A major use of i3 grant funding at Sammamish supports professional learning in multiple forms. PBL course re-design occurs in a phased way across the school, as course teachers receive a year-long, one-period release to collaboratively plan new PBL curriculum. This presents a real challenge, as we are not asking our teachers to redesign a unit at a time, but to examine their entire course and redesign elements of it to increase student ownership and creatively link their content to real disciplines and contemporary problems.
Design teamwork gives teachers the time and collaborative space to think about putting something new and different in their classroom. It also allows teachers to learn from each other with a focus on the student experience and deepening their own reflective practice.
In addition to design teamwork, we bring our entire staff together in the summer for a five-day paid professional learning conference. We use this time to engage the staff in learning together around our seven key elements and applying them to practical classroom implementation.
Teachers start by identifying the kinds of learning needed. Then they engage their colleagues in learning how to push current practice to new levels. At Sammamish, we strive to prepare students for the best possible futures in a rapidly changing world -- and we see students and staff learn and grow together in the process. This is the first of eight posts that will give more insight into the work at Sammamish. In the following posts, seven of our teachers who have transitioned to PBL instruction will be writing about how they have revitalized their classrooms with one of the key elements mentioned above.
Students may apply for entry to up to four selective high schools in order of preference. Application packages are available in October when the student is in Year 5 and tests are conducted the following March. Application packages for Years 8—12 entry in the following year are available in June. Entry to these classes is on the basis of the Opportunity Class Placement Test, conducted in July or August each year when the student is in Year 4. These schools are partially selective, enrolling students from the local catchment area, as well as others based on academic, cultural or sporting merit.
Meanwhile, the Queensland Academies consists of three fully selective high schools that admit students based on their ability in science, mathematics and technology; creative industries; or health science.
See Special interest schools for more information. Students applying for entry to these schools complete a centralised examination in June of the year pior to admission. When applying, students may submit up to three preferences. If successful, they will be awarded a place in their first preference.
For more information about applying to a selective entry school in Victoria, see Selective entry high schools. WesternAustralia has one fully selective secondary school, Perth Modern School , whichadmits students on the basis of academic ability.
South Australia. A number of schools offer specialised programs forgifted students, with admission based on academic performance. Staying in school in order to go to college is another matter. In the last decades of the century, economic returns to college graduation relative to high school graduation grew substantially. Almost all discussions about secondary education today involve the reality that its only real purpose is to facilitate college entry.
And, within that mandate, serious concerns with learning exist only among those few students, perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent, who aspire to highly selective colleges. For the rest, the academic curriculum is something to be endured; the goal is simply to accumulate credits and a minimal grade point average to get into some college.
The overwhelming majority of undergraduate colleges and universities are not especially competitive, since they accept 80 percent to 90 percent of applicants, and the community colleges, which now enroll almost 50 percent of all entering freshmen, are open to anyone who wants to enter.
The vocational curriculum is no longer serious, as it has become small and fragmented. It focuses on low-level jobs without any real benefits in employment, and students drift through with low aspirations. Most students have become disengaged from learning of any sort.
They believe that getting a degree will help them, but they do not associate that achievement with learning, at least not what schools have to teach. What counts in the labor market is the quantity of schooling an individual has completed, not the quality of learning, and so students have an incentive to continue as long as possible without expending more than the minimum amount of effort to pass.
This leads to overeducation, or more accurately overschooling, in which students get more schooling than they need for the jobs they are likely to get. For some, the level of disengagement is so high that they drop out before graduation. And despite the efforts of the standards movement to invigorate learning and academic achievement in the high schools, little has been accomplished.
The future need not be all doom and gloom. There are innovations developing that could help. Efforts to reconstitute high schools as small communities with a clear sense of purpose and with something serious to accomplish in their own right can be encouraged.
Large comprehensive high schools are a disaster—chaotic, fragmented, purposeless factories. In contrast, schools-within-schools, theme-based schools, charter schools, magnet schools, and schools where teachers stay with their students as they progress hold out some hope that common purposes, built on a community of learners, can restore coherence, engagement, and motivation.
Academic learning and school experiences can also be connected to life outside the school—through student projects, service learning, environmental protection, work-based internships, and co-op placements. These are hard to establish and harder to maintain at a high level of learning aligned with in-school instruction. But the alternative is to continue the high school as an institution cloistered from political, economic, and community life, to the detriment of students looking for something real to do.
And, of course, there are some issues, like the poor labor market for young people, that the schools can do little about, but which need serious attention from more active government. Reconstructing the high school requires giving it some meaning of its own. If the curriculum is important only in instrumental ways, as preparation for college or later employment, then it is simply something to endure while waiting for something else. If the curriculum has no intrinsic value, calls to learn will continue to fall by the wayside, and threats to enforce learning through high-stakes tests are unlikely to do much good.
The real challenge is to tie educational standards to the world around us in ways that recast academic disciplines and vocational education. Only then will the high school save itself. All Topics. About Us. Group Subscriptions. Recruitment Advertising. Events and Webinars. Leaders to Learn From.
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