A Successful High School in Our Own Backyard
The Portland high school redesign team could learn a lot from John O’Neill. He’s been the principal at Forest Grove High School for the last seven years. O’Neill was featured in Northwest Education’s Lessons From a Turnaround Specialist in the spring/summer 2009 journal.
When O’Neill was hired in 2002, Forest Grove had some of the lowest test scores and the highest dropout rate in Washington County. Since that time, John and his Assistant Principal Jerry Fitzpatrick have won Oregon Principal and Assistant Principal of the year awards along with national educator and school awards.
Forest Grove High School is the only high school in Oregon recognized for making significant student achievement gains for low-income and minority students for 4 consecutive years.
O’Neill credits Forest Grove’s success to doing a few important things incredibly well. They knew that “by choosing only a few new programs to implement at any one time, the chances of doing each one well went up.”
School staff began the turnaround process by analyzing student achievement, dropout, graduation and college enrollment data then setting a course of action. Their plan included:
- a school improvement retreat
- improvements in the hiring process
- individualized math and reading intervention workshops
- an advisory system where teachers act as advisers and student advocates
- staff common prep periods
- a well-developed student/parent orientation program
There’s nothing groundbreaking in Forest Grove’s strategy for improving student outcomes and closing the achievement gap. It’s a common sense approach that Principal O’Neill says is “100% replicable”. I think even PPS administrators might be able to replicate it.
Here’s Forest Grove High School’s profile:
- Enrollment – 1,879
- Free/ reduced lunch students – 45%
- Latino students – 36%
- English Language Learners – 15%
- Special needs students – 14%
- Students meeting or exceeding benchmark in Reading – 78.4%
- Students meeting or exceeding benchmark in Math – 80.8%
- Graduation rate – 89.9%
- AYP status – Not met (Forest Grove met AYP in all but one category – English/Language Arts for English Language Learners)
VOCATIONAL/TECHNICAL PROGRAMS: Vocational programs are available to students in the area of business, childcare, food services, agriculture, drafting and construction. For thirty years, FGHS students have designed, constructed and decorated a Viking House and sold it to the public. Our school is aligned with two regional programs: the Portland Area Vocational Technical Educational Consortium (PAVTEC) and the Business Education Compact (BEC).
ARTICULATED PROGRAMS: Dual credit programs are established with Portland Community College in the areas of English, science, math, business, professional/technical courses, agriculture, health occupations and firefighting in which students earn college credits that align with a technical preparation associate degree.
5 comments
Well, PPS has never yet found a problem that they couldn’t complicate further. The idea of learning from our neighboring districts is complete anathema to them. Oftentimes, the solution is so simple that it’s too hard. Our neighborhood association president described the PPS HS Redesign as “a solution in search of a problem,” and he is right.
There are many “successful” high schools in the surrounding districts. One thing they all have in common is higher enrollment than any school in PPS (most 1,800+, some as high as 2,700) which gives them the staffing flexibility to offer all kinds of classes to reach all kinds of students. Another thing many of them have in common (esp. in Beaverton) is that they don’t bother with Title I money, so they are not subject to B.S. NCLB AYP sanctions that tend to isolate poor and minority students in schools that end up focused on testing. Suburban schools also tend to be far more integrated to begin with, too, with less segregated populations and larger attendance areas incorporating middle and working class families in the same schools.
Zarwen, one problem the PPS redesign claims to address is the fact that only half the district is currently served by comprehensive high schools. That’s not a problem at all if you live in that half of the district, and it’s slightly less of a problem if you manage to win the lottery and transfer in. But it’s a huge problem for students who don’t live in the Cleveland, Grant, Lincoln or Wilson clusters who don’t win the lottery or who don’t want to (or can’t) travel across town for high school.
We may not agree on the district’s proposed solution (which actually does learn from our suburban districts in significant ways), or that they are sincere about trying to solve it, but this is a pretty obvious problem for those not living in Portland’s “finer” (read white and wealthy) neighborhoods.
Agree with you, Steve, about the problem in PPS for those not fortunate to live in one of the areas that has a “good” high school. Ditto, your comments about significant high school enrollment being needed to offer truly comprehensive schools. Even PPS’s redesign with 1350 as a target number doesn’t begin to match what the neighboring districts have.
Beaverton does receive Title 1 money, tho.
Special Ed Counsel is on her way out. So that is one taken off Carrie’s list.
Show me – Do tell? Is that Connie Bull you are talking about?
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