent, but not like it is in a high school. You still have, like

stereotypes . . . but they kind of combine. Not like a high school where people

want to [pause]—I’m trying to put it in your terms.
“No,” I said, “put it in your own terms.” She went on, the words rushing out in a tone
ﬁlled with intensity and conviction:

Well, over here you don’t have that many people trying to start shit with you.

You don’t have that many people talking behind your back. . . . [At the high

school] they needed something to talk about. They always need something to talk

about. They talk about you. That’s why I left, because I got tired of being the
news every week. I didn’t want to put up with it. I just wanted to get through
school and start my own life.

In summary, students who were interviewed generally did not express positive
views of the traditional high schools they had attended before coming to their current

alternative high schools. This was not surprising. After all, these were the schools

where, for a variety of reasons, they had not been successful. Many students were still

81

 

angry about what had happened to them in traditional high schools, and they were not
reluctant to share that anger. Clearly, their anger inﬂuenced their perceptions.

That said, some alternative high school students still grudgingly acknowledged
that traditional high school “works” for some students. In a group interview of students
at Westerby High School, “learning” ﬁnally was included as one objective for a
traditional high school:

Question: So what’s the goal in a traditional high school?

Allison: To look good.

Peter: To be popular.

Allison: Yeah, and try to get the cutest boyfriend, or whatever, girlfriend.
It’s just stupid.

Peter: Hang out with the right group.

Patrick: And some to learn.

Allison: And, yeah, some people at the high school do go there to learn.

However, despite such occasional admissions, it is signiﬁcant that the primary
perceptions alternative high school students held concerning traditional high schools were
negative. In traditional high schools, students and teachers are judgmental. Students are
classiﬁed and labeled. They are assigned to groups by teachers and other students.
Teachers do not provide help when a student does not understand. Teachers give up on
you quickly. They “let you fail.” These negative perceptions formed the backdrop for
the next section of this study, which considers the perceptions of both students and

teachers toward alternative high schools.

82

Perception_s of Student Relationships and Behaviors at
Altemative High Schools

Alternative high school students and teachers who were interviewed viewed their
schools as more accepting, ﬁiendlier places than traditional high schools. They debunked
commonly held stereotypes of alternative high schools and talked about the “family feel”
of these places. Naomi, at Northshore Alternative High School, also explained why the
alternative high school was a better “ﬁt” for her:

I came down here because high school was a lot harder; there were more

judgmental people. A lot more bullshit that I just don’t need. Come down here,

it’s easy. There is nice people, nice teachers, I’m friends with just about
everybody here. . . . It’s just like we are all friends, instead of having 12 different
groups here and there. Everybody is pretty much friends, and it makes the
environment a lot easier to just be here and want to come here.

Karri Shaw, a student at an alternative high school more than 300 miles away,
would agree with Naomi. Karri had attended several high schools before enrolling at
Eastwood’s New Century Academy and was in her ﬁrst year at the alternative high
school. She explained that her dream was “to become really famous. I want my name to
be out there,” she said, “I really do.” Karri’s mother was 17 years old when Karri was
born. Karri explained that her mother was “going to school right now and she ha[d] ﬁve
kids and she [was] only 33. Karri’s father was “an alcoholic living in hotels and going
from job to job.” During her interview, Karri was emphatic about the “accepting”
attitude of teachers and students at New Century Academy:

I felt very welcome because everybody was the same as me. Everybody had

troubles like me, everybody is learning like me. It’s not like, “Oh, she’s retarded,

and she just came here.” It’s not like that. Everybody was, like, “Yeah, I have
the same problems so I’m cool with you and I’ll be ﬁiends with you.” Teachers,
too, not only the students. But the teachers and advisors, they are all nice. They
don’t put you down.

Sam, at Mapleton Alternative High School, explained that his friends attending

Apple Valley High School had the wrong idea about the alternative high school. Like
83

most students and teachers from the other alternative high schools included in this study,
Sam indicated that students (and teachers) attending the traditional high school did not
understand the advantages and true value of alternative high schools:

[My friends from the regular high school] razz on me all the time about how

Englishville is a convict school and how everybody here is a gangster or else

freaks. I explain to them every day that it’s not even like that here. It just seems

like one basic general group of kids here. It’s kind of cool. It’s almost like a

family. You go to a small school and everybody is here every day, and everybody

gets to know each other. I don’t know too many people here that got problems
with anybody here. If they do, they don’t make it a conﬂict. They just keep
going on.

Allison, from Westerby High School, commented that students are “more
relaxed” at alternative high schools. When new students come from the high school, they
do not understand how the alternative high school operates. They start minor ﬁghts and
do not realize that (in Allison’s words) “we just don’t do that here.” Allison added, “But
after they are here for awhile, they ﬁnally realize what is goin’ on, and that it is laid back
and nobody cares about how you look, what you do.”

Teachers and principals often agreed that alternative high schools are places
where students ﬁnd acceptance and are not judged like they had been in traditional high
schools. Tony Williams, long-time principal of Northshore Alternative High School,
indicated that, although he did see “some grouping,” students did not have to join a group
to be accepted. The students are not ostracized if they do not join a group, even if they
were part of that group before coming to Northshore. “And it is fun to watch the kids
come over who are loners, or who are the nerdiest, or whatever,” Williams added. “They
ﬁnd acceptance among the people [here] . . . they are included in things.”

Why are alternative high schools so accepting? Why are these places less

judgmental than traditional high schools? Greg, 3 Northshore student, thought school

enrolhnent had something to do with it, something he labeled “the bigger factor.” Greg
84

planned to graduate from Northshore at the end of the school year. He had entered the
school in the eighth grade, and then attended the alternative high school, off and on, for
six years. He admitted that he had “dropped out a couple of times in the past six years”
and then added it was a mistake not to stay in school. “It was dumb,” he concluded. At
the time he was interviewed, his situation was unique. He indicated that he was “in jail.”
(He had a plastic band around his wrist, and after asking, “Do you want to see my
tether?” he pulled up his pant leg to show me a blue plastic device clamped around his
ankle.) Greg indicated that, after graduating from Northshore, he planned to go on to
community college to become a corrections ofﬁcer. He responded thoughtfully when
questioned why he thought alternative high schools were more accepting of differences
among students than were traditional high schools.

Maybe ‘cause it is smaller? A lot smaller. And everybody knows each other.

And as where you would go to a high school where it is huge, you wouldn’t know

everybody, you know what I mean? You don’t know what that person’s about.

You don’t know what they are like, so it’s like kind of hard to accept somebody.

I mean, it’s not but it is. I mean, if you don’t know nothing about somebody,

you’re not going to accept them in a way that if you knew somebody you would.
The fact that students are more tolerant and accepting of each other at alternative high
schools may, at least by Greg’s assessment, be directly related to the smaller enrollments
of these schools.

Alternative high school teachers did not View most alternative high school
students as misﬁts or losers. Christina Piper, a science teacher at New Century Academy
who also taught at a large Michigan university, saw students as creative and smart:

I think that the majority of our New Century Academy students are brilliant

students. They were just too smart to be in a regular high school. They realize

this is a creek, and they don’t want to do this anymore. They were too creative

and weren’t given an outlet. And I could name dozens of students that are in that
situation.

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Lora Brennan, a former principal of New Century Academy, now worked part
time in that school’s counseling center. Lora talked about the special attention given to
young people at alternative high schools, attention that was needed because of the unique
needs of alternative high school students, needs that often are not met in traditional high
schools:

It’s not to say—my husband teaches at the high school, and I came from the high

school myself—that they don’t care. But some people, some kids, some students

need a different kind of attention at different times of their lives. That whole
track of either you are a cheerleader or the dress-in-black group or the burnout
group—you know how high schools are. They are very rigid in those cliques and
groups, and our students probably didn’t ﬁt in with any of them.

That is not to say that all alternative high school students “ﬁt in” and undergo a
magical transition just by walking through the doors of an alternative high school.
Jackie, the secretary of Northshore Alternative High School, noted that lack of school
success usually was related to students’ lack of maturity. “Usually, the ﬁrst couple of
years after getting here, it’s almost like fun time for them if they’re not mature and
they’re not older,” she explained. “And once they’ve been here for a couple years, they
start realizing, ‘Wow, I’ve been screwing up for a long time and I haven’t gotten the
credit yet! ’ That’s the big thing.” She observed that once the maturity “kicks in,”
students begin experiencing success.

For some students, maturity was directly related to becoming a parent. Pregnant
students—and students with children—were an integral part of the alternative high
schools included in this study. Each of the four alternative high schools had a childcare
program available for students. At Mapleton, New Century, and Westerby, childcare was
available in the school building. The children of students attending classes in these

schools—and, in the case of Westerby High School, children of staff members—were

cared for “just down the hallway.”
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For lS-year-old Northshore student Toni Thompson, having a child was only one
of the things that had changed her life. “Last year I did 30 days in the county jail,” she
said. “And I had a school release so I came here. And that was hard . . . I was mad at the
time, but it did teach me a big lesson.” Toni indicated she had not been in trouble since
serving her 30-day sentence. “And I’m not going to be,” she added. “I’ve deﬁnitely
straightened up a lot.” Toni described the challenges Of being a parent and also talked
about the tendency of some Northshore students to spend their time “getting high”:

It’s kind of hard because I’m still a teenager, and it’s hard to separate my social

life and my parenting from each other. So when I’m at school, it’s my social life.

And when I am with my son, all my attention goes to him. I can’t, you know, act

how I do at school. So for a person who doesn’t get high, it’s kind of annoying

for a person to see. I mean, I am not going to lie. I’ve done it before and I don’t
say I’m not planning on getting high again. I’m not saying I probably won’t go
out and drink again. But it’s really annoying.

Toni was not the only student to criticize the behavior of fellow alternative high
school students. Students interviewed in a small focus group at Westerby High School
agreed that about 60% of the students attending that school “want to do good.” The other
40% were not highly motivated. They indicated that the students in this group were not
engaged. They did not complete assignments. Some fell asleep in class. So, why did
they bother to attend? Westerby High School student Peter Allis had a theory: “They
have to be in school. Keeps them out of the house so the parents can do their thing.”

Naomi from Northshore Alternative High School also talked about the “bad kids”
attending that school. She deﬁned a “bad kid” as someone who will “react about things,
yell and scream, freak out, and skip class and stuff like that”:

There are a lot of had kids. Most of them come here because they’ve gotten

kicked out of high school. Or they can’t handle high school. And they come here

and they can’t handle it here. They skip. And then it’s the other way around. My
boyfriend went to a high school when I ﬁrst moved here and then he’s doing

really good. He’s getting really good grades and doing his work every day, and
then one of his friends came here to the alternative. He’s been going here for

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awhile and he thinks, “Oh, it’s cool down here, you can skip all the time and the
work’s a lot easier.” And my boyﬁiend came over here.

I asked, “Did he get to decide that?” “Yeah,” she replied, “he got to decide that. He
skips all his classes and does all his work. . . . It is just, some kids can handle it and some
kids can’t. I guess it depends on if you want to graduate from high school.”

Smoking was a common behavior in all four of the alternative high schools
included in this study. According to students and staff members, most students attending
alternative high schools smoke. Bill Chandler, principal of Mapleton Alternative High
School, indicated that “probably 85% of our students smoke.” Chandler noted that,
because the only time Mapleton students got to smoke was during their lunch period, his
most effective disciplinary weapon was taking away the privilege of leaving campus at
lunchtime. “Quite regularly . . . I’ll tell them, ‘You’ve got ﬁve days of closed lunch for
this particular incident.’ They’ll say, ‘Can’t you just kick me out for three days? I
would much rather be suspended.”’

Douglas, at New Century Academy, indicated that students went out into a nearby
park to smoke. “There are only four of us that don’t smoke,” he added. “Except the
pregnant girls. They don’t smoke.” In the case of Northshore Alternative High School, it
was Paul who responded to the question, “So how many out of the whole school smoke?”
“There are probably ﬁve people that don’t smoke in the school,” he said. At a small
focus-group interview of Westerby High School students, I asked, “So how many are

smokers? Give me a percentage.” A discussion followed:

Peter: Seventy.

Patrick: Eighty.

Daniel: Ninety-ﬁve.

Patrick: I’d say 90. (Laughter)

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Question: Was smoking a problem‘at the traditional high school?

Peter: You couldn’t get off the bus and have a cigarette on the side of the
highway, you had to go right to class. There would be a parapro or
a cop waiting for you if you even stepped out. We always had this
little smoke area in the back of the high school. Every time we
went back there, a cop would be right back there following us.
You had no choice but to put your cigarettes out or hide ‘em.

Question: Do you think that some of the people are here because of that?

Peter: Some are. A very low percentage.

Patrick: Are you asking if most people are here because they are lax on
smoking?

Response: Yes.

Patrick: No, I don’t think that has much to do with it really. . . . I just think
it’s just . . . the kind of people that usually end up in this school
probably start out smoking way too young. That’s why we are
here.

