Credit: John C. Osborn/EdSource Today

Credit: John C. Osborn/EdSource Today

Personalized instruction, high expectations, and hands-on and group learning experiences are helping to close the accomplishment gap in four Northern California schools, according to a written report released today by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (Scope).

Such "pupil-centered" practices improved the outcomes for African-American and Latino students at two district schools and two district-approved independent charter schools, co-ordinate to the report, Student-Centered Schools: Closing the Opportunity Gap. The district schools both have a linked learning health care theme: Dozier-Libbey Medical High Schoolhouse in Antioch and Life Academy of Wellness and Bioscience in Oakland. The charter schools both emphasize arts and technology: Metropolis Arts and Tech Loftier School in San Francisco and Touch Academy of Arts & Technology in Hayward.

"The numbers are compelling," said Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University professor and Telescopic faculty director, in published comments almost the written report. "Students in the study schools showed greater accomplishment than their peers, had higher graduation rates, were better prepared for college and showed greater persistence in college. Student-centered learning proves to exist especially benign to economically disadvantaged students and students whose parents have non attended higher."

For example, in all four high schools all Latino students completed the coursework required for four-year state universities in 2011-12 compared with statewide rates of 28 percent. In three of the 4 schools, all African-American students completed the coursework – and at Dozier-Libbey 94 percent did – compared with 29 per centum statewide. All the loftier schools are relatively small, with Dozier-Libbey the largest at 639 students in 2012-13. Depression-income students fabricated up the majority in three of the high schools, with 99 percent of the students at Life Academy being eligible for free and reduced-price meals in 2012-13. At Dozier-Libbey, 48 percent were eligible.

The researchers cite the schools as models for closing the persistent achievement gap betwixt depression-income African-American and Latino students and their better-off peers. Today's jobs require specialized skills and knowledge that cannot be learned through traditional, more structured approaches to learning, the researchers fence. "Low-income students and students of color are particularly unprepared every bit they are more than probable to nourish segregated schools with a narrow and impoverished curriculum," they say. Besides the more than personalized approach to learning, these schools also permit more time for teachers to collaborate and reverberate on their practice, according to the study, which contains an educator's tool.

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