Ahead of the Curve (page 3 of 3)

Beat the Clock

The school. Federal Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio, draws its 360 students from a 270-square-mile rural swath of the state's southeast corner.

In the early 1990s, teachers and students were demoralized. The culprit, says social studies teacher Deborah Burk, was the slavish adherence to the 19th-century concept of dividing the day into 42-minute periods (still common in many schools across the country), with each period counted as a credit toward graduation. Back then, Burk says, students focused more on the clock than on what she was saying. They weren't entirely to blame. The system, she felt, didn't let her do much beyond repeating the same lectures over and over: There wasn't time to challenge students to delve into details. "You couldn't analyze their progress -- or even think about it."

The strategy. In 1992, Dr. George H. Wood, an Ohio University education professor who'd never run a high school, was named principal. He grilled students for their ideas, organized visits to programs around the country, and met intensively with staff. The result: The clock went out the window. With some arm-twisting of superintendents and state lawmakers, Federal Hocking moved from the cumbersome credit system to a less-is-more schedule tied to four 80-minute classes. "We decided," Wood says, "to teach fewer things better." In American history, for example, the emphasis shifted from devoting equal time to every era to focusing on big events.

The school developed its own credit system based on core studies but added other requirements -- a senior portfolio, and a yearlong project created by the students that's not always linked directly to their coursework. Project topics range from writing a world-foods cookbook to the restoration of an antique tractor. Graduation based solely on racking up a set number of credits was no longer possible.

Other changes followed. The seven-minute daily homeroom period -- basically an attendance call -- was replaced by an hour-long advisory meeting every Wednesday morning. Each teacher advises the same 14 or 15 kids through high school. Wood, meanwhile, never lowered his strict academic standards. "Everybody here reads Shakespeare, Emerson and Thoreau," he says, "even kids who are going to be mechanics."

Teacher Tim Arnold says the schedule changes had an effect similar to the flipping of a switch: "Everything decompressed. Instead of looking at the clock, we could look at the students. On the first day we all went 'Wow! That was cool.'"

Signs of success. Between the 1995-96 and 2003-04 school years, the percentage of the school's ninth-graders that passed Ohio's math proficiency test rose from 50 percent to 85 percent. Passing grades in reading shot from 69 percent to 96 percent. And honors diplomas jumped from 8 percent to 20 percent. "We don't focus on test scores," Wood says, "but it's clear that if you pay attention to the overall culture of the school, the test scores will rise."

From Reader's Digest - May 2006

 

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