In summary, students and teachers from all four alternative high schools indicated
that students in those schools were more accepting and less judgmental than would
typically be the case in a traditional high school. Most of the students in alternative high
schools smoked. Furthermore, although estimates of magnitude varied, it generally was
acknowledged that a signiﬁcant proportion of students were “immature” and not highly
motivated. These students skipped school, “got high,” and did not complete assignments.
Students doing well usually were focused on “earning credits so they could graduate.”
Students not doing well did not share that focus. However, it was often noted that there
was hope for these students. (In fact, teachers were especially positive in their
assessments of students’ potential.) Quite often, many teachers and students noted, an

“immature” student changed after a couple of years at the alternative high school; he or

she would “come around” and get busy and earn a diploma.

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Perceptions of Student-Teacher Relationships

Students, administrators, and teachers who were interviewed often spoke with
pride of the positive interactions between students and staff members. They said that, in
an alternative high school, students have a more personal relationship with their
instructors; there is a positive bond between staff and students that is rare in a traditional
high school setting. In an alternative high school, they added, students are more likely to
negotiate with instructors and administrators—often in a spirited manner that, in many
cases, turns the process into a game between students and staff members.

Bill Chandler, principal of Mapleton Alternative High School, pointed out the
importance of having a positive relationship with students:

I think that the alternative ed. world came around to the realization, perhaps

earlier than a lot of K-12 people, that the key to getting a kid to learn is to have a

relationship with the kid. Especially when you are dealing with difﬁcult kids. If

you do not have a relationship with them, they are not going to respond to you as

a teacher. . . . If they don’t care about the teacher they are not going to cooperate.

And so a lot of effort is put into building a relationship, which is different from

friendship—I want to stress that. Usually new people in alternative ed. try to

become “buddy-buddy” with the students. And that is not what we are talking
about when we are talking about relationships.

Ron Holaday, a teacher in his second year at Mapleton, talked about some of the
speciﬁc things he did to promote a positive relationship with students. “We do basketball
on Wednesday nights; we do a golf league in the springtime. I love that. I really enjoy
that part of it.” Holaday indicated that this sort of interaction had some practical beneﬁts.
“So, now when Ervingham is acting up in class, I say, ‘Ervingham, you don’t do this on
the golf course, you don’t act like this other places, why are you acting like that here?”’

Caroline Lorenz, Christina Piper, and Karen Anderson were all teachers at

Eastwood Public Schools’ New Century Academy. We discussed the interactions

between teachers and students:

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Question: Do you know what is going on in their life?
Karen: Oh, yeah, sometimes way too much.
Caroline: Yes!

Question: They tell you?

Karen: Yes, and you—a lot of the times because of their lifestyle . . .
they’re working in service, you know. They are working at Red
Lobster. It got for awhile I was avoiding going into those places.

Christina: Yeah.

Karen: Because they are there, and they want to see you. They do. And if
you were there and didn’t ask if so and so was working, they are
like, “I was working! Why didn’t you come back?” So you have
to ask. So, sometimes you know a little bit more than you wanted.

Christina: For example, one of the students is a cashier at Target, and if I
don’t wait in her line it’s like, “I saw you in Target and you just
said ‘Hi’ to me!” And I ﬁnd it really funny. I have to actually
search her out.

Caroline: They do seem to expect a lot out of us. And that can be tiring . . .
but for the most part, I think we are all up to that challenge where
we will wait the extra 10 minutes in the line at Meijer to make that
person happy.

At Westerby High School, instructor Kelly Gleason described the unique
interactions she had with students who were mothers. Gleason had a small child and used
the on-site daycare provided by the Blue Harbor Schools, the same daycare her students
used. “At lunch time, we are all in there feeding the kids,” she said.

It’s an immediate connection to them . . . to somebody else out there that may be
going through some of the things they’re going through. I’m not, of course, a
teen, 50 I don’t have that aspect of it, but they—I’ll tell you that not a week goes
by where somebody doesn’t ask me some advice. And it’s not like I’m a pro. I’m
battling through it just like they are. But it’s “How did you get your daughter to
do this?” or, you know, “How do you clear up a diaper rash?” It’s an immediate
connection for them. It’s somebody they can look to. I’m not a peer. I’m not a
teen parent, but it’s obvious that I’m going through some of the same things
they’re going through.

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Students—and their parents—saw the value of closer involvement with staff
members. Pam, a student at Mapleton, told the story of coming to alternative high
school. At the traditional high school, she had too many absences and did not get along
with the teachers. “I already did a couple things that got myself in trouble,” she
explained, “50 then the teachers had it out for me, so every little thing I did I got in
trouble for it.” However, Pam’s mother was not in favor of her coming to Mapleton.
Pam kept talking to her about it. “I went back to my mom and said, ‘Mom, listen, things
are not working out at the high school. Can I please go to Mapleton and try it out
there?’” Pam’s mother ﬁnally agreed. Pam began having success at Mapleton. Now,
Pam explained, her mother liked it better than high school because “it’s better for us
getting more involvement with the teachers and the teachers getting involved with the
students.” She added, “They care more.”

Sam, another Mapleton student, talked about the practice of calling teachers by
their ﬁrst names at that school (a practice, by the way, that was not common across the
alternative high schools in this study):

It’s different [from the traditional high school]. One of the ways, I guess the

biggest way for me, is being able to call the teachers by their ﬁrst name. It kind

of sets you on an equality level where you kind of get a little more respect
because you are calling them by their ﬁrst name and they are calling you by your
ﬁrst name. It just seems like there’s less authority and more “just people” to help
you out.

A common interaction between students and teachers in the alternative high
schools included in this study involved negotiations in classrooms about schoolwork.
Naomi, from Northshore, called it “making deals.” “You can make deals with the
teachers sometimes,” she said. “Like if you have a lot of work missing but you don’t

have a lot of absences—if you do all your work later, you can make a deal with the

teacher to let you keep the credit.” The students in a small-group interview at Westerby
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High School talked about trying to persuade a teacher to change an assignment at the
alternative high school and how the process at Westerby was different than negotiating

with teachers at a traditional high school:

Question: Let’s say [a teacher] gives you an assignment and you don’t like it.
What do you do?

Allison: You do it anyway.

Patrick: It depends how much it is worth.

Daniel: If it’s a big assignment, I’ll still do it. If it’s some piddly little
thing, I won’t.

Question: At what point do you say to the teacher, “Are you sure you want us
to do this?”

Allison: (Laughter) We say it all the time.

Peter: And plead with them not to do it. Like today.

Question: What happened today?

Peter: She assigned a bunch of questions.

Patrick: Two pages!

Peter: And then she said we had to draw three pictures, and I can’t draw
for crap. I hate it every time she assigns us an art project. She
wouldn’t listen. So we still have to do them.

Question: But you let her know that you didn’t think much of that. Would
you have done that in a traditional high school?

Peter: Probably not.

Daniel: You would probably put it off. Or you wouldn’t say anything.

Peter: You wouldn’t be open about it.

Question: You wouldn’t be open about it?

Peter: Yeah. You are always waiting for somebody else to say

something. You’re looking around thinking, “Well, is anybody
going to say something?”

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Question: In a traditional high school?

Daniel: Yeah.

Question: Whereas here?

Allison: You blurt it out!

Patrick: You don’t have to worry about it.
Peter: Yeah.

In summary, the students and teachers who were interviewed at the alternative
high schools in this study seemed to value closer, more personal relationships between
students and teachers. At some schools, students called teachers by their ﬁrst names.
Teachers and students joined in after-school activities that were not “school connected,”
like golf leagues and parenting discussions. Teachers and administrators put considerable
effort into developing positive, friendly relationships with students. Many students
responded by extolling these relationships and, for the most part, by cooperating with the
teachers and administrators. Students in these alternative high schools were quick to
negotiate with teachers concerning assignments and classroom management. In a
traditional high school setting, there might be some reticence to challenge the instructor;

however, there appeared to be no such reservations in an alternative high school setting.

Perceptions Concerning Instruction and Pedagogy

 

Paul, a student at Northshore Alternative High School, summarized his view of
the nature of teaching in alternative high schools in one short sentence: “Teaching-wise,”
he said, “it’s pretty much the same as the high school.” This point of View was echoed by
others; but students, teachers, and administrators interviewed for this study also shared

some common beliefs concerning ways teaching at alternative high schools differed from

that at traditional high schools. At alternative high schools, they reported, students spend
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less time listening and more time doing. At alternative high schools, teachers talk and
collaborate more than in traditional high schools. At alternative high schools, new
teachers need to learn how to become “alternative ed. type” teachers, and that means

teaching differently from teachers in traditional high schools.

leachingAs “Doig Stuff”

I asked Mapleton Alternative High School teacher Ron Holaday whether he
lectured much. “I don’t really lecture,” he responded. “I would say more discussion, but
since I’m leading, you know it’s me talking the majority of the time.” Holaday went on
to say that he was working at modifying his lessons and getting organized so that his
classes would include more “hands-on and less of me talking.” He concluded, “I’d rather
have them doing stuff as opposed to me blabbing away.” Mapleton’s principal, Bill
Chandler, indicated that he did not often see teachers lecturing in that school:

I can’t remember the last time I actually heard a standard lecture in class. You

will hear teachers giving directions, you know, “Okay, here is what we are going

to do.” And they might spend the ﬁrst ﬁve minutes of class making sure everyone
understands the focus of today. But I don’t think we have any classes where the
teachers just lecture. Teachers might lead . . . but teachers don’t stand up there
and lecture.

Carl Jackson, a teacher at Northshore Alternative High School, expressed the
point of view that teaching in alternative high schools is easier than at traditional high
schools, thanks mostly to a more “relaxed atmosphere.” Jackson added, “I ﬁnd that I
rarely get up in ﬁ'ont of the students and teach. I get in with them while they’re doing
reading or doing something.” He explained that students seemed to prefer and require
that approach. “That’s what they like. That’s what they are going to do.”

New Century Academy principal Dorothy White described how teachers used

ﬁeld trips and activities to keep students coming, to “hook them.” She described how

95

one New Century teacher was lobbying to have an inﬂatable planetarium brought in to
school for an astronomy lesson (even though the cost was $275):

He’s invented this class called Science From A to Z, starting with astronomy.

And that is going to be his ﬁrst class of the semester. He said, “Dorothy, I’m

thinking if we can hook them right away, they will stay!” And I said, “You know,

that sounds fabulous. We’ll ﬁnd you some sort of a grant for you to do that.”
White went on to describe a teacher who, as part of his zoology class, took students to a
man-made marsh near Detroit Metro Airport where there were eagles and “wooden
walkways over the water areas.” She explained that the goal of these activities was to get
students excited about learning and, in this way, get them to attend classes. “If they are
not doing, and we’re not talking reading a book, if they are not doing, manipulating,
participating, then it is much more difﬁcult to get them here. . . . Are they going to be
excited to come here? That’s what we hope!” White concluded that, at alternative high
schools, “retention is a huge problem.”

Many students also agreed that, at alternative high schools, there is less emphasis
on textbooks than at traditional high schools. Furthermore, alternative high school
teachers give fewer assignments requiring extensive reading and writing. Students Darcy

and Tracie talked about what went on in classes as Mapleton Alternative High School:

Question: Compared to what happened in the high school, do you write more
here or less?

Darcy: A lot less. A lot!

Question: What about reading and textbooks? Do you use textbooks here
more or less?

Darcy: Less, but we’re not saying we don’t use them, because we do.
But I would say that they take information out of the textbook and
try to make it more interesting so we are not just reading our text-
book. Every kid knows that’s no fun.

Question: “They” being the teachers?

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Darcy: Yes.

Question: So, in other words, they take the information and give it to you,
instead of telling you to go and read it.

Tracie: So you don’t really know it is coming from the textbook.

Darcy: Yeah, so it sounds a little more interesting to us.
At these alternative high schools, then, there was general agreement among students,
teachers, and administrators that there should be, and was, less emphasis on lecturing and
reliance on textbooks. Teaching in alternative high schools, most indicated, was student
centered and not teacher centered. There were more discussions. There were more

hands-on activities.

Teacher Interactions: Getting Together and Talking

Alternative high school teachers who were interviewed for this study agreed that
they spent considerable time talking and networking with other instructors in their
schools. Kelly Gleason, a teacher at Westerby High School, explained that teachers in
her school had a regular staff meeting every other Monday after school. “But that is
about 1% of the time that we get together and talk, I would say,” she added. Gleason
went on to say that teachers at Westerby talked before school, after school, at lunch,
during planning periods, and “just about any other time you can think of, we are
discussing students.” She paused and then added, “Well, and school policy and
procedures, but mostly students.”

Mapleton Alternative High School teacher Donald Ward indicated that teachers
watched, talked to, and learned from other teachers. Ward said that, when he saw his
fellow teachers doing creative units, he would think, “I need to kind of get it in gear and

move along and do something, too.” He also added the perspective of experience in an

97

alternative high school where teachers did not talk and mix so frequently. Before coming
to Mapleton, he had been a teacher at Garrison Alternative High School in a district
located about 40 miles away.

