Full Transcript for Pathways to Success: Rethinking High School and Beyond

do you make high school much more experiential? And this goes all the way back to Dewey. Um, the constructivist idea of learning is as true now as it was when Dewey was theorizing about it. And third, I would say, how do you ensure that high schools are actually building the skills in young people that they need, that we know predict success in post-secondary school and in work. So, skills like the ability to collaborate effectively, the ability to communicate well, critical thinking skills, the ability to persist, to be creative, to be curious. Those sorts of skills don't have to come at the expense of core academic disciplines, but they have to come, if we're, if we're serious about addressing the attainment challenge. Bob (07:07): Absolutely. In many ways, one of the challenges we face, right, is that the American high school was so successful in the 20th century. It's sort of, as you said, in 1910, very few people were going to high school. By 1950, almost everybody was. To achieve that rapid scale required in a way, a certain degree of standardization. And at that point, most people ended their formal education after high school. That was the big advance going to high school. Um, and now as you point out, that's far from enough. Like it's just a steppingstone now. It's not an end point. And so, as you were saying, like we've now got to redesign a new high school for a new century and a new purpose, but on foundations that were built for another century. Should we talk a little bit more about the challenges of something that was successful at one time is not successful now, and how do we make that transition? Tim (07:57): Absolutely. Carnegie is partially responsible for the, the architecture of high school that we know, as I know, you know, well, Bob, the, in literally in 1906, we introduced something to the world called the Carnegie Unit, otherwise known in, in common parlance the credit hour or the course credit. Um, in essence, the Carnegie Unit is the conflation of time and learning. It's, it, it was an, an accounting measure to determine whether professors would be eligible for a retirement benefit. That's why it was established. Over time, over the last a hundred years, that conflation of time and learning the Carnegie Unit has, in my view, become the bedrock currency of the educational economy. It's why bells ring between classes. It defines and shapes the daily work of teachers and professors. It's determines what goes on a transcript, what accreditation involves, who gets financial aid and who doesn't. So, it isn't just part of the system. It really is the system. If we're serious about taking a, a run at building high schools that are much more engaging, much more rigorous, and are actually preparing young people in systemic ways for success beyond the age of 18, we have to query whether this architecture is, is the right one. And, and just ticking through three quick reasons that I, I think there's every reason to do this. One, the Carnegie Unit ignores everything we've learned about learning, right? Since, since 1906, Tim (09:38): From, from neuroscientists to cognitive psychologists to learning scientists. We know you learn at different rates depending on the, on the individual and the subject of study. We know people learn from their peers. We know experiential education matters enormously for meaning making. So, we, we've learned all this stuff about how we best learn as human beings, and yet we've got an architecture that doesn't really allow for that to happen. I, I think a second big problem is that I think, as I suggested earlier, I think it's, it's, it's not that there aren't really elegant examples of, of how, for example, to do legitimate competency-based learning. We've had them since Montessori and Dewey. We have them in, in every region of the country. You can find a, a beautiful example of the kind of work that I described that Lincoln was doing happening at the school level. Tim (10:31): The issue is, is that those examples live at the edges. They're not the, they're not the norm. And so the, again, the question then becomes, well, how do you make that, how do you, how do you build an architecture that would actually make that the norm? And then the third problem I would just put on the table is, is is really drawing from Raj Chetty and, and the work he's done on social and economic mobility and looking at that over the last 80 years. And the, the reality is there's been precipitous drops in terms of economic mobility in our country. If you look at across the generations and high schools and post-secondary institutions are the most important engine we have to address that. Um, so the onus is, I think, on us all to, to think about what shifts need to happen in, particularly in the American high school, um, but also beyond it that would ensure that the, the education sector becomes a much more vital engine for, for, for social and economic mobility. Bob (11:33): Yeah, I mean that, that really lays out the, the challenge in front of us, and just, just to build on it in two ways, is that the Carnegie Unit also decides if you graduate from high school or not, right?  Indeed.  That, that's to graduate high school, you need 24 credits. A credit is earned by passing a course, a course is defined by the Carnegie Unit. Um, so you're, I think you're, you know, right on to conceptualize it. Is it, it is the controlling system. And then also, you know, when I think about it, it's just a, for maybe some this helps, sometimes it doesn't, is that there was a real logic to this when we were building high schools for the first time as a means of quality control. Because in our decentralized system, it's up to the local community to build their high school. Bob (12:14): And without something like the Carnegie Unit, you could imagine some folks being on the, let's be less expensive. Let's have a two-year high school, let's have a three-year high school. Let's just be in

