The Next Generation:

Personalized Schools Proposal

Proposal Summary

This personalized, small schools model creates five, separate, rigorous, choice schools for students. Two schools will be located in Thunder Mountain High School, two in Juneau-Douglas High School, and one at Yaakoosge Daakahidi. This proposal is a response to community comments requesting high expectations, challenging, engaging learning opportunities for all, choice, and more personalized education for all children.

While each school would have a different focus or theme, all schools would include small learning communities and ensure that all graduates leave with a post-secondary plan. These five schools will also include a four-year advisory program.

What might these personalized schools look like?  These are possible topics or themes for a personalized school:    

• Expeditionary - focused on challenging, hands-on learning, taking advantage of the uniqueness of Juneau.
• High Tech - instruction delivered via current technology and project based learning.
• Early College - students have opportunities to earn college credits. 
• Science/Math - emphasis on these content areas of study.

Section One:  Program Proposal Description

Overall Description of Program Proposal

A series of five small schools offering choices and personalized education for academic excellence for life.  Personalized Schools would include five small school choices organized around interests, careers, or learning styles, such as career/technology pathways, early college, new tech, global learning, place based, and expeditionary, as well as Yaakoosge. 

Because of their various structures, they would also include choices of location, time, theme/focus, learning styles, activities, and size. Each small school would be organized around a common theme/focus, but each school will incorporate structures that promote a personalized education for academic excellence for all students.  These common structures include the following:

• Programs developed to ensure that all students in each school graduate ready for college and/or post secondary training.
• Advisory programs implemented to ensure continuous relationships with an adult, a sense of belonging, and development of individual post secondary plans

Goals of Program Proposal

The goals of Personalized Schools include the following:

• Personalize education
• Ensure success for all students
• Offer schedule flexibility
• Address issues of equity
• Provide challenges for all students
• Provide engaging curriculum and activities with continuous staff development and support to ensure that these occur
• Create a culture of mutual respect, honest communication, and shared responsibility
• Enrich communication
• Make family and community involvement an essential ingredient
• Create an environment that leads to confident, responsible students that contribute to society

What would the program look like from a student’s viewpoint?

Personalized Schools will

• Make students feel empowered by choices and student involvement
• Have teachers as facilitators rather than as lecturers
  
• Practice mutual respect and responsibility
• Recognize the power of students making things happen
• Provide for student leadership
• Allow students to develop relationships with students and faculty and feel connect
• Make students visible
• Because of increased personalized education, decrease off campus issues
  
• Engage students in classroom activities, thus increasing participation and involvement

Alignment with Best Practices & Research

Personalized schools align with the Daggett Research (International Center for Excellence in Education) in the following ways:

• Focus on student learning styles and aptitudes
• Provide smaller learning communities
• Focus on excellence for all
• Focus an extra commitment to the ninth grade year
• Focus on high quality curriculum and instruction
• Focus on relationships
• Provide sustained and developed professional development

The following components have not yet been addressed, but it is the committee’s intent that they will be:

• Address literacy across the entire curriculum
• Provide instruction based on data
• Solid and dedicated leadership (current leadership is, but not all leadership, i.e. new principal, is yet in place

Model for Program

Personalized Schools are using the Gates Small School Grant Schools and the Mapleton School District reorganization as partial models for their work.  However, it is recognized that Juneau is a unique environment that will necessitate adaptations from any set small school.

How Program Addresses Data and Implications

Personalized Schools address the following existing conditions:

• Need for lowering drop out rates and increasing graduation rate:  Many students drop out due to a feeling of disconnection with the school.  Personalized schools will improve connectedness, thus leading to improved graduation rates.
• Increased personalization addresses the need to closing the achievement gap and raising the bar for all students by allowing teachers to know students well in a more personal environment, thus allowing more opportunity for differentiation.
• The organizational structures of Personalized Schools addresses the issue of increased integration.
• Rigorous options for all students, with the support necessary to promote success will be available.
• A safe, supportive environment for all students will be provided.
• This program will eliminate tracking while increasing high expectations for all students.
  