[At Garrison] teachers are very isolated. One, we never had the same lunch hour.

We didn’t have a lunch hour meeting, so we didn’t have the chance to talk to one

another. We were all in different portables. You never got a chance to really see

each other. Here we have our lunch hour together. We’re not required, we were
told we didn’t have to be here, but it’s kind of an expectation that most lunches
we would stay here—because that was our time to spread the word about what
was going on throughout the day and maybe share some ideas.
Ward also discussed collaborative teaching at Westerby. He noted that teachers in the
building “do a lot of time-sharing.” He explained that two teachers would often team-
teach a two- or three-week module. “Rich and I just did a whole marking period where
we did a combined [unit].” He added that on certain days their classes would meet
together; on other days, they would do the same project.

At all four alternative high schools, teachers indicated they spent a great deal of
time talking with other instructors about what was happening at the school, and especially
about students. Teachers generally did not feel isolated. Some, but by no means all,
indicated they teamed with teachers to deliver instruction. Teaming seemed especially
prevalent at Mapleton Alternative High School and Westerby High School. During

interviews, the principals at both Mapleton and Westerby extolled the virtues of teaming

and gave examples of effective collaboration at their schools.

Becoming an “Alternative Ed. Type” Teacher

Westerby High School teacher Terry Miller was hired nine months into the 2000-
2001 school year to teach after another teacher resigned. Miller had been teaching at a
charter school in a small city not far from Haynes. I interviewed Miller with another

Westerby teacher, Kelly Gleason, who was in her fourth year at the school. We talked
98

about the challenges of being a new alternative high school teacher. Gleason was the ﬁrst
to speak. “My ﬁrst year here was very difﬁcult,” she conﬁded. “I’ll be the ﬁrst to admit
that I made a lot of mistakes the ﬁrst year I was here. I approached things in ways I
shouldn’t have.” Gleason had previously taught in a traditional middle school, in a
setting she described as “very teacher directed.” That school was a place, she explained,
“where you’re standing up there and if a student isn’t doing what you tell them to do,
they are misbehaving and should be disciplined by the principal.” She said it took awhile
to ﬁnd her “comfort zone” as an alternative high school teacher:
I think I started off being a lot more strict and traditional-oriented type teacher;
and have shifted to more of the “alternative ed. type” teacher. I don’t think that is
an overnight thing. I don’t think that is even an over [the] year thing. I think it
takes time to develop that . . . that ﬁnesse to get back on your side of the . . . being
the authoritative ﬁgure.
I asked Miller whether he thought that, having just started teaching in an
alternative high school about six months before, he was in the middle of that transition.
“I think so,” he responded. Miller then went on to describe his strategies for becoming an
alternative ed. type teacher: “I think that the idea of an alternative school to me is that we
take the time to get to know the kids. . . . And I talk to kids; I get to know them. That’s
what I think alternative ed. is. It is the atmosphere; and just talking to kids, and
individualizing instruction more.” Miller also talked about the challenges facing an
alternative high school teacher when he or she tries to create an appropriate learning
atmosphere.
I think a lot of the students have an attitude, like, “Why can’t I lay on the ﬂoor
and curl up? I don’t feel like working today.” . . . And, you know, there is a
number of certain things, and you’re like, “No, it’s still school!” . . . I’m not going
to be a jerk about some things, but there is still some things that aren’t conducive

to a good learning atmosphere. And I feel pretty strongly about some of that.
And it is a struggle sometimes to get that idea across to them.

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Caroline Lorenz, an English teacher at Eastwood Public Schools’ New Century
Academy for nearly two years, summarized her ﬁrst year at that alternative high school in
precise, colorful terms: “New Century Academy ate me for lunch during [the] ﬁrst
semester. . . . I was totally unprepared.” Lorenz, who also taught English as Second
Language (ESL) classes, had previously taught Japanese people learning to speak
English. The Japanese, she recalled, were “formal people” who valued education. In
contrast, she found alternative high school students unruly and disrespectful of her
authority. When asked to describe the types of behaviors she observed at New Century
Academy, she responded, “Talking! That was the worst thing for me——the talking and
not paying attention. Not doing anything I asked them to do! Just doing their own
thing!” She also had difﬁculty individualizing instruction to ﬁt the wide range of
achievement levels within her classes.

I remember my ﬁrst semester I was teaching the upper-level grammar class, and

there were people that were just so lost, and just could not get what I was trying to

explain. And then there were others who were very, very bright. I mean,
unbelievably smart. And there was this one girl, Sandy, and she would go,

“You’re not explaining that right. Why don’t you just do it like Ms. Wilson?

Why don’t you just tell them this and this and then go get that worksheet? And

she was telling me this, and so then I’m, like, doubting myself as a teacher all the

time. And in some ways she was right. I didn’t know how to do it.

I asked Lorenz how she would handle that situation now, after nearly two years of
experience. She responded by saying she would listen to Sandy’s suggestions and
consider them, but she would not take it personally. “I think I would joke with her a little
bit more. . . . I think I would be far more quick to disarm the attitude and to demand
respect. At that point I didn’t demand that, and I didn’t get it.”

Alternative high school students also talked about the experiences of new

teachers. In a group interview at Mapleton, students discussed how ﬁrst-year teacher

Donald Ward had changed during his ﬁrst year at their school:
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Josh: [Don] was really hard at ﬁrst, but then he lightened up.

Question: What does he teach?

Josh: He teaches experimental ed. He took us to the rope thing. Don

was only used to detention centers and other places like that. . . .
Once he saw what the other teachers were like, he got better.

Dustin: Now he jokes around with us and stuff.

Question: Does he ever talk about it? Why he changed?

Josh: Well, he was telling us when he ﬁrst started here what his other

school was like, and how he had some really rough kids. And I
think after about a week or two of being here and ﬁnding out we
weren’t hellions and we weren’t here to raise hell, we were just
here to learn and we’re just like any other kids, you know, he
got lenient.

There was recognition, then, among many teachers and students who were
interviewed that new teachers often need to learn how to become effective teachers in
alternative high schools. In many cases, students and teachers said, that means being
more lenient than would be the case in a traditional high school. Still, they added, it is
important to set limits. Furthermore, the relationship between teachers and students is
important. Many indicated that success as an alternative ed. teacher is a result of

fostering an informal, ﬁiendly classroom atmosphere, an atmosphere that includes more

“joking” among the teachers and students than is typical in traditional high schools.

Summary

Among the persons interviewed, there were a number of common perceptions
about the nature of teaching at alternative high schools. For the most part, administrators,
teachers, and students thought instruction in alternative high schools emphasizes “doing”
more than in traditional high schools. There is less standing-at-the-front-of-the-room

type of lecturing. There is more dialogue between teachers and students, and even when

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the teacher “talks a lot,” it is mostly to explain and discuss matters with students. Many
teachers who were interviewed noted that, at alternative high schools, teachers talk and
discuss school matters more than at traditional high schools. Alternative high school
teachers did not complain of being “isolated.” And, although team-teaching practices
varied signiﬁcantly among the schools included in this study, many teachers still
expressed the opinion that such collaboration is valuable, and that it is present to a greater
degree in alternative high schools than in traditional high schools. Finally, there was the
general impression among many of those interviewed for this study that teaching at an
alternative high school is different. When it comes to dealing with students, “alternative
ed. type” teaching requires a different approach, a more informal approach that provides
a balance between being lenient and setting limits.

All that said, it is appropriate to revisit the comment made at the beginning of this
section. You will recall the statement made by Paul, the student from Northshore, about
the nature of teaching at that school: “Teaching-wise,” he said, “it’s pretty much the
same as the high school.” Paul’s comment is a reminder that alternative high school
teaching may not, in fact, be all that different from teaching at traditional high schools.
Finally, it is important to recognize that, like traditional high school instructors, teachers
at alternative high schools have a great deal of freedom when it comes to their style of
teaching. Hal Hoskins, principal of Westerby High School, indicated he encouraged
teachers to try new things:

There are a lot of ways that you can teach. Especially math. There are so many

different ways! . . . . I told the teachers this: As long as you can demonstrate that

teaching and learning is taking place, you will get very little eyebrow raising from
me on things you want to try. I don’t fear failure. If a lesson happens to fall ﬂat

on its face . . . I don’t look on that as a bad thing. I give you credit for having the
guts to try something new.

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Principal Bill Chandler of Mapleton Alternative High School agreed that
alternative high school teachers should be allowed to choose their own teaching style.
“One of the things that we have found is that the more freedom that we give our
individual teachers to follow their own teaching style, the more successful they will be.”
Chandler described the style of some teachers as “very straight-laced,” as compared to
another teacher, who, “if you didn’t know he was the teacher, you would think he was
one of the kids.” The result? It is quite possible there will be several different teaching
styles within the same school, depending on the inclinations of instructors working at that

alternative high school.

Perceptions Related to Student Success and Schooling

Students, teachers, and administrators who were interviewed saw the traditional
high school as the place that had failed alternative high school students. They viewed the
traditional high school as judgmental, unfeeling, and indifferent to the needs of “the sort
of student who winds up in an alternative high school.” Staff and students alike
acknowledged that a signiﬁcant proportion of students at alternative high schools are still
immature and unmotivated, but they were united in their View that the majority of
students attending alternative high schools are likable people and capable students.
These are “good kids,” alternative high school staff and students said, who have been

“screwed up” by the traditional high school’s approach to students and learning.

Goals for Alternative High School Students

What does it take for students to be successful while attending alternative high
schools? And what goals do alternative high school administrators and teachers have for

alternative high school students? Interviews with alternative high school students and

103

staff revealed that students’ success in these schools was largely associated with their
behaviors and responses to the forms of schooling. Frequently mentioned were qualities
like maturity, a willingness to learn, appropriate behavior, self-esteem, and regular
attendance.

When expressing their goals for alternative high school students, teachers and
administrators often used two phrases: “keeping them here” and “getting them through.”
Tony Williams, long-time principal at Northshore Alternative High School, when asked
about his goals for alternative high school students, gave a response he labeled
“realistic”:

I think the major goal is for them to gain some maturity so that they can go on to

have a good life. . . . I cannot think in terms of highest goals and things like that.

I am probably more of a realist, but I think that if kids can get through to the point

where they are beyond us, where they are regular in their attendance, and they are

calm—that is good.

I asked a group of three teachers at New Century Academy about their goals for
their alternative high school students. One teacher, Karen Anderson, responded
immediately and with feeling, “My goal is to keep as many kids in here as possible
because every minute they are here with me, it is an achievement. For them and for me.”
She went on to explain that having a student who had failed in traditional high school
say, “I like it here” was “the most powerful feeling in the world.” She added, “We are
doing God’s work here!

Principal Dorothy White pointed to the “completion rate” as an important goal
and accomplishment at New Century Academy. She talked about her response when
someone criticized the high dropout rate at that school:

Art Crane, who was our former director . . . whenever someone would say, “Well,

look at the dropouts in [alternative ed.] compared to the high school,” he said,

“Excuse me, but we got your dropouts and we turned them around—and 60% of
your dropouts were successful in our program.” So, you know, rather than

104

saying, “Oh, my gosh, you have a 40% drop rate?” No, we have a 60%
completion rate. Where others failed.

And what about academic achievement? Did alternative high school teachers and
administrators consider meeting academic standards a primary goal for their students?
White went on to explain that, although she considered academics important, some
preliminary steps were more important:

That academic part becomes ahnost secondary because, unless I can turn that

angry young man into someone who is going to be receptive to learn, then nobody

is going to be successful. And if we can help to shape them so when they leave
here then when an employer gets in their face and is hollering at them, they don’t
slug them or tell them where they can go. So certainly the academics are way
important. But [the goal] is to get them to the spot where they are ready to soak
all that up.

Kelly Gleason, an instructor at Westerby, indicated that her goal for alternative
high school students was a balance among academics, “lifetime habits” (such as regular
attendance), and responsibility. She added, “I don’t think any one of those is more
important than the others.” Kelly described the “three sides” of her goal for students: “I
think that one side of it is deﬁnitely academic, and they need to learn a certain content
material to make it . . . in the world outside the classroom. That’s deﬁnite.” Another
side, she added, was attendance. Students need to learn to attend class regularly, and to
be on time. Finally, students need to act responsibly--“taking responsibility by saying,
‘Okay, well, I screwed up. I need to take the consequences and these are my
consequences.’”

Caroline Lorenz, a teacher at New Century Academy, indicated that teaching self-
esteem was her primary objective:

My goal has always been that the students feel better about themselves when they

leave my classroom than they did when they entered. That is my goal as a

teacher. And in the process, I hope to pass some information on to them, and I
hope to give them some reading and writing skills. But I always work from more

105

of a self-esteem point of view. If you love them ﬁrst and they feel good about
themselves ﬁrst, then they learn it.

