Continue the conversation after the talk -- reception to follow.

Can't make it in person? Watch the live stream here. If you have a question for Jal during the live stream, tweet @Sch_House_Talk

The Elusive Quest for Ambitious Schooling: Limits and Possibilities of the American High School

In this talk, Jal Mehta, Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University, will report on his co-authored book-length study of efforts to create “ambitious” American high schools. Drawing on more than 750 hours of observations and 300 interviews across 27 highly varied public schools—including “no excuses” schools, project-based schools, International Baccalaureate schools, magnet schools, and comprehensive high schools—the study concludes that despite these schools stated missions to increase rigor and develop 21st century skills most classrooms remain places that feature tasks of low levels of cognitive rigor and passive forms of student engagement. History, inertia, isomorphism, tracking, external constraints, and the absence of forces that would disrupt these patterns are some of the reasons why such disheartening realities persist. More positively, the study finds that “peripheral” contexts like extracurriculars and electives were often reported by students to create more powerful opportunities for learning than "core" disciplinary classes. These spaces did so by embracing a different “grammar” than conventional schooling, building learning platforms which emphasized choice, community, interdependent roles, apprenticeship, and “playing the game at the junior level.” A minority of disciplinary classes were able to achieve similar things, by prioritizing depth over breadth, inviting students into the real worlds of the disciplines, and closing the gap between the “game of school” version of the fields and the actual work in the disciplines. We also found a small number of schools that were able to mount consistent programs that met ambitious goals by developing a set of internal mechanisms to support their visions as well as a set of external strategies to actively manage their environments. The conclusion of the talk will suggest both reformist and radical ways to rethink high schools to make the kind of powerful learning which is currently the exception in American public schools the rule.