session for half the year. Right? Like it did, it did have a, a role in, in a time and place. But the world has changed so much.  And the one thing I'll add to your list too, is that maybe up through 1995 schools were the only way to have a mass dissemination of knowledge. It's the only place, right? Where you could transfer knowledge at a higher rate to lots of people. But in 1995, we got the first internet browser. And since then, knowledge has become, there's many, many sources of knowledge now, um, there's problems with that in many ways, as we've seen. But it's no longer the case that you could only get knowledge in schools, right? So that's, that's another part of the challenge we face. Tim (13:03): Just to your quality control issue. It's true. They, and, and, and at the time, the, the post-secondary sector, the colleges and universities were saying, how can we know whether a school on the western frontier, um, compares to Boston Latin, one of the first or the first public school? Um, we need a measure. And, and so there's nothing tidier than the number of minutes, right? Yep. Yep. And I think that's another reason it's, it's stuck around so long. But, what I would say now, in this century is that number of minutes spent at a desk, AKA seat time, or, or, or logged into a digital platform, they're just not good proxies for learning. And, and we can do far, far better than that. And if we don't make sure that quality is defined by the actual authentic evidence of learning, both the acquisition of academic skills and the, the development of whatever you want to call them, skills for the future, durable skills, the things that we know employers want, we, the things that we know predict success out beyond school - things like civic engagement, things like leadership skills and things like, again, communication, collaboration. We're at a point where we can actually do a much better job of knowing whether young people are developing those core academic skills and this, and the skills for the future. So, it's really time, both it's technologically time. There's, we have tools now at our disposal, but it's also in terms of our economy, our democracy, our social fabric. It's time that we moved to a, a much more legitimately competency or mastery-based system. Bob (14:50): And that, that really leads into my next, next challenge I want to talk through with you, which is the, the Grad Partnership, which your organization and mine are both part of. Um, and is about to come out with its first annual report on the state of educational attainment called Educating America. And in that report, when it comes out, folks will see, but I'll preview it now, um, is that, you know, one statistic that really stood out for me was that in 21/22, which was that sort of first year back post pandemic, there were close to 5,000 high schools with more than 400 chronically absent students, right? Just think about like, what that does to a school as far as social cohesion and like learning pace. And it really seems that post pandemic, many high school students are voting with their feet and telling us that the high schools as they currently exist, are not places where they feel needed, where they feel, feel they need to be every day to succeed. Right? They feel like they can part-time in person is enough, and I could do my assignments online the other days, right? So how do we balance the sense of student voice in high school redesign with our knowledge of how tightly economic our opportunities are still tied to educational attainment? Tim (15:59): Yeah, that's a, that's a great question, Bob. I mean, I, I, I do think the pandemic gave young people the license to vote with their feet. It, it, it was, there was a poll, and I don't remember who did it during the pandemic of high school students. And, and almost a hundred percent of the students responded to the question, do you want to go back to high school with Yes. And almost a hundred percent of the students, it was like 99.8, responded to the question, do you want to go back to high school all the time in the way you used to? The answer was no. Right? Tim (16:36): <laugh>. So it, it was in that sense, a, a, a big American wake up call. Um, and, and where, where suddenly the idea of learning in schooling was, was decoupled from place in a, in a way that, that I, I would argue has really stuck with, with young people, particularly high schools, students who have agency, who can vote with their feet, who can leave the house in the morning, and go somewhere else. If I think the charge in that, in my view, is to acknowledge the student voice, is to say, you're right, actually, you, you, we could construct school differently as you get older. It's harder when you're little and you, you might get lost, but as certainly as you get older, we could construct high school in a way that would enable you to take some traditional courses that look and feel like what we all know to be high school, but also would enable you to have an opportunity to learn independently, to learn virtually for perhaps one of those courses, to