A somewhat different point of view was expressed by Bill Chandler, principal of
Mapleton Alternative High School. Chandler noted that the school was in the process of
placing great emphasis on academics. He explained that a lot of alternative high schools,
including Mapleton, start off being “more treatment oriented than academically oriented.”
Chandler recognized the importance of “treatment” for alternative high school students,
but he indicated that “we have to realize we are dealing with kids who have an awful lot
of potential. These are not broken or dumb kids. And so if we don’t present a
challenging and relevant curriculum, we are doing them a disservice.” Chandler
concluded that Mapleton was “in a metamorphosis of becoming each year a little more
academically oriented than we were the year before.” He acknowledged that some
alternative high schools have the reputation of being what he called “soft jails”—places
where students could do about anything and still succeed. “They build a nice, ﬁiendly
little warehouse and put the kids there . . . and unfortunately these are the [alternative
high schools] that give us all a bad name.” Chandler explained that Mapleton was more
assertive in ensuring that students were engaged in meaningful learning. “Our approach
here is . . . you’re here to get an education, not to sit around and stare out the window, so
we need you to get to work. And if you are not going to get to work, you might as well
go home and stare out the window because that is not what we are about here.”

Alternative education students also had their opinions about the goals for
alternative high schools-—and what it takes to succeed in these places. Greg, the
Northshore student who was attending school while serving his time in jail, provided a
one-sentence recipe for success at an alternative high school. In response to my question,

“What does it take to get your diploma and get out of here?” he replied, “Do your work,
106

pay attention in class, listen to the teacher, not be a smart ass, not back talk to the teacher,
follow the rules, attend class on a regular basis.” Absent from this formula for success
was mention of academic achievement. In the interview with Greg, I asked him about his
academic accomplishments.

Question: Can you read and do math and all that stuff?

Greg: I can read pretty good, but my math skills, not good. I mean, I can
barely do my times tables. But as far as everything else, I’m good
at. . . . It’s just, like, numbers, they just don’t make sense to me,
you know what I mean? Like fractions and decimals and
whatever. Numbers just don’t make sense to me. You know?

Question: It just doesn’t click?

Greg: Right, right. . . .

Question: So do you get help here? As far as with math?

Greg: No, I actually have got all my credits for math now. I did get
through my math. It took longer than most students, probably . . .
but I got all my credits for it, so now I ain’t gotta take any more
math.

Jim, a student at Northshore Alternative High School, saw alternative high
schools as places for students who could not “cut it” in traditional high school, and places
where students could “graduate quicker.” Jim had attended traditional high school for
three years and planned to graduate at the end of the school year. He mentioned that he
had $4,000 in the bank and intended to attend Grand Valley State University in the fall.
In the interview, Jim did not make speeches. He went right to the point. First he talked
about the students who attend alternative high schools: “Primarily, it’s for all the had
kids, you know? Like all the bad kids, the ones that couldn’t cut it in high school. The

had kids usually come here. But there is also kids that come here to graduate quicker.”

When asked to explain the term “had kids,” Jim explained that they were not really bad.

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“They are cool people,” he said. “They just made some bad choices.” Then he went on
to compare student learning at the alternative high school with the traditional high school:

It’s pretty much the same, kind of, really. They give you a bit more slack, though

[at the alternative high school]. You can goof off a lot more before you get in

trouble with it. But they teach the material, if you’re there and you’re willing to

learn. You can get the same education. But, you know, half the people don’t.

Mapleton students Darcy and Tracie talked about the requirements for going on
ﬁeld trips. They talked about doing things like going horseback riding, and said you
were not allowed to go if you were not passing four out of seven classes. “That’s pretty
lenient,” Tracie concluded. I asked, “So you’re telling me it’s pretty hard not to pass four
out of seven classes?” Darcy replied, “You got to be slacking off pretty bad.” Tracy
added, “I don’t think anybody has never not passed.”

In conclusion, when describing what it takes for students to be successful, and to
get a diploma, persons interviewed for this study talked about behaviors like meeting
attendance requirements, completing assignments, behaving appropriately, and following
school rules. Most students, teachers, and administrators who were interviewed talked
about student achievement, or at least they spoke of grades and testing. However, there
was relatively little mention of speciﬁc requirements for academic achievement by

students. In contrasts, everyone talked about things like attendance requirements and

strategies for earning credits.

Meaaures of Behaviors and Achievement

Some speciﬁc indicators of student behaviors and achievement used at alternative
high schools include student progress report checklists, data related to retention rates, and
student test scores. Student progress reports were designed to provide students and

parents with speciﬁc information on the student’s success, or lack of success, at school.

108

The topics included on this form illustrated what the alternative high school educators
who had designed and used the form identiﬁed as indicators of success. The report
included a letter grade for the student and attendance statistics, along with a checklist that
enabled the teacher to “check off” appropriate comments. The categories listed in the
progress report checklist, in the order they appeared on the form, include:

Excellent attendance

Too many absences

Positive and cooperative in class
Disruptive or discourteous to class
Exhibits respectful behavior
Inattentive

Participates effectively

Assigned work incomplete

Uses time wisely

Poor test scores

Does not bring material to class
Capable of performing better work
Parental conference strongly advised

Among schoolwide indicators of success, most alternative high school
administrators and teachers often cited retention rates. All of the alternative high schools
in this study monitored and calculated retention rates. Retention rates include the number
of students who stay (i.e., the ones who do not drop out) during a quarter, semester, or
year. All staff members at an alternative high school usually were well aware of their
school’s retention rate, especially if that rate was a source of pride. For example, New
Century Academy teacher Karen Anderson was proud of that school’s retention rate:
“This year I think we have about 140 in the New Century Academy, and we have an 85%
retention. We just had a staff meeting this week, and we were told we had 85% retention,
which I think is astronomical!”

And what about student testing? How much importance do alternative high

school administrators and teachers place on schoolwide testing programs, such as the

109

Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP)? It appears that the schools in this
study placed relatively little emphasis on the MEAP. Some teachers and administrators
noted that testing programs like the MEAP generally are not applicable to alternative
high schools. Teacher Kelly Gleason at Westerby High School described that school’s
connection with the MEAP and explained why staff there were “less driven by a speciﬁc
test”:

When you have an alternative ed. population that is in such ﬂux, we don’t have a
lot of the students taking the MEAP test. And it’s not that what’s on the MEAP
isn’t important to teach. I’m not trying to say it that way. But the way that it is
presented and the organization of it is a little bit stricter than we need to have
here. . . . It’s pretty restrictive and regimentative, which is something we don’t
really need as much of here. We, you know, we do have some more ﬂexibility
that way to come up with things that are more unusual.

A testing program that was used at two of the four alternative high schools was
the ACT WorkKeys assessment. Westerby High School principal Hal Hoskins described
WorkKeys as “a way for employers and for schools to know what is needed.” The ACT
WorkKeys assessment covers the following tOpics:

Applied mathematics
Applied technology
Listening

Locating information
Observation

Reading for information
Teamwork

Writing

At each level of proﬁciency, characteristics and skills are established, with speciﬁc
criteria spelled out for each numerical level. Some tests are paper and pencil with
multiple-choice responses; others are videotaped or audiotaped with multiple-choice
responses. In the case of writing, the test is audiotaped with a constructed response.
Hoskins explained that Westerby High School was concentrating on applied

mathematics, reading for information, listening, and writing. He explained that when a
110

student achieves at a particular level, the employer reviewing the test results can look at

the WorkKeys chart and determine the student’s competencies. Hoskins explained that

the WorkKeys ranking is more descriptive to an employer than are grades. The employer

may say, “Hey, yeah, you’ve graduated from high school You got an A in algebra,” but

you lay [the WorkKeys scores] down, now I know you can do this, this, and this—

because they are broken down into levels.” Mapleton High School also used the ACT

WorkKeys assessment, and educators at that school incorporated that measurement into

the school’s North Central Association (NCA) Transitions credentialing process for

1999-2000. Mapleton established WorkKeys Level 3 as the “needed score” for students

to be credentialed in the areas of reading comprehension, writing, mathematics

(middle/secondary), science reasoning, employability skills, and career awareness/

exploration. (See Table 3 for criteria.)

Table 3. ACT WorkKeys—Reading for Information (Level 3)

 

Characteristics of Reading

 

 

Level Materials and Questions Skills
3 Short, uncomplicated passages Identify uncomplicated key
which use elementary vocabulary concepts and simple details
Basic company policies, pro- Recogrrize the proper place-

 

cedures, and announcements

All necessary information stated
clearly in the reading materials

Focus on the main points of the
passages

Wording of the questions and
answers similar or identical to the
wording used in the reading
materials

 

ment of a step in a sequence of
events, or the proper time to
perform a task

Identify the meaning of a word
that is deﬁned within the passage

Identify the meaning of a simple
word that is not deﬁned within
the passage

Recognize the application of
instructions given in the passage
to situations that are also
described in the passage

 

lll

 

In summary, then, administrators and teachers pointed to some speciﬁc indicators
of success used by the alternative high schools. The list of student behaviors for New
Century Academy illustrates what the educators who designed that form considered as
important goals for their students. Retention rates are important schoolwide indicators of
success. Teachers and administrators who were interviewed generally indicated that not
a great deal of emphasis was placed on the MEAP test, and staff in two schools indicated

that they preferred ACT WorkKeys for assessing students.

The Admission Process
Before heading to class at any of the alternative high schools in this study,
students must ﬁrst go through a systematic, individualized admission process. This
process includes testing of entering students and individual interviews with an
administrator or counselor. The tests are used for placement purposes, and also to
determine basic skill levels. At New Century Academy, counselor Sarah Dexter
explained the process used at that school:
We give what we call the Adult Placement Indicator, API for short. That tells us
an approximate level of reading and vocabulary skills. . . . During the registration
we send the student who is here for an API assessment. Then they come back and
for scoring we have red, yellow, and blue on our score sheets. If a student scores
red, that’s a basic reading type [student] that we would not put into regular classes
at that point, especially in reading. If they score yellow, then that’s a caution—
more like an entry-level class. Then the blue is above 9th-grade level, which is
the high school level and where we put them in any class.
Dexter added that the placement test used at New Century Academy for mathematics was
the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT). “It’s basic stuff,” she explained. “It’s

fractions, decimals, times, and averaging.” Teachers also administered proﬁciency tests

to new students.

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Carl Jackson, an instructor at Northshore Alternative High School, used a
proﬁciency test in his English classes to determine whether students could read and “just
to see where they are.” He added, “from there we start ﬁnding out: Do they have a
problem with spelling? Do they have a problem with vocabulary? Word recognition?
And then we just kind of start building on wherever they are.”

Interviews with prospective students were also part of the admission process at
each school. Principal Hal Hoskins, from Westerby High School, commented: “I meet
with every single student in here. We’ll explain what our program is and what it isn’t,
and try to get the motivation of why he wants to and make sure that the reason they want

to come here is the right reason.”

Attendance Reguirements

Once they were enrolled, students were expected to attend classes. Each school
had elaborate, speciﬁc attendance requirements. Everyone knew and understood these
requirements. For example, Jim, 3 student at Northshore Alternative High School, saw
the attendance requirements as “the biggest difference from high school.” He explained,
“They give you all kinds of slack, they have better things for kids that are bad, but you
only get six absences. And if you are over six, you lose credit. No matter what. You’re
over six, you’re out.” After saying that, a few minutes later Jim conceded that, under
certain conditions, the teacher just might give a student one-quarter credit:

If you go up to the teachers, and you’re nice to them, you know, you’re not a

bastard, they are cool with it. They’ll give you deals, like if you come the rest of

the quarter and do your work, they’ll give you credit. It’s a ridiculous amount,
but you get credit. If you’re bad, you’re out. They’re not going to give you no
breaks, you know?

New Century Academy allowed students to miss eight times per semester before

they lost credit. After more than eight absences, students lost credit, but, as at

113

Northshore, they could still earn one-quarter credit. New Century instructor Karen
Anderson explained that, if students had missed more than eight times and truly wanted
to complete the class, there was a possibility that they could earn one-quarter credit
instead of the one-half credit usually earned for the semester-long class: “I will offer
them an option of quarter credit, with some stipulations. You have to tell me that you are
not going to miss from now on. I’m not going to give you a quarter credit and then you
turn around and miss six more times. No, I’m not going to do that. I don’t have a license
to do that.”

At Mapleton, students could have eight absences per semester before losing
credit. If they missed more than eight times but still completed the class, the credit they
would have earned went in a “credit bank.” Sam, a student at Mapleton, explained that if
“the only thing not done is those attendances, they’ll put it in a credit bank and they’ll
pass you on.” If, during the next marking period, the student completed all of his or her
other coursework and did not miss more than eight times, the student would also earn the
credit he or she had banked. “So they give you the beneﬁt of the doubt on that,” Sam
added, “unless in the next marking period you screw up and they take it all back.”

