Last Chance High: How Girls and Boys Drop In and Out of Alternative Schools 9780300156973

Citation preview

LAST CHANCE HIGH

Last Chance High

How Girls and Boys Drop In and Out of Alternative Schools Deirdre M. Kelly Foreword by Jeannie Oakes

At atime when lowering the dropout rate is said to be a national priority, America's longest running and largest dropout prevention program has gone strangely unnoticed. This highly readable book explores the hidden world of the continuation high school, the most

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common form of alternative high school. Deirdre M.

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Kelly analyzes the factors that limit its success and focuses especially on gender issues in these schools: how girls and boys slip in and out of the system in different ways, for different reasons, and with different consequences.

Kelly finds that mainstream high schools attempt to mask their own dropout and pushout rates by sending marginalized students to continuation schools. These schools, therefore, become as much safety valves for the system as safety nets for the students, and the resulting contradictions and stigma hamper success. In the two continuation schools that she examined closely, completion rates were low.

Kelly discusses the history of the continuation school and the ethnic and class composition of the student body: in cities, African-Americans and Latinos

Continued on back flap

LAST CHANCE HIGH How Girls and Boys Drop In and Out of Alternative Schools

Deirdre M. Kelly

Foreword by Jeannie Oakes

YALE UNIVERSin PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Copyright© I993 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections I 07 and I 08 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Baskerville and Gill Sans types by Maple-Vail Composition Services, Binghamton, New York. Printed in the United States of America by Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kelly, Deirdre M. Last chance high : how girls and boys drop in and out of alternative schools I Deirdre M. Kelly; foreword by Jeannie Oakes. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-05272-3 I. Evening and continuation schools-United States. 2. Dropouts-United StatesAttitudes. 3. Sex differences in education-United States. 4. Educational sociology-United States. LC555l.K44 I993 373.I2'9I3'097~c20 92-4I978 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

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CONTENTS

List of Tables and Figures ix Foreword by jeannie Oakes xi Preface xv List of Abbreviations xix

Overview

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Where Are the Girls? 5 From Factory to Soap Opera 8 Entering the Hidden World 9 A Mini-Traditional School and a Hybrid Alternative II In the Eyes of the Beholder: Helper, Hippie, Stoner, Spy I7 Some Definitions 23 Ways of Seeing the Continuation School 30

2 How a Chameleon Survives: A History of Continuation Schools ss Early Years: A Part-Time Bridge between Schooling and Work 37 Years of Uncertainty during Hard Times 43 Adjustment Education: I945-I965 48 Alternative Education for "Divergent Youth" 57 The "Discovery" of an Outcast Group: Pregnant and Mothering Girls 6I

3 Safety Valve versus Safety Net: The Process of Stigmatization 67 Community and Family Influences 69 Organizational Influences 73 Individual and Small Group Influences 86

viii CONTENTS

4 Slipping In and Out of the System: Symptoms and Styles of Disengagement by Gender 94 Warning Signals: Quiet and Loud 95 Absenteeism and Cutting Classes 100 Classroom Survival Strategies 103 Boys' and Tough Girls' Greater Vulnerability to Pushout 107

5 Reasons for and Timing of Disengagement by Gender

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Fighting 127 Institutional Labeling Practices and Stigma Avoiders 139 Competing Demands of Relationships and the Relationship-Absorbed 142 Early Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Marriage 152 Family and Work Responsibilities 158 Timing of Disengagement 163

6 What Do Continuation Schools Continue? Learning Gender and Class 167 Connections between the Continuation School and Students' Futures 170 Peers' Informal Enforcement of Traditional Gender Identities 181 Consequences of Dropping Out versus Getting a Continuation Diploma 194

7 Reengagement: Who and How by Gender

199 The Continuation Credential 201 Academics: Second Chancers, Push-Throughs, and Pushouts 202 Extracurricular Activities 206 Peer Relations 208 The Limits to Reengagement 210

8 Hidden Hierarchies 215 The Credential Hierarchy and the Dilemma of Difference 216 The Gender Hierarchy 220 The Adult-Child Hierarchy 225 The Knowledge Hierarchy 227

Appendix: Routes through the Hidden World: Charts of Student Flows into and out of Beacon and La Fuente 231 References 249 Index 267

TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Comparison of Beacon and La Fuente, 1988-89, with All Cal15 ifornia Continuation Programs, 1986-87 Table 2. Student Perceptions of Choice regarding Continuation Transfer by Sex 75 Table 3. Primary Reason for Continuation Transfer by Sex

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Table 4. Suspensions from Beacon, 1988-89, by Reason, Sex, and 109 Ethnicity Table 5. What Students Disliked about Comprehensive High School by 126 Ethnicity, Sex, and School Figure 1. Enrollment in Federally Funded Continuation Classes by Sex, 1920-1964

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Figure 2. Enrollment in California Continuation Programs by Sex, 1920-1987 37

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FOREWORD Jeannie Oakes

For a century American schools have been buffeted by competing, even contradictory, ideas and interests. Perhaps most powerful are the tensions that arise from the nation's wish to be simultaneously an egalitarian community and a competitive meritocracy. These cultural tensions manifest themselves in the demand for a universal system of schooling that provides both a common education and the means for individuals to attain very different opportunities and rewards as adults. In part to resolve the obvious conflicts between these values and expectations, American schools have adopted an ideology and a structure of equal, but differentiated, opportunities in a common school. The ideal has been for all American youth to attend the common schools wherein they acquire the social and civic virtues necessary for democratic life. At the same time, the schools provide different instructional programs tailored to different students' needs; in senior high schools these programs range from rigorous academic curricula to programs stressing life skills and vocational training. The combination of common and differentiated school experiences has generally been viewed as educationally appropriate and socially just, given the diversity of American teenagers' abilities, interests, and motivations. Thus, an equal educational opportunity in American schools has been construed as that which best matches individual students' current competencies and best prepares them for their probable adult lives. With participation in (or dropping out of) various programs driven by individual choice and merit, the comprehensive high school-so the logic of American schooling goes-