have an internship or a, an engagement with a community organization, a cultural institution, a business, an apprenticeship as part of the, the, the whole. Tim (17:53): So, I think if we listened to students, they would say that would make more, that would, that would prompt me to lean in. Just as Lincoln was leaning into his traditional courses, because he saw the connection to his, his building a business based on drones he was designing and building. I think if those opportunities are, um, are constructed in a more systematic way, we will address the core chronic absenteeism problem by, by making learning more engaging, more experiential, and truly connected to competency, not seat time. Bob (18:32): The good thing about this is, you know, some high schools are already leading the way, you know, so you told about a high school you visited recently. I, I

recently visited a high school in Ohio that was a part of some redesign work, uh, that we were engaged in. And what they had done in sort of from learning from this pandemic is, you know, they could, they haven't quite done it for every class, but for the majority of their classes, students can now choose, do I wanna take this in a traditional way, which is like 45 minutes, five days a week? And like for math and foreign language that works for a lot of kids;  Do I want to take it like college style, which is like twice a week for longer periods? Is this only time the course meets or do I want to do it online? And they've actually did a lot of work building a support in families and, and in, uh, teachers that like this would work. And it, so far they're very happy with it. You know, because it lets kids design they, and they kids, most kids mix and match those learning modalities, as you said. They're not all one way or the other, but for certain classes they feel there's, you know, one modality is a better fit for them. Tim (19:32): And that, I think that's a beautiful example of, of sort of underneath your question, like, how do you give young people agency and voice and yet not reduce the opportunities for them over time. There's, there's, there's choice in that as there should be. Um, but you're, you're not walking away from the core enterprise. Bob (19:51): Yeah. And a hundred percent because I sometimes worry that some of these ideas of, you know, be able to let kids figure out more themselves that that's just going to advantage the advantaged and disadvantaged the disadvantaged. So there has to be some, some structure there and then some choice there. You know. Tim (20:07): I, I think the other thing implied in looking for that structure and but also the new modalities is the opportunity, particularly in the high school level, to start thinking about new designs for teaching and the kind of role of teachers. If I had those choices where I could do college seminars, as well as an online piece, as well as in person, right? Yeah. And then perhaps with some of the time left over, I could actually curate learning experiences for those students who I'm responsible for in a more community embedded way. That becomes a more interesting portfolio as a teacher. Bob (20:42): Yeah, it does. We'll be able to find an answer if we just have the right opportunities to do it. It is what I feel.  And then the, the last thing I want to bring up is that both of our organizations, both ourselves work in this, is that, you know, high school is no longer enough. Even if we perfectly redesign a high school for the 21st century, we know that it's this steppingstone, not an end point. And kids have gotta go somewhere after high school. And we know, because again, of the historically how this evolved, that with most kids ending their formal education after high school, they didn't build a lot of like, you know, on-ramps from high school to post-secondary into the high school experience. We've, you know, tried to add them in bits and pieces over time, but there's still many kids that don't have much of a high school experience that helps them make an informed choice about what comes next, right? Do I wanna go to a two year or four year, earn a certificate, look for apprenticeship, do a year in national service? We sort of just say, figure it out, right? And that's hard to do if you don't have any experience or don't even know what the options are. So, what are some ways that either Carnegie or just in general folks are starting trying to figure out how do we build this better sense of transition and stronger, more supportive pathways from high school to a range of post-secondary options?   Tim (21:59): Well, I think, I think the intentional and publicly supported pathways is - at broad scale is key. Um, and it's particularly important for first generation low income underrepresented young people who may not have the informal pathways that middle- and upper-class families have already established for themselves. And there's lots of good evidence that that coherent paths from secondary into post-secondary, defined broadly, not just a four year degree, are, are very critical mechanisms. And yet it's quite idiosyncratic if you, if you take a clear-eyed look across the country, it's not something, it's more the deviation from the rule than the rule to, to, to find those kinds of, of programs. And I, I do think, um, I do think that there's an opportunity here because higher ed is facing an existential crisis. The value proposition is in question. The demographics, as you know, Bob as well as anybody, have shifted dramatically. Tim (23:08): Just last week I read that this year's freshman class, college freshman class for the nation, is down by 5%.  