At Westerby High School, students could be absent up to seven times in a
semester. Once they went beyond seven, they were ineligible to receive credit. Westerby
principal Hal Hoskins explained that there could be exceptions:

Now there is an asterisk, as there often is. And this is if on the eighth absence

say, for example, a parent calls and says, “Ben is throwing up. He is sick,” I

consider that an excused absence. Ben can still earn credit in his class, provided

he makes up the time, and that means after school. And it’s pretty systematic; we
have a form and everything.

In summary, attendance was an important institutional requirement at the

alternative high schools in this study. Students, teachers, and administrators talked a

114

great deal about attendance, and the speciﬁc requirements students must meet in order to
earn credit. School ofﬁcials and students also explained allowable exceptions to the
attendance regulations and appeal process. In short, a well-deﬁned set of rules governed

attendance requirements—rules that were clearly understood and followed.

Earning Credits

Toni Thompson, a student at Northshore, summarized what she liked about going
to that school: “It’s a cool place,” she said. “I mean, I love coming to school ‘cause it’s
so easy and you get your credits and you can graduate, like if you just show up.”
Administrators, students, and teachers described a variety of systematic procedures
designed to assist students in keeping track of their credits. They talked about creative
ways students could earn credits, and they explained how teachers helped students so
they would not lose credit. The number of credits required for graduation differed from
school to school (see Table 4), but many were consistent across schools. For example, in
most traditional high schools (at least the ones not on a “block” schedule), students earn
one half credit for one semester-long class. At alternative high schools, the year is
divided into quarters, and students earn credits in increments of one-quarter units.
Westerby High School principal Hal Hoskins explained, “Our marking periods are really
four different semesters.” As a result of this organizational technique, students at
alternative high schools earn one-quarter credit for the ﬁrst quarter of a “two-quarter-
long” course, even if they do not meet the requirements of the second quarter. At a
traditional high school, the student who fails to meet class requirements in the second
marking period of a semester-long course would usually lose the entire one-half credit for

that semester-long course.

115

Table 4. Required units for credit at alternative high schools included in this study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Required Areas of Units of Credit Units of Credit Units of Credit Units of Credit
Coursework Required for Required for Required for Required for
Mapleton New Century Northshore Westerby
English/lagguage arts 4 units 4 units 3-1/2 units 5-1/2 units
Mathematics 2-1/2 units 2 units 2 units 2-1/2 units
Science 2-1/2 units 2 units 2 units 2 units
American history 1 unit 1 unit
American jovemment 1/2 unit 1/2 unit
Social studies 1-1/2 units l/2 unit 4 units
Global studies 3 units
Sociology/psychology 1/2 unit
Phys‘ca' “mm“! 1 unit 1/2 unit 1 unit
health
Computers 1 unit 1/2 unit 1 unit
Consumer education 1 unit
Fine or practical arts 1 unit
Art 1/2 unit
Pre-employment 1/2 unit
School to career 1 unit
Experiential learning 1/2 unit
Electives 10 units 9 units 6-1/2 units 6 units
53:11:51” REQUIRED 26 units 20 units 20 units” 22 units”

 

 

 

 

 

I‘The total required units for Northshore Alternative High School was increased to
21 units in 2003 and will be 22 units in 2004.

bThe total required units for Westerby High School was increased to 25 units in
2003, and will be 27 units in 2004 and 29 units in 2005.

Daniel and Patrick, students at Westerby High School, described the techniques a

teacher named Marty used to help them succeed:

Patrick:

Question:
Patrick:
Daniel:

Patrick:

Marty always makes lists of all our assignments. Every two weeks
or every three weeks, she hands out lists of your entire assign-

ments.

So she is keeping track of you?

Yeah. She’ll write down our grade and what we got on each paper.

And if you miss an assignment . . .

She’ll put a star next to it or something.

116

 

Mapleton Alternative High School teacher Donald Ward talked about some of the
procedures he had developed to help students not lose credit. “My students all know if
they don’t pass a test, they can retake it, but they usually have to do a few more
assignments in between to show me they worked at it.” Ward explained that when it was
close to the end of a marking period and a student had a cumulative score of 50% to 65%
(with 70% required for passing), he had developed other ways for the students to earn
credit:

I have offered them the opportunity to either do the work, retake the test, and get

the grade you want to get; or you can get the book and make all the corrections so

you know all the right answers and the highest grade you get is 70%. Some of the
kids like that, but the thing you have to be careful of are the kids who will say,

“Forget this test!” and do the open book later. But I haven’t run into that yet.

Some teachers helped students experience success and earn credits by placing
more emphasis on daily assignments and giving less weight to testing. New Century
Academy instructor Karen Anderson explained, “I do not give tests. . . . I go more for the
daily. Every day is an examination.” Ron Holaday at Mapleton Alternative High School
also followed this philosophy. He explained, “The way I set up my classes is that if you
do the homework assignments and you do well on those, you don’t have to worry about
the test. The test is going to be part of it; you“ won’t get an A, but you’ll certainly pass
the class.”

Another teacher made the point that teachers needed to be careful about “piling
on” daily assignments. New Century teacher Caroline Lorenz said she was known as
“the queen of the packets.” Packets, she explained, were daily assignments copied and
handed out to students in batches. The downside was that students were intimidated by

the size of the packet. “They think, ‘Oh, my gosh! You’re giving me all this work. I’m

going to die! ’” Lorenz said she would tell them that not all of it had to be done today, but

117

they still did not like it. SO she said, “I had to tell the copy lady, not a packet, a couple of
pages only.”

Finally, another technique used by alternative high schools to enable students to
earn credits expeditiously was independent study. Some of the schools made extensive
use of independent studies for students; others used this type of approach inﬁ'equently.
However, all had some form of individualized, for-credit program for students. Mapleton
Alternative High School made extensive use of what it called “self-paced” classes.
Principal Bill Chandler said self-paced classes at that school took several forms.

It all depends on what class it is. If they are taking a self-paced art class, Gary

will let them propose their own contract. They negotiate out a contract in the

beginning, and he turns them loose. So that class is really designed by the
students. There are other classes, like self-paced math, where the teacher says,

“Okay, we tested you, here is your skill level; over the next nine weeks here is

what you are going to accomplish.” So it depends on the subject matter and how

much direction a teacher has in putting it together. But most of the classes are put

together by the teachers.
For many independent studies, Mapleton used Harcourt Brace Jovanovich’s Nova Edition
programmed course studies. Students read from texts and other supplemental materials,
completed written assignments, and then took the unit test. They also took an
examination at the halfway point of the course of study, as well as a ﬁnal examination. If
the student’s cumulative score was 70% or higher, he or she earned one-half credit for
completing the independent study.

Alternative high school teachers, then, had created many well-articulated
procedures, practices, and programs to help students earn credits and a diploma. The

procedures and practices were well understood by all of those interviewed—students and

staff members alike.

118

AMVS Welcomed Bac_k

Despite the structure and encouragement offered by teachers, many students did
not earn credit. However, even then, all was not lost. Those students could still come
back, and many did. Westerby principal Hal Hoskins said it was sometimes Obvious that
students were not going to earn credit. He used the example of a student who, with ﬁve
weeks of the nine-week quarter gone, had “0%” and had completed only half of one
assignment out of 30. Hoskins said he told the student that he should consider “taking off
the next four weeks” and coming back for the next nine-week quarter. “And a lot of
times they come back,” Hoskins observed, “and, you know, some of them are successful
and some of them will be like, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I saw what happened when I didn’t
put forth the effort.’” Westerby teacher Kelly Gleason agreed with her principal. After
she acknowledged that “we lose quite a few,” I asked whether they just stopped coming,
or whether there was some sort of procedure they went through. “No,” she responded,
“they usually just discontinue their attendance.” She went on to explain that some came
back for their GED or to attend night school. “They don’t usually go away completely,”
she added.

Northshore students Toni and Carissa talked about the reaction of alternative high
school staff when students took some time off:

Carissa: For two years, I was in and out of here. I’d sign up and go for a
couple of days.

Question: But they don’t give up on you?

Both: No.
Carissa: Every time you are always welcomed back.
Toni: Yeah.

119

Carissa: It’s not like, “Oh, you didn’t do anything last time!” It’s not like
they don’t care. They do.

Question: So, if I don’t get credit that ﬁrst quarter, no big deal. I just come
back for the second one.

Toni: Yeah. Well, if you’re 16 or older, you don’t have to come any
more. . . . But if you’re 15 or younger, you have to come because
of truancy.

In summary, students who did not earn credit, or who left mid-semester, were not
seen as dropouts by other students or staff members in this study. The process of earning
credit and getting a diploma at an alternative high school was ﬂexible. Students who left
usually were viewed as just “taking some time off.” They could be readmitted to the
alternative high school in good standing, and they often were. Students thought that they

were, in fact, welcomed back to the alternative high school (without being scolded for

their past failures).

Testing Out

At Northshore, “testing out” of speciﬁc classes was one way for students to earn
credits. Both students and staff members were expert in describing this procedure.
Naomi, the Northshore Alternative High School student who had previously attended a
tribal school, explained that she would have 17-1/2 credits (of the 20 required) by the end
of the current school year. I asked whether she planned to return the following semester
and enroll in classes to earn the other 2-1/2 credits needed for a diploma. Naomi
explained that was not going to be her approach. But she did have a plan, and in the
interview she shared her strategy for completing her requirements for graduation:

Naomi: Well, they have this thing where you can test out, where you take
tests, and each test is worth a half a credit.

Question: Talk to me about that. How does that work?

120

Naomi:

Question:

Naomi:

Question:

Naomi:

Well, you have to enroll for classes for another quarter. And you
can only take [the test] if you—let’s say my class graduates this
year, in 2002, and because I don’t have enough credits to graduate
this year, I can take the tests next year. But then you have to be

18 also. Next year I’m going to have to come back, because my
birthday is at the beginning of September, so I can enroll for
classes and tests. And next year I’m done. I have to come back
and take a speciﬁc class. I have to enroll in a class to test out. But
then I have to go to regular classes too. I don’t know if I have to
be there every day.

What kinds of tests are they?
They are just like regular high school tests.

If you can pass the test, you don’t need to take the class. 15 that
the bottom line?

Yeah.

During his interview, Northshore student Greg Hughes told me he was just about

ready to take a test. “I’m working on psychology,” he told me. I asked him whether the

test was hard.

Oh, yeah, it’s hard. You have to do a lot of reading; It’s like multiple-choice
questions, all the tests are. But in the tests there is a lot of reading, you know
what I mean? You’ve got to take in a lot of information. Like the psychology
test. You’ve got to read about it and learn about psychology and what different
psychologists do. How many different psychologists there are. And math, there’s
math. They’ve got a math one. And sociology tests basically everything.

Tony Williams, the principal of Northshore, indicated that the tests used for

testing out of classes were purchased from Educational Development Services. He

explained that “they are really adult ed. tests that ﬁll the void that was left when the GED

said, ‘Look, you can’t give high school credit for GED tests.”’ In the 19805, the Board of

Education of Northshore Area Schools approved allowing students to test out of regular

classes. A total of ﬁve credits could be earned by successfully passing these tests,

including two credits in English, one credit in mathematics, one credit in science, and one

credit in social studies. “I think it works great now,” Williams concluded, “because the

121

student has to be 18 and the class has to be graduated.” I then commented to Williams
that the students “seemed street smart” about these testing-out credits and what it took to

get them. Williams smiled and gave a one-word answer: “Yep.”

Summary

Data presented in this section dealt with perceptions concerning student success in
alternative high schools. Interviews revealed that such success ﬁequently was associated
with student behaviors and student responses to institutional requirements. Therefore,
this section also included data related to several aspects of the forms of schooling in
alternative high schools, including things like attendance requirements, strategies for
earning credits, admission processes, “testing out,” independent studies, and the
procedures used by students to drop out and return. Speciﬁc indicators of student
behaviors and achievement used at alternative high schools, such as student progress
reports, data on retention rates, and student testing programs, also were discussed.

Alternative high school administrators and teachers who were interviewed talked
in detail about many procedures, practices, and programs designed to keep students in
school and help them earn their high school diplomas. These things were creative and
were well understood by all of those interviewed for this study—students and staff
members alike. Responses related to academic achievement were, by contrast, not as

speciﬁc or prevalent as discussions related to institutional requirements.

Perceptions Concerning the Curriculum
The perceptions held by administrators, teachers, and students regarding the
curriculum of the alternative high schools are examined in this section. I highlight

common beliefs shared by those interviewed regarding curriculum development and

122

implementation at these schools. One belief is that alternative high school administrators
and teachers have considerable ﬂexibility and freedom in designing and implementing
curriculum. In other words, a considerable amount of the curriculum at alternative high
schools is teacher determined. That said, most administrators and teachers indicated that
they followed some sort of curriculum framework, benchmarks, or guide that established
the basic direction. However, the curriculum of alternative high schools also was seen as
being highly teacher driven. Another belief shared by the administrators of all four
alternative high schools was that “others” see alternative high schools as having a
“watered-down” curriculum. A number of teachers and administrators thought that, to an

extent, this impression was accurate.

