A few years ago, when my alma mater Evanston Township High School decided to reconsider it’s curriculum tracking in a whole new way, a neighbor that was very familiar with local school politics and policy told me, “If this works, Dr. Witherspoon and Evanston are going to be nationally known.” That prediction is baring fruit as the only public high school in Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago is the subject of a feature article in the National Journal, a magazine that reports on politics and cultural trends around the country. The story explored Evanston Township’s push to expand Advanced Placement(AP) programs to as many students as possible specifically the embarrassingly underrepresented minority populations. The Journal cited the most recent numbers from 2014 in which over 88 percent of white students at Evanston graduated after taking at least one AP class while that same number is 44 percent for African-American students. Such a gap is still way too far for any school that is serious about equality, but there is a change underway at Evanston that seems to be setting the school up for long term success.
What impresses me most about Evanston Township is its change in mindset led by the school district’s superintendent, Dr. Eric Witherspoon. His attitude that “you aren’t born smart. You get smarter,” is spreading throughout every corner of the school. It’s an attitude that is closely associated with the work of Dr. Carol Dweck and her Growth Mindset. Dweck’s Growth Mindset embraces the scientifically supported notion that every person possess within them the ability to improve every aspect of who they are including their intelligence, personality, and all other skills. Evanston even brought Dr. Dweck to come and speak with the staff as part of it’s extensive professional development. The renown developmental psychologist does not claim that everyone is equal or that every person has the ability to reach the same intellectual plateau, but growth is innate within everyone. Her work shows that it is more valuable to praise effort to make you intelligent then the intelligence itself. From a teacher’s perspective, nothing could be more important for fostering young people into life long learners.
This mindset is more significant than the AP push itself. It touches on every aspect of the school’s culture and everyday life. If you have a message like that coming leaders at top, buy in is much greater for the staff and community alike. It challenges the notion that we should determine, as Evanston did while I was in school, what a child is capable of when they are at the elementary or middle level of secondary education. Growth happens at different rates and in different ways for everyone, and school should be a place that is ready to support students whenever and wherever it takes place. Students should be allowed every opportunity to achieve the highest level of course work possible, which means that schools should not make such life altering decisions about curriculum tracking at such a young age with no opportunity for change in the future.
One effort by school officials to increase the number of students taking AP classes is the elimination of honors and standard freshmen English classes and the creation of a mixed-honors class for all freshmen. By mandating that all students participate in the same English classes in which honors credit is available and must be earned in their first year, Evanston acknowledges the fact that schools need to give students opportunity as well as flexibility. Within the old system, if a student was placed into a regular class as a freshmen, the likelihood of moving up to honors or AP level classes was painfully low. Witherspoon understands that it is the culture as well as the structure of the school, not the students, that need to be changed the most.
As an outsider without much access to Evanston Township, I wonder how this mindset has impacted non-honors or AP classes within the school. Even with this movement to expand AP programs and opportunities, there are still many students taking courses of lower rigor. What are the cultures within those classes? Are they being pushed towards higher level work? Are students given the opportunity to move to higher level classes if they choose to put in the effort to do so? What are the expectations of teachers for students in those classes? What are the expectations of the students for themselves?
As a 7th grade writing teacher, I do not teach any honors or standard writing classes. All of my classes are “mixed” in the sense that I teach students within the same class that take honors reading and math along with those that do not take any honors classes. When asked about the label of my classes, I tell students that “All of my classes are honors level classes.” This is the attitude in which I approach my preparation and this is a big part of the expectations that I communicate with students.
Each day, a wide range of abilities come through my classroom. Sometimes, a lot of the times, it is overwhelming for me. How can I push students to improve who both are struggling to understand a certain concept and at the same time are five steps ahead? What do you do if one of your students has independently finished a writing project and another student hasn’t written a word and won’t be able to without some serious one on one attention? These are the types of situations that scare teachers as well as community members into thinking that the quality of the classroom experience decreases with such a wide range of skills.
I don’t claim to have all of the answers. I’m still in search of practical ways to reach all students. I do know that it takes a detailed focus on understanding what your students already know and what they need to know in order to take their skills to the next level wherever that might be. It takes organization, planning and vision. It takes collaboration with a focus on student work. It takes a classroom environment that allows students to all be working on different things or different ideas at the same time. Most important, it takes a core belief that students are not born smart; rather they grow smarter.
This is what Evanston Township is trying to do. I expect that it will continue to draw support as well as criticisms from a wide range of stakeholders. For me, Evanston is exactly the type of school that I want to work for. If a school doesn’t believe that change is possible and that all students can learn, what do they believe? Moving forward, I hope that Evanston will empirically prove that this approach works for all students. In order to get buy in, they’ll have to show that it helps both students that are taking AP classes that never would have taken such courses as well as students that would have taken them regardless. They will need to show that they have raised expectations for all students and not just those students on the margins. They will need to show that the graduation rate increases, the number of students that receive AP credit by passing tests increases, and the number of students that do well on standardized tests such as the ACT increases.
Good luck Evanston. You’re in for a wild ride. Maybe, I’ll join the excitement some day
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