and Ash Vasudeva
Clover Park High School is located approximately 40 miles south of Seattle in the city of Lakewood, Washington. Lakewood lies near the southern edge of the Puget Sound in a section of rural western Washington commonly referred to as the Lakes District. Natural lakes dot the city's landscape and Mount Rainier's snow-speckled peak dominates the horizon.
Lakewood's geographic features and its proximity to Seattle, the Puget Sound, two nearby military bases and one National Guard station have created strong socioeconomic crosscurrents. Affluent families often live in expansive and well-maintained lakefront homes nested within gated communities, while poor families are concentrated in run-down apartments and small bungalows clustered around the town's commercial strips and military installations.
Clover Park High School is at the confluence of Lakewood's diverse demographic, economic, and social streams. Nearly 25 percent of the city's children under the age of 18 live below the poverty line, and 51 percent of Clover Park High School students are enrolled in the district's free and reduced lunch program.
At Clover Park High School 64 percent of students are people of color and more than two-dozen home languages are spoken. Although no single group constitutes a majority, whites (46 percent) and African Americans (24 percent) are the two largest racial groups at the school. Forty-percent of the students' families are affiliated with the military and/or national guard – a factor that contributes to the school's high transiency rate. Each year Clover Park loses approximately 300 students and enrolls about 200 new students.
It is against this backdrop that Clover Park High School has been pursuing a reform agenda designed to address the disparate achievement levels that separate the school's high-achieving students from those who upon graduation are not well prepared for either college or the workplace. Following a district push for whole-school reform in the mid- to late 1990s, Clover Park High School began converting into small schools in fall 2001.
During the last four years, Clover Park has transformed itself from a single, comprehensive high school serving approximately 1,500 students into four small schools that serve between 350 and 375 students each. In its fourth year of implementation, Clover Park's achievement data is showing consistent growth and a narrowing of gender, socio-economic, and racial achievement gaps. Between 2001 and 2005, the overall percentage of students who achieved a score of proficient on state assessments in math, reading and writing rose by 16 percent, 25 percent and 30 percent respectively. Between 2003 and 2005, the reading gap between low-income and non-low income students was reduced from 18 percent to 8 percent. Achievement data details are explained further in the outcomes section of this case.
After discussing the district context and reform history at Clover Park, this case study highlights four particularly salient themes that illustrate and illuminate the school's small school conversion: a commitment to equity, the distribution of leadership, a sharp instructional focus and an emphasis on embedded professional development.
Of these four themes, equity may be the most prominent, and it is suffused throughout the others. Clover Park's commitment to equity is both the impetus for reform and the overarching principle that guides staff actions. For example, in an effort to ensure equitable enrollments, staff opted to randomly assign students to the four small schools. Similarly, the small schools deliberately did not differentiate themselves by theme or career emphasis in an effort to avoid segregating students.
Clover Park's distribution of leadership has helped transition the comprehensive high school into semi-autonomous small schools. By shifting decision making from the building principal to administrative and teacher-leaders in small schools, Clover Park has broadened and strengthened its ability to provide disciplinary support and instructional guidance.
Finally, Clover Park's core redesign efforts focus on instructional improvement and embedded professional development. The school's staff members have implemented block scheduling and interdisciplinary instruction as strategies for reducing pupil loads and increasing personalization. They have also moved toward using exhibitions and performance assessments to demonstrate student learning in ways that are not captured by pencil and paper tests. Instructional facilitators or coaches work closely with teachers to support instructional improvement and plan professional development. Similarly, school-wide professional development is teacher-driven and focuses primarily on instruction.