A “Loosely Aligned” Curriculum

A cursory examination of the courses offered by alternative high schools reveals a
curriculum that looks a lot like that offered at traditional high schools (see Table 5 for an
example). However, many of those interviewed indicated that, when it came to the issue
of curriculum, there was more “ﬂexibility and freedom” in an alternative high school than
in a traditional high school. Westerby High School principal Hal Hoskins talked about
his experiences as an alternative high school teacher at nearby Galway Public Schools, a
position he held for several years before moving to Blue Harbor. “We were left to our
own devices, which can be good to a degree, in that you have a lot of ﬂexibility and
freedom.” However, there was a downside to that ﬂexibility and freedom. Hoskins
explained that “usually when you drift like that, you don’t have the beneﬁt of a lot of

resources.”

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124

Christian Piper, a science teacher at New Century Academy who also taught
university classes, also talked about ﬂexibility. When asked whether, in the area of
curriculum development, there was anyone “looking over her shoulder,” she responded,
“No, especially in the sciences.” Piper added, “Of course, we have guidelines to follow
and the classes are related to different benchmarks, but we’re very ﬂexible.”

Mapleton Alternative High School principal Bill Chandler agreed. He talked
about the alignment of the Mapleton curriculum with the MEAP and ACT tests. “The
curriculum is very, very loosely aligned with the tests,” be reported. Moreover, he added
that there was not a lot of “outside” pressure to create that alignment. “And the only
pressure right now that is put on teachers to tighten up the [curriculum] alignment,” he
added, “is the pressure they put on themselves.” He went on to say that the focus at
Mapleton was going to be aligning the curriculum with the ACT Plan assessment and not
the MEAP. He described the ACT Plan as “more relevant to what most of our students
are going to do after high school.”

And when there is no curriculum, what do teachers do? I asked Mapleton
Alternative High School instructor Donald Ward. Ward had been at Mapleton for a
relatively short time, having previously taught at an alternative high school in the
Garrison School District. I inquired whether, when he ﬁrst came to Mapleton, anyone
reviewed with him what he was supposed to teach—or did he just “dive in”? “Kind of
dove in,” he responded. “Actually, dove in at both school systems. In Garrison we asked
a number of times if we could get some of the high school criteria—give us some guide
so we know we’re doing the right thing. We never received any. Here [at Mapleton] I

was able to get them right away. That’s kind of what I based off of.”

125

Peregrtions of aLWatered-Down” Curriculum

All of the administrators whom I interviewed talked about the perception held by
others, especially traditional high school staff members, that the curriculum at alternative
high schools is not as rigorous as at traditional high schools. New Century principal
Dorothy White said that opinion might have some merit, considering the size of
alternative high schools:

So curriculum-wise, there is the perception of a watered-down curriculum. Well,

you are not as tough as a high school! Well, we’re not. Unfortunately, we can’t

fund a class for just six people for calculus. We can’t do it even though we got
the foundation grant money for pupils. The funding source for adult ed. is very
different. So we can’t do that. . . . The perception is that we don’t measure up.

And, in actuality, we don’t in some areas.

Hal Hoskins, principal of Westerby High School, also talked about how others
view alternative high schools. When asked how he thought high school staff regarded
Westerby, he answered, “With suspicion, I think. There is no question that, I think, a
number of teachers, counselors, administrators, you know, are suspicious of what we do.”
Hoskins went on to say that these people believe in the stereotype of alternative high
schools as places where “all the losers” go. And what do they think about curriculum?
Hoskins responded that they think “there is no curriculum.” And he admitted, “In all
honesty, I think that some of that is deserved because I’ve visited a bunch of alternative
schools, as I mentioned earlier, and some of them actually were jokes.”

Northshore Alternative High School principal Tony Williams noted that others
sometimes view alternative high schools as educational “ugly stepsisters.” In the case of
Northshore, he indicated that school had been criticized for the way it dealt with Native
American students and the dropout rate. He added:

So the alternative has come under ﬁre. But it’s always been kind of viewed as the

ugly stepsister or whatever—the stepchild. But we are given the materials to
develop the curriculum—well, not to develop, to deliver the curriculum—and I

126

don’t see anybody ever coming in with the authority above me to say, “Look,
we’ve got to start doing this.” We’re pretty much given free reign.

Mapleton Alternative High School principal Bill Chandler spoke at length of the
curriculum initiatives under way at that school. Mapleton is an NCA-accredited school,
and Chandler indicated the staff took school improvement efforts seriously. However, at
the conclusion of the interview, Chandler concluded, “If I had to point to a weakness in
this program, it would be in curriculum. And I think we have a stronger curriculum than

a lot of alternative ed. programs, but I still think our curriculum is not what it could be.”

The Curriculum Reﬂecta the Teachers

Some persons interviewed for this study also indicated that, just as with teaching
styles, the curricula of alternative high schools are tailored to ﬁt the needs and strengths
of teachers. “I think that the curriculum reﬂects the teachers,” Northshore Alternative
High School teacher Carl Jackson said. “Nothing is really set in stone. ‘Cause, yeah,
look at my schedule! I’m teaching health and science. Health was my major and earth
science was my minor. Where does consumers ed. ﬁt in?” Jackson (Teacher 3 in Table
5) taught two sections of consumer education and one section of parenting.

Mapleton principal Bill Chandler noted that, when it came to electives, the staff
members themselves often submitted creative proposals. Describing the process for
implementing a new elective class, he explained that teachers “come to me and say, ‘I
want to teach this particular elective,’ and we put it on the agenda for the next staff
meeting.” Next, Chandler said, the staff member proposing the class explains “how they
think it ﬁts into our total curriculum and our mission for the school.” He said the staff

“kick it around” for a couple of weeks, and then they come back together and make a

127

decision. As an example, he talked about a ﬁrst-hour drum classl taught by a language

arts instructor:
It’s just fabulous. The kids love it . . . they have made instruments out of
materials, and they are really getting pretty good. I thought it was going to be a
blow-off class. Quite frankly, I was an obstacle to starting the drum class, and
now I’m glad I didn’t win that battle because it has turned out to be a great
elective.

Teachers and administrators from other alternative high schools also indicated that staff

had a great deal of ﬂexibility in establishing elective classes and that often these classes

reﬂected the interests of teachers.

Summary

The data indicated that curriculum guidelines at alternative high schools often
were not the primary focus for instruction. Most alternative high school educators
acknowledged that they did use some sort of a district-provided guide as a framework for
their instruction. Often these guides were based on State of Michigan curriculum
benchmarks. That noted, persons interviewed indicated they retained a great deal of
ﬂexibility and freedom in designing what was to be taught and how it was to be taught.
Often the school curriculum was inﬂuenced by teachers’ needs, desires, and strengths.
The administrators of these alternative high schools noted that staff members at
traditional high schools often viewed their curricula as “watered down.” And these
administrators conceded that, at least to some degree, this was an accurate observation.

There was little discussion of curriculum developed exclusively for these alternative high

 

|l came to Mapleton early one day so that I could observe the drum class. An amusing thing
happened during this observation. Students came in, picked out their “instruments,” and took a seat around
tables placed together to form a large rectangle. I took a seat at one comer of the rectangle. A young
woman carrying a stainless steel bowl and a wooden spoon came and sat next to me. She looked a little
pale. She told me her name, and I introduced myself. “I don’t feel very well,” she told me. She held up
the stainless steel bowl. “I picked this so that if I have to throw up I can use my instrument.” She made it
through the class without that happening; her color eventually returning as she whacked the bowl with her
spoon in time to the music.

128

schools, with the exception of the creation and design of electives. Teachers and
administrators consistently indicated that teacher-designed elective classes were common

at their alternative high schools.

129

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS

“Our efforts at education appear woefully inadequate in
spite of the remarkable accomplishments of our schools.”
Harry F . Wolcott, 1983, p. 247
Introduction
The purpose Of this study was to describe and explain how alternative high

schools in Michigan compared with traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum,
organization, and pedagogy. To have a basis for comparison, I ﬁrst needed to understand
what happened at traditional high schools, 50 I turned to the large body of literature
dealing with the nature and development of the traditional high school. In Chapter II, I
summarized key points that scholars have made concerning the curriculum, organization,
and pedagogy of traditional high schools. This was the mirror I held up to alternative
high schools. In other words, the literature dealing with the curriculum, organization, and
pedagogy of traditional high schools served as a basis for comparison when, during the
course of this study, I examined four alternative high schools in Michigan. As I gathered
and analyzed the data, 1 formed conclusions concerning the ways that alternative high
schools were similar to, or different from, what the literature said about traditional high

schools. Those conclusions are reported in this chapter.

What Is Alternagve About the Curriculum of Alternative High Schools?
The literature dealing with traditional high schools described the modern
traditional American high school as a buffet of educational choices. Development of a

curriculum varies from school to school, and different curricula are developed for

130

different types of students. The historical trend in American secondary education has
been to expand what is taught in traditional high schools in order to promote students’
success (Powell et al., 1985). Students who plan to continue their education beyond high
school often enroll in more demanding courses. For students who do not intend to
continue beyond high school, the curriculum is less demanding. In many cases, the
objective of the curriculum seems to be student success with minimal effort on the part of
the student (Grant, 1988). The curriculum is designed—some would say diluted—to
accommodate the needs of students.

It is the same in alternative high schools. The data from this study consistently
supported the conclusion that the curriculum in these schools follows the same logic of
accommodation characteristic of traditional high schools. However, there is a signiﬁcant
difference. Alternative high schools take the public school logic of accommodation to
new lengths to promote the success of their students. Almost all of the alternative high
school administrators and teachers interviewed for this study indicated their willingness
to reduce institutional requirements to their most basic terms to encourage students to
stay in school and help them get a high school diploma. They indicated they did
whatever they needed to do to “keep them here” and “get them through.”

The strategies of Donald Ward, a teacher at Mapleton Alternative High School,
illustrate just how basic accommodations could be. He explained that, when alternative
high school students were failing his class, they still had options. “I have offered them
the opportunity to either do the work, retake the test, and get the grade you want to get; or
you can get the book and make all the corrections so you know all the right answers and
the highest grade you get is 70%.” When talking about testing and daily assignments,

teachers talked in terms of procedures and not content. They described things students

131

did to “bring up their grade.” There was little discussion concerning how students
demonstrated they had mastered content standards established for that course.

That is not to say there were no established standards. Alternative high school
educators, when interviewed for this study, consistently indicated that instruction at their
schools was framed by some sort of a curriculum guide or guides, most of which were
based on “imported” district-level or State of Michigan benchmarks. However, most
alternative high school teachers and administrators interviewed for this study also shared
a common belief concerning oversight. They responded that only rarely did someone
“look over their shoulder” to determine whether they were implementing any sort of
curriculum standards. As principal Bill Chandler at Mapleton Alternative High School
noted, the only “pressure that is put on teachers right now to tighten up [curriculum]
alignment is the pressure they put on themselves.”

At ﬁrst glance, the course offerings of the alternative high schools included in this
study looked much like those offered at the districts’ traditional high schools. However,
a great deal of energy and detail went into the design of elective classes in the alternative
high schools included in this study. Moreover, the data revealed that the curriculum often
was shaped to ﬁt the needs of individual students. At New Century Academy, teachers
spoke with pride of their plan for a student who had been home-schooled and could not
read. The “self-paced” classes at Mapleton allowed students to earn credits relatively
quickly, if they were motivated.

To succeed at alternative high schools, students did not need to master a one-size-
ﬁts-all prescribed set of academic standards, or even choose from two or three options.
Teachers indicated they met students “where they were at.” Students took placement

exams to determine their current levels of achievement, and that is where instruction

132

started. If students could handle more, they were encouraged to do more. There were
fewer demands on students who were struggling. Greg, a student at Northshore
Alternative High School who had difﬁculty with math, ﬁrst told me, “I can barely do my
times tables.” Then a few sentences later he added, “I actually have got all my credits for
math. . . . I ain’t gotta take any more math.”

In summary, the data from this study consistently indicated that there was little or
no support among alternative high school administrators and teachers for a more uniform,
more demanding curriculum for all students. There was, by contrast, considerable
support for a curriculum that would accommodate the speciﬁc needs of students.
Alternative high school administrators and teachers designed learning plans for individual
students. They created programs, like self-paced independent studies, that
accommodated the needs of their students. And teachers taught what they wanted to
teach. They designed elective classes based on their interests and what they thought
would interest students. Moreover, when asked about curriculum, most alternative
educators did not feel compelled to give “lip service” to the need for intellectual rigor and
demanding courses of study. Instead, they talked about the need to keep the curriculum
ﬂexible to accommodate students and help them get a diploma.

What Is Alteraative About the Organization and Structure of
Alternative High Schools?

