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As I complete my seventh year as principal at Clintondale High School, it hasbecome abundantly clear what our educational institution will have to do inorder to create a thriving academic environment that is financially solvent.Since 1992, our school district has been open to school of choice. The policywas instituted in order to offset the transitioning amount of students whochose other schooling options. These options included private and newlyformed charter schools, as well as, local area traditional public schools.These local schooling options forced our school district to compete and thecompetition is even fiercer under the state’s current economic condition.Since the acceptance and inception of a school of choice policy within ourschool district we continuously examined the pros and consof having such apolicy. We have compared and analyzed data pertaining to grade pointaverages and discipline records of in-district and out-of-district students andhave found that there have been some notable differences in culture, andpreparedness among new students.Upon my analyzation of our school districts MEAP trend data, as well as,interviewing teachers and students my findings have reveal a profoundpattern between school of choice and state scores. Below represents thecurrent trends in social studies MEAP scores.When examining the high school’s student enrollment for the 9

grade, thenumber of students who were enrolled in our 6

grade in 2005-06 thatentered the high school is 54%. Therefore, producing a turn over (rotation of students) rate from this particular class of 2012 of 46%. In order to validatethis trend the turn over rate of our students that enter the 9

grade and aregoing to take the MME test in the 11

grade in 2009 is 30% and the numberof seniors who went K-12 from the class of 2009 is 12%.This data is significant because the numberof students did not changedramatically. The class of 2012 was expected to have approximately 190-195 total students and it arrived at the high school on count day between195-200 students. Therefore, giving the appearance that when looking atthe scores that are released to the media that our school district is failinghowever, this movement of students provides us with a significant academic

challenge. Their educational backgrounds, socio economic status, familystructure, distance traveling to school, did change the make up of 46 per100 students.In addition, our school of choice families demographic make up were mostlyAfrican American families that came from the city of Detroit in which 26.8%live below the poverty line. Furthermore, according to city data.com ”Detroithas struggled mightily trying to maintain a quality level of education in theface of budget shortfalls within an educational system that is embedded intoa largely impoverished city population.” In 2005, the average SS MEAPscores for Caucasian students was 83% and for African American studentsthe scores were 57%, a 26% learning gap, with a large percentage residingin Detroit.The chart below represents the number of students entering the high schoolfrom are most recent school of choice marketing campaign. The totalnumber of school of choice students enrolled from our campaign is 91students, with 71 of the students being African American and from the cityof Detroit.This school enrollment data reveals that the majority of our new studentpopulation has the following socio-economic and learning characteristics:

•

Economically disadvantages; lacking basic physical and emotionalneeds

•

Student lack of exposure to a rigorous curriculum

•

Student learning gaps due to normal school differences

•

Low level of mother’s education levelHistorically, the above mentioned characteristics have a profound andnegative effect on student achievement and can provide great educationalchallenges. The next chart below provides a general comparison of the

background of a typical student who left and the student who replaced them

City or TownIncome% of Pop.WithDegreeHS Grad%PovertyDetroit$29,50011%69% 26%ClintonTownship$48,00018%87%9.2%State of MI $44,00021%83%10%

2000 USCensus

Simply stated, we are educating a different student at the secondary levelthus, validating many of our concerns and frustrations among our staff.When evaluating our current population trends and academic situations, it isincreasingly apparent we need to address

our entire

student learning issuesand our

all

of our student movement trends.

We Are Not Built To Handle It

Furthermore, when investigating thehuman learning processes, research willindicate that not all students learn at the same rate or the same way. Forexample, within our K-12 educational system that we have total control overstudent movement, we are going to have a normal bell shaped curveregarding student achievement. In other words, we are going to have somestudents who will be excelling, some students who maintaining and somewho are falling behind. Thus, like all current school districts, we will react ina methodical way making sure that teachers are trained to deal with the K-12 issues getting teams together to align our standards, enabling buildingprincipals communicate with each other about the current student learning