Innovation alive at Roosevelt

April 29th, 2008 at 04:32pm Jeff Kolkey

For my part of the 180 Degrees project, I am looking at the changes over the last three decades in area schools and especially the Rockford School District. 

My major finding is that the students who make up the Rockford School Disrtrict are vastly different than they were 30 years ago.

 No longer are Rockford schools the suburban-like school system they were in the 1980s when just 25 percent of students came from low-income families. Today, Rockford schools are urban with almost 70 percent of students coming from low income households.

Although Rockford elementary schools have largely found ways to adapt to the changing needs of their students, high schools have not. Dismal graduation rates, high drop out rates and high truancy rates are the norm.

But today I visited an innovative and often over-looked high school. And it’s right over there on Haskell Avenue in Rockford.

Roosevelt Community Education Center and alternative high school is an impressive place that’s so innovative, it reminds of some of the charter public schools I recently visited in Chicago.

There at Roosevelt, I met one student who was pregnant at age 18 and could have wound up a single mother without even a high school diploma. Another student I met has spent parts of her high school career at five high schools in four school districts and two states. This once homeless dropout was able to get back in school through the district’s homeless program.

Thanks to Roosevelt’s unique program that allows students to work at their own pace and offers daycare and preschool for children of teen mothers (and even a few fathers), these and hundreds more students are getting a diploma with plans for further education, typically at Rock Valley College.

These are students for whom traditional high schools like Auburn, Jefferson, Guilford and East did not work. At Roosevelt, they told me that they develop a personal relationship with teachers who seem to care whether they graduate or not.

As the community looks at high school reform and the possibility of bringing public charter school proposals, it would do well to first take a close look at how Roosevelt does high school. It may well already be on to an answer for how to improve high school graduation rates and encourage students to move on to college.

Entry Filed under: 180 Degrees