Since 2018, there's been a 19% reduction in white students and 11% reduction in black and brown students enrolling in post-secondary institutions. And then there's like basic cost business model problems with post-secondary.  It's just too expensive for a lot of people to access. All of that creates an opportunity, I think to, to partly because higher ed needs the students. There's an opportunity to say, well, if you want the students, then we, we need to build pathways. But I think there's, just to go back to where we started our conversation about the Carnegie unit.  In 1906, the Carnegie Foundation, the place I'm responsible for said a college degree should be 120 credits. And today it's 120 credits. And that's stunning to me. And I mean, there's, even, even universities in Africa, in Europe, in Asia have figured out that there could be a three-year degree, but we've been very reluctant to tinker with this, right? Tim (24:14): Yep. On aggregate, you know, that only 60% of people who start college finish it. Um, you've got a 40% failure rate and then compounded by all the debt that represents for Americans. I think just as we have to take a sort of hard look at the

nature of what high school has evolved into, we have to do the same at the post-secondary level. We have to figure out whether, for example, instead of having to earn 120 credits, that's like a, a, a very long protracted on-off switch. So I, why couldn't you earn 30 credits and have that have value in the world? And so, I don't know whether that's called a micro degree or, or what it should be called. Um, and I'm not suggesting the four-year degree should go away. I'm just saying that we haven't built the sort of post-secondary sector in a way that accommodates people, for example, parenting or needing to work. Um, it's, it's just not nearly as flexible as it, as it should be. And I think because of the existential crisis that higher ed across the country is facing, I think there's an opportunity to change that. Bob (25:29): Yeah. And you know, as you said, like, you know, the, at the heart of it too is this idea of like, does it really have to be four years? Is that really empirically founded or is that more just like Right? No, it's not. And my Right, right. Yeah. And in my own case, when I think about it, you know, I got a very generous credit for three AP classes I took, they gave me like 18 college credits. It was some crazy thing that allowed me to take my whole junior year off. And I went to, I went to China and didn't really get credit for that, but had a great learning experience.  Tim (25:59): I bet.   Bob (26:00): <laugh>. And so I, I did graduate in three years, even though technically I was in the university for four, right? And I never felt deprived because of that. Right. So <laugh>, it's like, I think we really do have to think about like, and you know, the final thing to is, is that for post-secondary world to recognize that it has become the mass institution, high school was the 20th century. It's not an elite institution. It's not a professional on track to professionals. And you know, it was stunning to me when we looked at it that like if you take like an age cohort of like ninth graders, in who students who were ninth graders in 2012, it turns out that 80% of them will touch higher ed in some version by the time they're 26. Right? It is so normative. You know, a bunch of kids don't go right away because they want to get to work and they don't like school, but they quickly find the youth labor market is not a, was not a forgiving place for a high school graduate and they then have to go back to college, which they didn't, when they didn't like school in the first place. Bob (26:58): They do even worse then and accumulate debt, as you said. Right? So, we've, we've got to really think about if it's a universal system, how do we have to make those shifts? Tim (27:06): And we know that it's an incredibly powerful, important engine when, and so it's, yes, we need to, we need to work on it and transform it, and create clearer pathways and, and easier ways of getting to whether a two or four year or something in between degree. But

it, we should underscore, it's an extraordinary part of the American educational, um, reality, Bob (27:33): So where I wanna bring us to end is, is back to student success systems and the role they can play in both high school redesign we've talked about and, and transforming this transition from high school to post-secondary. And just to remind our listeners at the heart, student success systems are a means to sort of progress monitor important outcomes and indicators and then organize proactive, preventative, targeted, and customized responses as needed by engaging the wisdom of school staff, teachers, students, and their families and the larger evidence base. So the, my argument is, and I want to test this with you, Tim, is that in both high school redesign and in creating stronger structured pathways from high school to post-secondary, we need sort of an air traffic control mechanism to let us know, like, you know, if we're doing mastery learning or all our kids acquiring mastery, if we're trying to give them a range of, uh, experiences, exposures, applications to both college and career and high school, are all our students getting those, right? Bob (28:45): Someone's got to be like tracking and monitoring and then problem solving when the answer is no. So just your thoughts in some ways that this idea of a