 

To provide a basis for comparison to alternative high schools, I reviewed
literature dealing with the organization of the traditional high school. The literature
indicated that American high schools were designed primarily to provide direct,
uncomplicated ways to maintain control and promote orderliness. The school day was

arranged into periods, and the clock regulated the lives of students and teachers. The

133

layout and design of the school promoted efﬁcient education of batches of students
(Cusick, 1973). There were all sorts of rules for all sorts of things: smoking, being tardy,
and behavior in class and in the halls. Students did not “come and go” as they pleased.
These were complex bureaucracies, and it took effort to ensure that they were orderly and
that educators were the ones in control. Powell et a1. (1985), Cusick (1983), McNeil
(1986), and Sizer (1984) all talked about the relationship between control and instruction.

Many students did not want to be in school. At best, they were quiet and
unresponsive. At worst, these students were abusive and disruptive. Given this reality,
teachers often promoted strategies and agreements designed to keep order. Sizer
observed that, in traditional high schools, “getting agreement takes persuasiveness,
ﬂexibility, trust, and time. Failing to get agreement, and agreement on ends and means
that forward serious intellectual activity, however painful, results in an empty school”
(p. 160). A signiﬁcant challenge facing educators in traditional high schools, then, was
keeping order in spite of the lack of motivation of many students. And educators could
not say to those uncaring students, “Just leave!” Americans valued education as a key
component of good citizenship. Fundamental American values said it was important for
all students to attend school, even if they were unruly or unmotivated. An egalitarian
ideal charged educators with the responsibility for getting students to attend classes, and
working with disorderly students to see whether they could complete the work (Cusick,
1983)

The data collected for this study consistently revealed that alternative high
schools were organized much like traditional high schools. Alternative high schools
looked like traditional high schools in many ways. Like traditional high schools,

alternative high schools were organized to promote orderliness and maintain control.

134

Subject areas were divided into classes. The school day was divided into periods, and the
clock regulated the day for students and teachers alike. Students earned credits for
classes—at the rate of one half credit for a semester-long class that met for one period a
day. Like traditional high schools, alternative high schools were organized to
accommodate the needs of students.

However, as was the case with curriculum, there was a signiﬁcant difference
between the organization of alternative high schools and that of traditional high schools.
When organizing their schools, alternative educators took the public school logic of
accommodation one step further. Alternative high school educators reduced institutional
requirements to their most basic terms. Again, the objective was to encourage students to
stay in school and help them get a high school diploma. Educators in alternative schools
made little or no pretense that their primary mission was to nurture the intellectual
development of students. At alternative high schools, students succeeded by mastering
well-deﬁned institutional demands that were reduced to a set of “bottom-line”
requirements. The requirements were speciﬁc and well articulated. Everyone talked
about them. Everyone, including students, understood what had to be done to meet these
institutional demands. To illustrate how alternative educators created and shaped these
institutional requirements to accommodate students, four areas related to the organization
of alternative high schools—attendance, earning credits, dropping out, and standards for
student behavior—are reviewed in the following paragraphs. Data concerning each of
these areas initially were presented in Chapter IV.

Attendance requirements at alternative high schools were an interesting
combination of tough standards and clever exceptions. Jim, a Northshore student,

explained it by saying, “You only get six absences. And if you are over six, you lose

135

credit. No matter what. You’re over six, you’re out.” However, Jim went on to say that,
under certain circumstances, you might get a teacher to give you partial credit for the
class. He said, “If you go up to the teachers, and you’re nice to them, you know, you’re
not a bastard, they are cool with it. They’ll give you deals, like if you come the rest of
the quarter and do your work, they’ll give you credit.” Among the schools included in
the study, the number of absences allowed varied from school to school. However, the
basic procedure that Jim outlined held true (in some form) in all of the schools. And
everyone understood the limits, and everyone understood what one had to do to get
partial credit.

At each of the alternative high schools included in this study, understanding the
procedures and regulations related to earning credits was considered serious business.
Teachers and students understood that accumulating credits was the lifeblood of “getting
through” and earning a diploma. Administrators, teachers, or counselors made sure
students knew exactly where they stood “credit-wise” There were periodic conferences
or audits to ensure that students were making progress. Moreover, at these schools there
were ways to earn credits other than sitting in a classroom participating in regular classes.
For example, at Northshore, another way to earn credits was through “testing out.” At
Mapleton, self-paced classes provided students another route for earning credits. At New
Century Academy, a student earned credit while learning to read, and Westerby High
School emphasized job shadowing and work-related activities. What is important here is
that administrators, teachers, and students all understood these options. Moreover, in the
process of accumulating the credits needed to earn a diploma, alternative routes (some

might label them shortcuts) were both allowed and extolled. The bureaucracy was not

136

designed to limit and restrict. Educators designed bureaucratic requirements to help
students succeed.

The data indicated that the general procedure for dropping out of an alternative
high school was basic: You could not drop out. If you were over the age of 16, you
could legally discontinue your attendance. But that did not mean you could not come
back. Carissa, a student at Northshore Alternative High School, explained that over a
two-year period she “was in and out of here.” However, when it came time to retum,
Carissa explained, she did not have to battle through bureaucratic red tape. “Every time
you are always welcomed back,” she said. Alternative high school educators had created
procedures for leaving, and then returning, that were truly basic. If you were over 16,
you could leave. If you wanted to come back, you could come back.

Finally, there is the matter of standards for student behavior. Alternative high
school students reported that, when it came to student behavior, you were given “more
slack” at alternative high schools. Greg, a Northshore Alternative High School student,
observed about that school, “You can goof off a lot more without getting in trouble for
it.” Administrators, teachers, and students who were interviewed for this study generally
acknowledged that alternative high schools did not have as many rules and regulations as
a traditional high school. That is not to say there were no boundaries for student
behaviors. The data collected during this study indicated that there were limits, and,
moreover, both staff and students understood those limits. Students seemed especially
“street smart” concerning the requirements for staying in school. And students
communicated those parameters to other students. Allison at Westerby High School
explained that when new students started ﬁghts, they were given a message: “We just

don’t do that here.”

137

The data dealing with student behaviors revealed that most alternative high school
students smoked. So there were rules about smoking. However, the administrators,
teachers, and students interviewed for this study pointed out that these rules differed
signiﬁcantly from the ways traditional high schools treated smoking. No alternative high
school included in this study permitted smoking on school premises. Some schools,
however, “allowed” students to smoke on the sidewalk near those schools. At others,
students had to leave the school area to smoke. Although there was considerable
variation from school to school, the alternative high schools included in this study shaped
the organization to accommodate students’ smoking. At Mapleton, students were
allowed to leave campus at lunch time. At other schools, the day was structured to
provide “breaks,” and students were permitted to go outside to a nearby “smoking area”
off school grounds. That did not happen at traditional high schools. Peter, a Westerby
High School student, summarized the problem at the traditional high school: “You
couldn’t go off the bus and have a cigarette on the side of the highway. You had to go
right to class.” And once in class, students usually were not permitted to leave until the
end of the school day.

Many students and educators interviewed for this study also indicated that the
relationship that alternative education students had with their teachers inﬂuenced student
behavior. They said this relationship was often more personal and positive than at
traditional high schools. Students at some alternative high schools included in this study
were on a ﬁrst-name basis with their teachers. They shared in-house day care and talked
about their children. Students and teachers bowled and played golf together after school.
Administrators, teachers, and students indicated this relationship inﬂuenced behavior.

Ron Holaday, a second-year teacher at Mapleton, talked about the beneﬁts of golﬁng in a

138

league with students. He explained that when one of his fellow golfers started acting up
in class he could say, “Ervingham, you don’t act like this other places, why are you
acting like that here?”

In summary, data related to attendance, earning credits, dropping out, and
standards for student behavior illustrated how alternative high school educators went
beyond what happened at traditional high schools to accommodate the needs of students.
They developed tough attendance requirements—and then invented creative appeal
processes and clever ways for students to earn partial credit. Students and teachers kept
close track of the progress made toward earning a diploma, and they created new ways to
earn credit. Students did not drop out; they just left school for awhile and generally were
welcomed back when they returned. And, although there were deﬁnite limits on
allowable student behaviors, those limits often went beyond the boundaries established
by traditional high schools. Alternative high schools were organized to give students
“more slack.” Alternative high schools were organized to accommodate students, and to
provide programs and procedures that enabled students to stay in school and get a high

school diploma.

lhaals AlterrLtive About the Pedagpgy of Alterative High Schools?
There was a general impression among many persons interviewed for this study
that the art of teaching in an alternative high school was quite different from the
pedagogy of traditional high schools. They noted that “alternative ed. type teaching”
required a different approach. Alternative high school administrators, teachers, and
students indicated that instructors in alternative high schools chose teaching styles that
were less teacher centered. Instruction in alternative high schools emphasized “doing”

more than in traditional high schools. There was less lecturing from the front of the
139

classroom, and there were more dialogs between teachers and students than typically was
the case in traditional high schools. In general, then, alternative high school students’
and educators’ data indicated that alternative high school classrooms were more student
centered and included more interactions between teachers and students than was the case
at traditional high schools.

The literature related to traditional high schools, reviewed in Chapter II of this
study, conﬁrmed that teaching in traditional high schools was often teacher centered
(Sizer, 1984). In traditional high schools, teachers chose to set up the classroom so that
they were on one side, and students were on the other. Then teachers lectured, passed out
assignments, questioned, called on students to answer, and then corrected or commented
on the responses. Traditional high schools included a great deal of “telling” (Cohen &
Barnes, 1993; Cuban, 1984). So when I compared the literature dealing with traditional
high schools to the comments of the persons interviewed for this study, differences
surfaced.

That said, both the literature and the data collected in this study also revealed a
signiﬁcant similarity regarding the pedagogy of alternative and traditional high schools.
The literature dealing with the pedagogy of traditional high schools conﬁrmed that
teachers in these schools often controlled what was taught and under what conditions
within their classrooms. Teachers had a considerable amount of autonomy to decide
what happened in their classrooms. In her Contradictions of Control (1986), McNeil
noted that teachers at Nelson High were free to develop their own style behind closed
doors. In his The Egalitarian Ideal and the American High School (1983), Cusick noted
that “each person was allowed, even encouraged, to develop his or her own content and

approach to subject matter, and was then allowed to deliver that curriculum to the

140

students in ways that he or she deemed appropriate” (p. 3). Lightfoot, in The Good High
School (1983), wrote that she was struck by the centrality and dominance of teachers.
She added, “They give shape to what is taught, how it is taught, and in what context it is
transmitted” (p. 334).

The same was true in the alternative high schools included in this study. The data
gathered in this research consistently indicated that the pedagogy of alternative schools
was based on the teaching preferences of individual teachers. Teachers at alternative
high schools had a great deal of freedom when it came to their style of teaching. Hal
Hoskins, principal at Westerby High School, spoke for many other alternative high
school educators when he said, “There are a lot of ways to teach.” Hoskins added that as
long as teachers could “demonstrate that teaching and learning is taking place,” they
could choose their own teaching methods.

When it came to pedagogy, then, the literature dealing with traditional high
schools and the data from this study revealed both differences and similarities. Teaching
in alternative high schools was more student centered. Alternative high school teaching
included less lecturing, less “telling,” than the literature indicated occurred in traditional
high schools. On the other hand, the literature and the data from this study indicated that,
in both alternative and traditional high schools, individual teachers determined the
pedagogy. This conclusion, in turn, raised an important question: Why would alternative
high school teachers generally choose teaching styles that were more student centered?
Mapleton principal Bill Chandler addressed this issue when he talked about the
importance of positive relationships between teachers and students. “The key to getting a
kid to learn is to have a relationship with the kid, especially when you are dealing with

difficult kids.” So, one reason for a student-centered approach to teaching was the need

141

to develop closer relationships with “difﬁcult kids.” New Century principal Dorothy
White provided another reason for less lecturing and more doing. She explained, “If they
are not doing—and we’re not talking reading a book—if they are not doing,
manipulating, participating, then it is much more difﬁcult to get them here.” White
concluded, “Retention is a huge problem.” So teachers used methods that encouraged
students to keep attending classes. The way teachers approached teaching at alternative
high schools, then, can be viewed as one more thing they did to accommodate students.
Teachers selected teaching styles that helped them form relationships with difﬁcult
students—styles that would keep students attending classes. Again, as was the case with
curriculum and organization, the goal was to promote the success of their students.
Teachers in alternative high schools did what they needed to do to encourage students to

stay in school and help them get a high school diploma.

The Conclusion

The curriculum, organization, and pedagogy of the alternative high schools
included in this study reﬂected the same logic of accommodation that the literature
indicated was characteristic of traditional high schools. However, the data from this
study consistently revealed that alternative high schools went beyond what happens at
traditional high schools to meet the needs of students. And that is what is alternative
about alternative high schools. Alternative high schools take the public school logic of
accommodation as far as it needs to go for their students.

