"If you want to rip the heart out of a nation, you hurt the children. But, if you want to put the heart back in a nation, you help the children." —Judy Reneck, founding director

Within the first hour of my teaching career at North High School in Columbus, Indiana, I had set the carpet on fire. That morning I had to get a ride from a friend's mother when my aged station wagon had shuddered its last breath. Just as the first bell was ringing, I arrived at school, lugging half of my worldly possessions. Rushing to my classroom, I was admonished by an older teacher to slow down, "Your teacher isn't going to mark you tardy on the first day." After I had extinguished the fire with my bare hands, I quickly went into a short discussion of fire safety with my very quiet and slightly frightened chemistry students.

My reputation as a pyromaniac quickly spread through the school and each of my subsequent chemistry classes that day filed in demanding that I do that "thing with the carpet." By the time I caught a cab home, I was exhausted, disheveled, and in love. Teaching was cooler than I had ever thought it would be.

The decision to teach hadn't come easily. My father had pushed me to go into business, while my grandmother had decided that it would be perfectly acceptable for me to veer away from the convent in favor of pharmacy. Yet, after my first taste of teaching as a visiting lecturer at Purdue University, I couldn't deny the draw of working with young people. The long hours didn't frighten me. I was prepared to hear people say (particularly my peers in the chemistry and biology fields), "Those who can't, teach." Even the myriad of often conflicting expectations held by everyone from the federal government to my childless next-door neighbor didn't sway my conviction that teaching was the way to be of service to society and have fun while doing it.

Yet, the most memorable part of my experience is what I gained. In my five years as a public high school educator, I was taught how to be human and how to care for others. My students showed me where my prejudices lurked and then forced me to grapple with them. Certainly, my life is much richer and more vivid because of the experiences I shared with my students.

And yet, last year I resigned. After having been in school from the age of six, as either a student or teacher, I was concerned that my passion for the profession was blinding me to flaws in the system. I felt that I had an obligation to understand public school and its role in society.

Simply stated, one could say that public high school is the foundation upon which our society rests. Mary Alice Deike, principal of Akins High School, where I taught for two years, says, "Our whole nation's democracy rests on public school working."

In the months since I resigned from teaching, I have keenly felt the meaning of how vital education is to finding a new career path. College degree in hand, significant work experience under my belt, I still struggled to find meaningful employment. If I'm meeting obstacles like this, I can only imagine what others are experiencing. Even in the best economic climate, people without at least a solid public school education have a much higher chance of being underemployed or even unemployed.

And so the question begs, are our schools working? What is happening in the halls of our public schools, more specifically in the high schools of Austin Independent School District (AISD)-that final proving ground for our city's young people?

No Child Left Behind but many struggling to keep up

For centuries, the American public school system has been shaping the society in which we live. We all pay a portion of the cost of educating our youth, particularly here in Austin where local property taxes for AISD total $622 million, or eighty-four percent of AISD's total budget of $737 million for the 2003-2004 school year. That's a huge investment, and we all stand to lose or gain by AISD's performance.

Every day, roughly 20,000 students can make the choice to file into one of the twelve different high school campuses scattered throughout Austin. Unlike students in smaller districts, many of these students are likely to move within the district at least once. Add to this the complexity of replacing one of every eight teachers each year and you can begin to imagine the iceberg of challenges around which the district navigates. To put the challenges and successes of our high schools in proper perspective, it is important to consider the implications of the newest round of federal education reform and the current crisis in state funding for education. Local change will be driven or hampered by how each of these issues plays out.

In addition to local standards of performance, each school is held accountable to state and national standards. In the past, Texas charted the success of each school using the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test. For more than a decade this exam was used to determine whether Texas school children were receiving adequate instruction aligned with the Texas Standards of Knowledge and Skills set forth in the Texas Education Code. Answering criticism that the TAAS test was too easy, Texas developed a new exam, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). Unlike TAAS, this assessment includes science and social studies components in some grades. Also, promotion to the next grade will be determined in part by a student's score on the TAKS, fulfilling the Texas Student Success Initiative of 1999, which prohibits social promotion.

Because TAKS is intended to be significantly more challenging than the TAAS, the proficiency standard it imposes is gradually increased over a three-year period. This scale works something like this: Your son scored a 44.6 percent on the third-grade reading test last year. That score looked really bad to you, but received a proficient label from the state. However, when his younger sister takes the same test this year, she'll have to score a 51.8 percent to be proficient and should she be held back, she'll have to score a 58.9 percent in 2005 to meet the state's standards. This gradual increase in standards also applies to the scoring of each TAKS grade-level test from fourth to eleventh-grade. This spring, class of 2005 juniors will take four subject area TAKS tests, all of which they must pass to graduate next year.

Texas is one of eighteen states to use test scores to determine the academic advancement of its students. In the late nineteen-nineties, results of the TAAS test showed tremendous leaps being made by Texas schoolchildren, particularly in Houston's school systems. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, signed by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002, was modeled on the Texas accountability system.

