My Field Trip to Visit Rhode Island HS’s, and What I Learned About Algebra II

On Tuesday evening, I climbed onboard the Delta commuter to take me to Providence, Rhode Island to join the Michigan delegation taking part in the American Youth Policy Forum Field Trip. I was AYPF’s guest for the next two days. On the plane with me was Kathleen Straus, President of the State Board of Education. We would meet the other Michigan members at breakfast the next morning. Our delegation consisted of representatives from the Governor’s office, a State Senator, a MDE advisor, the Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, Kathleen and myself.

Rhode Island is about five years ahead of Michigan in ramping-up rigor in its high schools. I listened and visited with Peter McWalters, RI’s Commission of Education telling of-the-why Rhode Island went a different direction than most New England states and the rest of us. They rejected a high stakes graduation test and put in place rigor using portfolios, capstone projects, and assessment to demonstrate proficiency. Under the Rhode Island Diploma System, they stuck with the Carnegie Unit requiring twenty credits but added performance based learning requirements. The graduation portfolio uses performance-based end-of-course exams. Students must also show evidence that they have mastered applied learning skills by appearing before community members to explain a self-chosen research project - capstone project. The school has a choice to use two of the three requirements. The Class of 2008 is the first graduating class with these expectations.

I was surprised and envious to learn that in state policy every high school is required to have one-hour per week of joint faculty staff school improvement planning. The Rhode Island principal is definitely an instructional leader. And, yes, they have union issues, as do we.

Want to learn about what Rhode Island put together? www.ride.ri.gov/Instruction/curriculum/rhodeisland/assessment/diploma.ht...

The second of the three high schools I visited was Coventry High School, in an urban fringe area. It’s a school of 1,800 students of little ethnic diversity. The other two schools I visited were urban, high minority population, inner-city schools. Coventry was chosen to visit to see how they were handling the capstone option. http://schools.coventryschools.net/highschool/

While at Coventry HS, I found myself spending most of my time visiting with Jim Erinakes who had recently taken a central office assignment after being the math department chair at Coventry for a number of years. Jim, told me that Coventry did have a requirement every student must take Algebra II as part of their graduation requirement. Their failure rate was about 8-10%.

They’re in their tenth year of this student requirement. Like us in Michigan, they struggled in the beginning. But aggressive interventions at middle level content, scheduling, and student learning plans, and time to make adjustments have produced success. Using a 4x4 modified block schedule they were able to bring those students who were struggling up-to expectation by their senior year. The math sequence and delivery is much different today than when they started the Algebra II requirement several years ago. This is a point that Jim made over-and-over again.

An important piece that Rhode Island put in their requirements that Michigan left out was a school support system for all students: enhanced literacy instruction k-12, universal design for access, and personalized education. When we here in Michigan put the rigor into our state law, we all seemed to get caught up in the fight regarding the ability of all students to do algebra II, protecting access to CTE and we left out requirements to help the student.

The horror stories from our members about failure rates in Algebra are quite troublesome to me. I did find a sense of relief from my visit in Rhode Island that those who implemented this requirement before Michigan have found a way through and students are successful, even those students in urban high schools. Required intervention for students, faculty, and course content is what made the difference.