Almost all of the alternative high school administrators and teachers interviewed
for this study repeatedly indicated their willingness to reduce institutional requirements to
their most basic terms to encourage students to stay in school and help them get a high

school diploma. Alternative high school educators were ﬂexible and creative in

142

designing these “bottom-line” requirements related to schooling. Everyone talked about
these requirements. Everyone understood them. Unlike traditional high schools,
educators in alternative high schools made little or no pretense that their primary mission
was to nurture the intellectual development of students. Instead, alternative educators
explained that their goal for students was to “keep them here” and “get them through,”
and they did what they had to do to make it happen. This down-to-basics approach to the

logic of accommodation explains much of what happens at alternative high schools.

Reﬂections

In many ways, then, alternative high schools follow the same basic logic as
traditional high schools in the areas of curriculum, organization, and pedagogy.
However, it is signiﬁcant that administrators and teachers in alternative high schools are
willing and able to take this logic one step further. As noted above, they consistently go
as far as possible to keep students coming to school, and to help them earn their high
school diplomas. What explains the tendency of administrators and teachers in these
schools to be more ﬂexible and permissive when it comes to curriculum, organization,
and pedagogy? I would point to three areas as possible explanations for this increased
ﬂexibility and permissiveness.

First, alternative high schools are not faced with the same scrutiny and pressures
from external forces as traditional high schools. As Northshore Alternative High School
principal Tony Williams noted, alternative schools are “pretty much given free reign.” I
would propose that one reason for this relative lack of scrutiny is the result of the
expectations many people have for alternative high schools. The objectives for success
for alternative high schools are generally much simpler than the benchmarks for success

many would establish for traditional high schools. For many people, it is enough that
143

students in alternative schools “just get through.” Success means coming to school,
staying out of trouble, and earning a high school diploma. When many people look at
traditional high schools, they often focus on, and criticize, the dropout rate. When many
people look at alternative high schools, they often focus on, and celebrate, the completion
rate. Principal Dorothy White summarized it nicely. She noted that instead of saying
that New Century Academy had a 40% dropout rate, she responded, “No, we have a 60%
completion rate. Where others failed!”

The ﬁndings from this study also revealed relatively little “outside” scrutiny of
alternative high school students’ standardized test scores. There was little indication that
students’ aggregate scores on the MEAP or the American College Test (ACT) were of
critical importance in these alternative high schools. All the alternative schools included
in this study administered these tests, but alternative high school educators consistently
indicated that results from such testing were not reliable indicators of the school’s
academic effectiveness. They pointed to factors such as the transient nature of the
school’s population to explain why these measures were poor indications of student
success. Teacher Kelly Gleason at Westerby High School spoke for many other
alternative high school educators when she noted, “When you have an alternative ed.
population that is in such ﬂux, we don’t have a lot of the students taking the MEAP test.”
By contrast, the aggregate and individual MEAP and ACT scores of the traditional high
school are that reported to, and studied by, a number of professionals in the school
district. Then these scores are reported in aggregate form to people outside the school
district and often are viewed as an indicator of the school’s effectiveness. In many
communities, it is not uncommon to have the aggregate MEAP scores of the district

compared to those of nearby districts in a chart published in the local newspaper. In

144

traditional high schools, the content areas assessed in MEAP and ACT tests cannot be
ignored without repercussions.

The second reason that alternative high schools are able to take the logic of
traditional high schools one step further is related to the size of the schools. In general,
alternative high schools have much smaller enrollments than traditional high schools.
The enrollments of the alternative high schools included in this study ranged from
approximately 90 students to approximately 125 students. The traditional high schools in
the four districts visited for this study ranged from 850 students to 1,700 students. It is
not uncommon to have a traditional high school with an enrollment of 2,000 students or
more. Because of the smaller school size, alternative high school administrators have
more time to meet with students and, in effect, customize procedures to meet the needs of
individuals. Hal Hoskins, principal from Westerby High School, described the norm for
the alternative high schools included in this study when he explained the admission
process for that school. “I meet with every single student in here,” he said. “We’ll
explain what our program is and what it isn’t, and try to get the motivation of why he
wants to, and make sure the reason they want to, come here is the right reason.”

Because of the smaller size of alternative high schools, teachers also get to know
their students. New Century Academy instructor Caroline Lorenz noted that many of the
students attending that alternative high school had gone unnoticed at the traditional high
school. They were students who had fallen through the cracks, but the size of the
alternative high school brought them to the “front of the class.”

A lot of the kids [attending New Century Academy] don’t even have behavior

problems. They just fell through the cracks. They are the kids that sit at the back

of the classroom [in a traditional high school] and maybe didn’t cause a big

disruption; they just didn’t stand out in any way. For teachers to have 150 kids a

day, somebody that is sitting at the back of the class, is not disruptive, but doesn’t
get their work done and isn’t going to pass—they are not necessarily considered a

145

behavior issue. . . . So some of those kids that we get have, for the past 9 or 10

years, sat at the back of the class and not done anything but sat back and watched.

And here they don’t get away with that as much. We know their names, we know

their parents, and we know their situation.

So smaller enrolhnent clearly makes a difference when it comes to getting to know
students. In turn, this sets the stage for the third reason that explains why alternative high
school educators are able to take the logic of the traditional high school as far as they can,
within limits.

A third factor that explains the greater ﬂexibility and perrnissiveness of
alternative high schools is the relationship between educators and students in these
schools. This research revealed a clear and consistent message from both students and
educators: There are closer and more positive relationships between students and
teachers in alternative high schools than is the case in traditional high schools. As noted
above, this relationship is explained, in part, by the relatively small size of the alternative
high schools. Another factor in the formation of positive student-teacher relationships is
necessity. Mapleton principal Bill Chandler pointed out that “the key to getting a kid to
learn is to have a relationship with the kid.” Chandler added that difﬁcult students would
cooperate when they cared about the teachers. So positive relationships between students
and teachers promote learning and cooperation. Then, too, there is the need to keep
students coming to school, and to enroll new students on a regular basis. Positive
relationships between students and teachers certainly promote regular attendance by
students, and as current students talk to prospective students about their relationships
with teachers, new enrollments are likely. Furthermore, in alternative high schools, there

is a clear, direct link between student attendance and the existence of jobs, and even the

school. If students don’t attend, and in adequate numbers to provide ﬁnancial support for

146

current programming, the number of staff members could be reduced or the school
closed.

That said, the research ﬁndings pointed to an even more persuasive explanation
for positive relationships between teachers and students in alternative high schools.
Again and again, I was impressed by the ways teachers, administrators, counselors, and
secretaries in these schools showed they cared about “the kids” in their schools. And I
was equally impressed by the number of students who truly appreciated the opportunities
provided by their alternative high schools. These students respected their teachers, and
they were grateful for the close relationships they had with their instructors and other
staff who worked at the school. Smaller size, enhanced learning, greater cooperation, and
the need to maintain current enrolhnent are important factors in producing positive
relationships between teachers and students. However, I would propose that the most
important reason for positive, productive student-teacher relationships is the sense of
mission that I observed in the four alternative high schools included in this study. The
consistent message I received from alternative high school staff was that their mission
was to “help these kids.” And it follows that, in the process of fulﬁlling this mission,
they were obviously willing to go as far as possible (within limits) to keep students
coming, interest them, and help them earn the credits they needed for a high school

diploma.

Other Explanations

In qualitative research, issues related to generalizability, validity, and reliability
ultimately depend on the researcher’s ability to convince the reader that, as Geertz (1988)
noted, this is “an authentic account by someone personally acquainted with how life

proceeds in some place, at some time, among some group.” Cusick (1983) said about

147

generalizability, “It is the obligation of the reader to determine if the descriptions
presented in the account match his experiences in similar places” (p. 134). So,
ultimately, it is the reader who will decide whether there could be another explanation.
And, because that decision would be based on the reader’s particular set of experiences, it
is clear that, yes, there could indeed be other conclusions drawn from the data presented
in this study.

Another possible additional explanation concerning what is alternative about
alternative high schools emerged from the data collected for this study and is worthy of
additional discussion here. Although this was outside the initial scope of this study and
not an exploratory question, data collected from students consistently revealed that
alternative and traditional high schools differed in the degree of importance placed on
students’ social groups. Students from all four alternative high schools included in this
study held common opinions concerning the existence and inﬂuence of groups in
traditional high schools. They explained that things like what you wore, how you looked,
whom you hung out with, and whether or not you played sports or sang in the choir were
all very important in traditional high schools. These things often “classiﬁed” you and put
you in a group. As Melissa, a student at Mapleton Alternative High School, explained,
“In high school, it really matters what group you are in and who you’re with.”

However, students interviewed for this study indicated the attitude toward social
grouping was much different at alternative high schools. These schools were less
judgmental and more accepting of all types of students. Naomi, a Northshore student,
indicated that at the alternative school, “it’s just like we are all friends, instead of 12
different groups.” Kari, a student at New Century Academy, talked about the way she

was accepted at that school: “I felt very welcome because everybody was the same as

148

me. Everybody had troubles like me, everybody is learning like me.” Students
interviewed for this study indicated that social distinctions were signiﬁcantly less
important in alternative high schools than in traditional high schools. Students
interviewed for this study also reported that groups, or cliques, seemed both more
common and more important in the lives of students at traditional high schools. At
alternative high schools, groups were much less prevalent and much les important to
students. According to the responses of these students, the different ways students
regarded social distinctions and groupings at traditional and alternative high schools

might provide another explanation of what is alternative about alternative high schools.

The Potential for AdditionaReseaagh

The preceding discussion concerning social groups at alternative high schools
illustrates that there is a great deal of potential for additional research involving
alternative high schools. Despite the growing number of alternative high schools, there
continues to be relatively little research dealing with these institutions. Limitations of
this study included the number and types of alternative schools visited. Four schools
were included in this research, and these four schools had several common traits. All had
an enrollment of approximately 100 students. All were located in a building not
connected to another school building. All had been in existence for several years. There
are many different types of alternative high schools. Studies that included more schools,
or different types of schools, could make a signiﬁcant contribution to the discourse
concerning the nature and effectiveness of alternative schools. Other types of schools
that could be included in future studies include:

0 Alternative middle schools

0 Alternative high schools located within a traditional high school (sometimes
called a school within a school)

149

Smaller alternative high schools (with enrollments of 20 to 40 students)
Larger alternative high schools (with enrollments of 300 students or more)
Alternative high schools that are also charter schools

“Specialty” alternative high schools (such as schools for talented students or
for students with special needs)

There also is potential for additional research based on the type of student
included in the research. Another limitation of this study was that the students
interviewed were, for the most part, students whom administrators and teachers would
label as “mature.” With some notable exceptions, the students included in this study had
been at the alternative school for at least a year and were considered successful. Another
study that concentrated on new students or students who were unsuccessful in alternative

high schools could provide another perspective on these institutions.

Signiﬁcance of the Findings

Geertz (1988) reminded readers that it is absurd to talk about “describing”
nonentities like “culture” or “society” as if they were “fully observable, though somewhat
ungainly, bugs.” He explained, “In ethnography there are no ‘things’ there to be the
objects of a description, the original appearance that the language of description
‘represents’ as indexical objects for comparison, classiﬁcation, and generalization; there
is rather a discourse” (p. 136). The signiﬁcance of this study, then, is not the extent to
which it describes “things” that explain alternative high schools, but rather the extent to
which what is reported here adds to the discourse about these schools.

1 would suggest two contributions this study makes to the discourse about the
nature and effectiveness of alternative high schools. First, there are the data reported in
Chapter IV. When I began this project, I was apprehensive that some people, especially
students, would be reluctant to talk with me about their experiences. That did not

happen. Every alternative high school administrator, teacher, and student I interviewed
150

for this project willingly provided insight into their work, values, and goals. They spoke
with candor, and many of their comments were insightful. I have attempted to report
these people’s comments accurately and within the appropriate context. I would hope
and expect that others interested in alternative high schools would also ﬁnd value in the
observations of these administrators, teachers, and students.

The second contribution this research makes to the discourse concerning
alternative high schools lies in its conclusions. The data revealed that alternative high
schools consistently went beyond accommodations made at traditional high schools to
meet the needs of their students. In fact, alternative high schools took the public school
logic of accommodation as far as it needed to go for their students. Raywid (1998)
observed that alternative high schools do not seem like “real schools” to many people.
She noted that alternative educational programs are “somewhat marginal to the
educational mainstream and a fringe rather than a fully accepted member of the
educational establishment. As a result, even after decades, and even when providing
leadership for others, they have never achieved institutional legitimacy” (p. 12).

I would submit that the conclusions of this study suggest that alternative high
schools are indeed mainstream. When it comes to curriculum, organization, and
pedagogy, traditional and alternative high schools share a common foundation—the
public school logic of accommodation. Both traditional and alternative high schools are
“real schools,” and educators at both schools are doing what the American public wants
them to do. They are helping students stay in school and earn their high school diplomas.
Whether that is a sufﬁcient and worthy objective deserves continued discussion, for both
traditional and alternative high schools. Mapleton principal Bill Chandler went right to

the heart of the matter, talking about the students in that alternative high school: “These

151

are not broken or dumb kids,” he said, “and so if we don’t present a challenging and

relevant curriculum, we are doing them a disservice.”

152

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153

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