Brown students are becoming more involved at Hope High School, while a recent report by the Rhode Island Department of Education shows major improvement since the school's reorganization by the state last February.
The report, released in December by State Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, describes "positive progress" in increasing Hope's learning standards and "clear sense of shared purpose" and creating a distinct niche for ninth and 10th graders at the school. But the report also identified five areas still in need of improvement by the end of the school year.
Last February, Hope High was "reconstituted" into three separate learning communities under a Consolidated Corrective Action Plan.
Special Master Nicholas Donohue, who was appointed by the state last April to oversee reforms at Hope High, compiled the December report, which stated, "Hope is improving. Students are in school more persistently, the school is orderly and disruptive incidents are at a minimum."
The report did not give specific figures on student performance or performance goals, but Adeline Becker, executive director of the Brown-affiliated University Education Alliance, said improvements in student performance will not be evident for several more years because of an "implementation dip."
Such a dip would cause student performance to spike, decline a year after implementation and then slowly increase over a few years, according to Becker.
"(Administrators) had to get students into school," Becker said, "so they had to deal with a lot of issues like improving attendance, decreasing truancy and behavior problems. They have been successful at turning some of those things around."
Becker said Hope High's reconstitution model is becoming more common among high schools with large student bodies.
"They're looking for smaller learning communities where teachers know where the students are and students care about whether they're there every day," she said. Becker said Hope High's "checkered past" has caused it to be singled out by state officials such as Gov. Don Carcieri '65, who mentioned only Hope High by name in his 2003 State of the State address.
The state's intervention at Hope High put the school "on the front burner" both for the Providence School District and for neighboring universities, Becker said, and she said the intervention was a "very hopeful" development.
"(Hope High) is an environment where parents have historically been more vocal than in other parts of the city," Becker said. The December report recommended "two-way, monthly communication between advisors and parents regarding how their child is doing in school and what the plans are for next steps" as an objective in the "personalization" of Hope.
Mackay Miller '01, assistant director for youth programs at the Swearer Center for Public Service, called the school "a hot potato" but said the problems there are also present in schools across the state.
Rhode Island College, the Rhode Island School of Design, Johnson and Wales University, Roger Williams University and Brown all have partnerships with Hope, according to a Feb. 16 article in the Providence Journal. Some have made concrete donations, such as Johnson and Wales offering Hope High all its surplus computer equipment. RISD will offer three years of art education beginning in the freshman year, and Rhode Island College will allow Hope High teachers to take its graduate courses at no cost, according to the Journal.
Miller said most of the Swearer Center programs at Hope and other Providence schools are administered through a nonprofit organization called Hope High Optimized, but the grant that supports the organization is not crucial to Brown's engagement with the school.
"We were there before the grant and we'll be there after the grant, because we have interest," Miller said. "The Swearer Center is committed to running programs in the Providence School District no matter what," he added.
Katie Wang '06, the Brown coordinator of Let's Get Ready!, which offers SAT preparation classes to Hope High students, said she sees the role of the after-school program as "being able to work in a way complementary to what the school is doing."
Approximately 30 high school students each semester take SAT classes free of charge through the program, which Wang says Hope High's guidance counselors cannot currently provide.
That program, along with the College Guidance Project and the Pre-College Enrichment Program, makes up a Swearer Center group called the College Access Initiative, which aims to give students a "comprehensive" college-guidance enrichment program, according to Lang.
Let's Get Ready! used to hold classes at night on Brown's campus, but this semester it will offer the course after school at Hope High.
"It's better to be after school," said Wang. "Many of the students live on the South Side of Providence, and that's two buses to come to Brown and two buses back home late at night. They have many other responsibilities and obligations, whether jobs or babysitting siblings or cousins."
Miller said the Swearer Center aims to partner undergraduate programs with teachers at Hope and other local high schools, but retirements and personnel changes can disrupt those programs.
While the December report cited progress in the creation of Individual Learning Plans for Hope High students, the process is "slow," Wang said.
She said she was optimistic that the school will implement the plans, though currently accessing information at Hope about applying to college is "very difficult."
"Ideally, Hope and other Providence public schools would be strongly invested in college access," including programs during the day, Wang said, but "it would be difficult to prioritize what to include in a curriculum" for that purpose.
The school currently offers its students the Preliminary SAT but is not a College Board-designated testing site for the SAT.
Rex Cheung '07, a Starr Fellow who has tutored for two years at other schools in the Providence area, decided last year to establish a pilot program offering calculus after school to Hope High students because of "logistics."
"I have run into people who have arranged (activities) with Mt. Pleasant (High School), but it took longer," Cheung said. He tried to enlist students who were able to help tutor students at Hope High in advanced math, since Hope High does not offer any courses in calculus.
"The teachers basically have their hands full," Cheung said. "When Brown students tutor it's a closer interaction, one-on-one and small group-to-one. Because we're younger than the teachers, they're not afraid to ask the actual questions they're thinking but don't want to ask in class."
The Department of Education is looking to hire a staffer to act as a liaison between Hope High and the University. It may hire a candidate by the end of the semester, according to Becker.
There are nine recent Master of Arts in Teaching graduates from Brown currently employed at Hope, the highest number in decades, Becker said.
"I think it's exciting that more students are opting to stay in Providence with their MAT degrees," Becker said. "The education department is very interested in working there," she added.
"Hope and the school district created a passageway," Miller said, for MAT grads from Brown and other area schools who might not otherwise have been able to teach at Hope High. This connection is open to undergraduates as well.
"You can't learn everything in a classroom in Wilson Hall," Miller said.
"I went into (tutoring) not trying to change the world or anything," Cheung said. "I figured I would enjoy doing it and it would be worthwhile to do. ... I have the modest aim of having (students I tutor) going away having learned something," he added.
