Every Student Deserves a Legacy 2007:
Real-life stories of progress from the front lines of high school reform
How do you make sure students in some of Ohio’s most disadvantaged areas are getting a good education?
If you’re principal Roslyn Valentine at Lorain County Early College in Elyria, Ohio, you focus on the troublemaker struggling with authority or the angry teen who’s living in a car. "That’s who this school is for," she says. "It’s not for the kids who are already motivated. If the only students we save are the motivated ones, why have an Early College?"
If you’re English teacher Joleata Howell at Brookhaven High School in Columbus, Ohio, you push your fellow teachers to focus on raising the literacy level of a student population where fewer than a third read at grade level. "When you can’t read and I can’t do anything to help you, it hurts," she says.
If you’re sophomore April Rios at Toledo Early College High School, you force yourself to ask your teachers for help when you find that old study habits aren’t enough at your new school. “It wasn’t just that there was so much more work to do here,” she recalls, “but the teachers want you to put yourself into it, too.”
Those stories – and dozens more documenting what it’s like to be part of one of the country’s most concentrated efforts to reinvent urban high schools – are captured in the third annual edition of KnowledgeWorks’ “Every Student Deserves a Legacy” publications.
These books share the day-to-day struggles and triumphs of educators and students working to transform underperforming large urban high schools into small personalized schools or to pioneer schools that blend high school and college learning.
Written by a team of freelance writers who spent hours in the classrooms and hallways throughout the 2006-07 school year, they tell the true stories of why it’s so hard to change schools and how, despite the obstacles, change is taking place.
Most Likely to Succeed: Real-life stories of progress in five redesigned urban high schools
To a Higher Degree: Real-life stories of progress in four early college high schools