student success system, which is often thought about a way to, you know, give students supports where they need extra supports can also be used to help sort of more at the structural system redesign level. Tim (29:05): I think it's a, it's an incredibly important observation, Bob. I, I, you know, I'm from Chicago and was engaged along the way in the story of bringing student success systems across the Chicago Public School system over time. And albeit it took us a while, um, but the student success teams moved the needle from approximately 55% of young people graduating from high school to 87%. So extraordinary improvements, um, in a system that had basically been delivering half of the kids through high school, um, for generations historically, what it wasn't was a program in a box. It was, it was good data at the right time about the right things. Um, that and then a, an architecture for the people closest to the young people to actually think about and act on the, the data that they were engaged with and, and the young people they were engaged with. Tim (30:21): But it had this exceptional story came, grew up through, and it lived through at least three mayors, probably 17 superintendents. I, I, I lost track. Um, but your question about whether that architecture, which wasn't about implementing something with fidelity, it was about implementing something with integrity, whether that architecture could be applied to, for example, the post-secondary priority of ensuring that every student actually then has a pathway or a strategy, a, a set of pathways to the right post-secondary option. Or whether it could be used to, to the same methods

of good data. A, a social architecture or structure could be used to actually transform the high school from a, in an instructional sense. I think it's a really important idea and I think it's something we should actually not just posit, but pilot and, and learn from. And, uh, and I'm sure there's places in your, your firmament that are, are working on this. But I, I think it's at the heart of it, what, what it really appeals to me is that it, it, it, acknowledges that, that we have these extraordinary people in the form of teachers and counselors and administrators in all schools in America who are in, in many ways, um, I mean they're gold, right? They're like, they we're sitting on gold and if well leveraged and well organized, will be the very people who can help turn the corner in terms of what the American high school becomes. Yeah. Bob (32:01): And it's, it's gotta be, it's gotta be driven by the people who do the work. because if we just tell them, here's a better vision, they're going to say, what do you know?  Tim (32:08): Yeah, exactly. Bob (32:11): So, this has been a great conversation, Tim. Thank you. Um, is there anything else you'd like to share, or tell us, or is there a website our listeners could visit for resources or ideas to explore? Tim (32:21): It's, uh, been a great pleasure. I have nothing but joy and pleasure in being able to partner with the Grad Partnership and with you. Certainly. If anybody listening is interested in the work Carnegie's doing would welcome you to come to our website or just reach out directly. We do everything we do in partnership. Bob (32:38): Wonderful. Thank you so much.  Tim: (32:40) Thanks, Bob.    Bob: (32:42) So today we have examined how the world has changed since the advent of the American high school and how as a result, it's time to redesign our high schools. So, they enable our students to be ready for the opportunities and challenges of our time. We have also looked at how we need to create more supported transitions from high school to post-secondary schooling or training and enable students and parents to make informed choices. We concluded by examining how student success systems could help.  The big point throughout our discussion is we need to do something. We cannot stand pat and rest on the glories of a prior century. As Tim mentioned, data just recently came out showing that the percent of students enrolling in college immediately after high school is down substantially in 2024. If we think about this cohort of kids, they are kids that really had a fractured high school experience. Bob (33:28): They were ninth graders at the height of the pandemic when most schooling was virtual. They were 10th graders when chronic absenteeism rates doubled, and now they're enrolling in college in lower numbers. It'll be easy to just to dismiss this as a one-time artifact of the pandemic, but we also have to consider that it's a harbinger of things to come. As more and more students find high school in the transition to post-secondary schooling, frustrating and confusing and begin to question the point of it all. Yet, we can't let this happen because educational attainment still matters. It's linked to health, civic engagement, wellbeing, and increased potential for prosperity. It's up to us: educational thinkers, school leaders, teachers, community members, students, and families to work together to create the high schools and post-secondary transition supports our youth need to thrive in the world we live in today and we'll live in tomorrow. As we close, we want to ask you to please subscribe to designing education. Stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave has a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center thanking everyone for listening today. I invite you to listen to the other podcasts in our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to podcasts. Onward and be well.