ALASKA'S
SMALL RURAL HIGH SCHOOLS
ARE THEY WORKING?
Footnotes
1. Judith Kleinfeld, A Long Way from Home: Effects of Public High Schools on Village Children Away from Home (Fairbanks, Alaska: Center for Northern Educational Research and Institute of Social, Economic, and Government Research, 1973).
2. The rates reported here are for the 105 students we followed for the 1973 study. In A Long Way from Home, we also reported drop out rates for all village students who entered boarding programs in 1971 and 1972. Of the 1,724 students who entered boarding programs in 1971, 22 percent left during that year. Of the 1,561 students who entered the boarding programs 1972, 34 percent left during the year. Most students did not drop out of school entirely but transferred from one program to the next. See A Long Way from Home, Appendix III, pp. 1-3.
3. In the 1973 study, we gave the California Achievement Test to the 105 students we were following when they entered high school. We then gave them the same test at the end of their freshman and sophomore years, and measured change in grade level equivalents. We simply do not have the test data necessary to compare today's village high school students to the students who attended the boarding programs. Our point is, however, that the boarding schools did not produce a year's gain in achievement for each year in the program. See A Long Way from Home, Appendix IV, pp. 1-6.
4. According to Mt. Edgecumbe records, graduating seniors in 1963 scored at the 11.2 grade level. Entering freshmen scored at the 8.2 grade level. In other words, over the four years of high school, students gained three grade levels.
5. The 1976 "Agreement of Settlement" in Tobeluk v. Lind (previously known as the Molly Hooch Case) has been incorporated into state law. The regulations state that a school district must provide a local secondary education if the local school committee wants one, if the community has an elementary school program, and if there is one or more children available to attend the secondary school (4 AAC 05.040).
6.Personal communication from Stephen E. Cotton, formerly with Alaska Legal Services, July 20, 1984. Mr. Cotton has continued to monitor compliance with the Tobeluk v. Lind settlement agreement.
7. Information provided by the Alaska Department of Education, Tobeluk v. Lind Consent Decree, Facility Construction Facility Report, undated (circa 1984).
8. Information provided by the Alaska Department of Education, Management, Law, and Finance Division. Foundation Funding, Small High Schools in Alaska, Revised Foundation Reports, 1984.
9. We identified 162 small high schools in 1984. The total number of high schools shifts slightly each year since the smallest schools may or may not exist in a particular year depending on the number of students.
10. See, for example, Theodore Sizer, Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984): Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1982); Ernest C. Boyer, High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1983); Theodore Sizer, David K. Cohen, and Eleanor Farrar, The Shopping Mall High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
11. Benjamin S. Bloom, "The 2-Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring," Educational Researcher (June/July 1984): 4-16.
12. Henry M. Levin, Gene V. Glass, and Gail R. Meister, Cost-Effectiveness of Four Educational Interventions (Stanford University: Project Report No. 84-A11, 1984).
13. See Paul Berman and Milbrey W. McLaughlin, Federal Programs Supporting Educational Change, Vol. III: Implementing and Sustaining Innovations. Report to the U.S. Office of Education (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1978).
14. See, for example, the discussion in Boyer, High School: A report on Secondary Education in America, pp. 121-130.
15. Thelma Buchholdt, Proposed Interim work of the HESS Committee (Alaska State House of Representatives), memorandum dated April 10, 1979.
16. Virginia Juettner, The Iditarod Area School District Program Evaluation 1979-1980 (McGrath, 1980).
17. See, for example, Alex Inkeles and David H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).