• Personalized schools will decrease discipline issues.
• Because of the smaller, more personal environment, as well as the element of choice, parental participation will increase, thus decreasing the potential to drop out.

Description of Classroom Instruction

• Classroom instruction will focus on flexibility to meet different learning styles.  The expectation is that every teacher in every classroom will teach to multiple learning styles.
• Teachers as coaches/Students as workers.
• Instruction includes active learning such as place based, project based, hands on learning.
• Differentiation is an expectation in order to allow for success and learning for all in a heterogeneous learning environment.
  

Utilization of School/Community Facilities

Each personalized school will be housed in a designated wing/part of one of the school buildings, but they will also share common resources with other small schools.  Shared resources will include libraries, physical education facilities, music and art facilities, computer labs, etc.  
 

Section Two: Rationale for Program Proposal

Describe the Proposal’s Alignment with the following:

Action Belief Statements    

Personalized Schools align entirely with the Action Belief Statements.  In fact, the belief statements were used to help design and refine the proposal as can be seen in the goals for this proposal.

Interests of Community

Community input included the following desires that are components of this plan:  choice, flexibility, rigor/high standards, relationships, personalization (smaller class sizes, known well, etc.), connectedness, safe learning environment, making all students visible, visions of confident/secure graduates, equity.

District’s Strategic Plan, Goals, and work JDHS is currently undertaking    

This proposal is in alignment with the visioning work of the school district.  It speaks directly to rigor, relevance, and relationships, as well as the specific goals.  It also supports the idea of creating smaller learning communities that JDHS is currently working on and that Yaakoosge already has in place.

Section Three: Implementation and Other Factors

Describe how the Program Proposal will impact and provide guidance in making decisions around the following:

School Boundaries

Families deserve to choose which school best meet their children’s needs.  It is recommended that the school district work with the city transportation system to accommodate needs for transportation and busing.

Staff/Teacher Choices: 

The district needs to develop a plan for accommodating teacher choices.  This could be done by application, self-selection, etc., but choice is as essential for staff as it is for students.

Activities and Athletics

Many athletics and activities may be offered, but they may not always be associated at students’ own school;  rather, they may be open to all students.  With this plan, competitive athletic teams may be all located at one school facility or at two;  either structure (one district team or two separate school teams) could work with this plan.

What would be the recommendation for the beginning year and possible school enrollment?

It is anticipated that 11/12 graders would remain at JDHS in its current structure until they graduate.  Personalized schools would begin with ninth and tenth graders,  two small at TMHS during year one, and two at JDHS, although none of them would be at capacity.  The programs would grow each year with an additional grade level.  Teachers of 11th and 12th graders would move into personalized schools as their students graduate.  It is recommended that some choices also be offered for 11/12 graders to join the personalized schools if they so desire.

It is imperative to emphasize the importance of building community and culture at the beginning of the year for each personalized school in order to fully maximize the potential for personalizing education for all.

Describe issues, other obstacles, and questions associated with the Program Proposal.

• Teacher disinterest:  in some districts that have implemented similar programs, a small percentage of teachers have chosen to not participate and go elsewhere.  This is not a viable option for the Juneau community, since there is no neighboring district.
• This option might not meet the expectations of people who voted for and wanted two, comprehensive high schools.
• Athletics and activities are unresolved and could be issues
• Possible decreased electives, but this is offset by increased overall choice
• Four years of full time students—not half day
• Credits?

Overall, how will this program proposal meet the needs of all students in Juneau?

The committee that developed this proposal believes that it meets the needs of all students in Juneau by offering substantial choice, both in theme/focus area as well as elements of learning styles, location, time, etc.  By eliminating tracking, research shows that it is possible to increase achievement while decreasing the achievement gap.  It provides the necessary ingredients to decrease dropouts and increase graduation rate (personalization, choice, smaller learning communities, high expectations for all).  And finally, it provides that overall sense of belonging that is so essential for students and staff to feel a part of a community and develop the mutual respect necessary to maximize learning.