NCLB is a cumbersome piece of legislation that aims to increase the accountability of school systems and state education departments by making critical data for each school and school district available to parents and community members. Namely, it asks that states report and be held accountable for the test scores of each demographic and ethnic group of students. Previously, if a school in Texas received high-average test scores it was rated favorably, regardless of how poorly any subset of students performed within the whole. NCLB changes this.

Additionally, schools may be rated poorly if more than five percent of the student body is absent on the day of the test. This new legislation also requires that graduation, crime, and attendance rates be used in the ranking formula. Of specific impact on our high schools is the expectation that at least seventy percent of the students of any class graduate within four years of beginning high school.

An unfavorable rating is given if a school or the entire district does not meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). For a school to meet AYP it needs to demonstrate that it has either met federal expectations or that significant progress has been made in its area(s) of weakness.

If a school fails to make AYP two years in a row, it must notify parents of their right to either request that their child be moved to a higher performing school or demand additional tutoring for their child. Both the cost of transportation for the student to her new school and the tutoring must be paid for by the school or district. In the case of a five-year stretch with no AYP made, the school faces more serious sanctions, namely dissolution of its entire staff.

Here is a closer look at the high schools that didn't make AYP for the initial 2002-2003 testing cycle. Seven of the eleven schools listed for unsatisfactory performance were included on the list solely as a result of low test participation, while only four high schools in the district failed to meet expected reading performance standards or the satisfactory graduation rate. Garza Independence High School is missing from the list due to the small number of students tested at this high school. Should any of these schools fail to make required improvement this year, the consequences-an increase in transfer requests to other schools or demand for supplemental tutoring-could easily make the financial crunch the district is experiencing turn into a vise grip.

Low graduation rate-Lanier and Travis.

Low math participation-Akins, Anderson, Austin, Bowie, Crockett, Johnston, Lanier, LBJ, McCallum, Reagan, and Travis.

Low reading performance-Johnston, Reagan and Travis.

In general, NCLB stands to empower parents to place their child in the highest performing schools available by providing meaningful data in a timely fashion. Nevertheless, it also paves the way for potentially excessive standardization between schools and places a large financial burden on school districts and state education organizations. Both the potential standardization and the financial burden arise from the frequency of testing and repercussions of poor student performance. It has become essential, both for the promotion of the student and the funding of the school, that TAKS scores are high. This kind of pressure, brought about by a test administered yearly from third grade on, is already driving changes in the way core subjects like biology and algebra are taught in high school. At a time when the student body of our high schools is so diverse, it is unrealistic to think that a single solution, no matter how well thought-out it is, will suit everyone.

It is difficult to determine what is not working without reliable information; nevertheless, given the conflicting interpretations of how well Houston's schools are actually performing, it is important that we remain vigilant of what is actually being tested. On December 3, 2003, The New York Times published several accounts of misreporting in Houston's achievement, graduation rate, and crime rate. Such national attention to an urban district very similar to our own raises questions as to the real meaningfulness of the testing system. Reliable assessment and reporting will require community involvement and monitoring as well as funding.

Footing the bill

With the high demand it places on states and its emphasis on reliable data reporting, NCLB defies easy categorization-it is a double-edged sword. Yet there is one issue around which we can surely rally the forces: school financing reform.

On September 29, 2003, AISD joined Dallas ISD and West Orange-Cove Consolidated ISD in a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the present school financing system.

Currently, Texas uses a recapture system to ensure equitable funding of poor and wealthy districts. Since 2000, Austin ISD has been designated a property wealthy district, which means that a certain percentage of its revenue is sent to the state for redistribution. Considering that twenty-one percent of total district revenue-$158 million-was sent to the state this year, it is obvious that AISD could do a far better job of retaining its experienced teachers and providing a better education of our youngsters if those funds could be spent within the district.

Recapture funds are calculated from the previous year's local tax valuation. Essentially, any increase in property values increases the amount that a property-wealthy district will send back to the state. Worse, if the taxable value fell between the previous and current year, the district ends up losing income at the same time it is sending out more money. This is exactly what happened to AISD-the recapture funds paid for school year 2003-2004 are ten percent higher than last year, despite the fact that tax values fell thirty-seven percent, compounding the loss of revenue.

While eighty-four percent of AISD's revenue was derived from local property taxes for the 2003-2004 school year, the state contributed just seven percent ($51 million) and federal sources just two-tenths of one percent ($1.6 million). Raising the local tax rate to provide more funding of our schools is not allowed because AISD has already reached the state-mandated cap of $1.50 per $100 property valuation.

The recent lawsuit joined by AISD is an attempt to add pressure to the reforms being mulled by state lawmakers. The Texas Legislature's Joint Select Committee on School Finance has already begun holding hearings. The goal is to find a way to be able to cut property taxes and make up the difference with other sources of revenue.

Essentially, the $50,000 that AISD has initially invested in this court case could work as a catalyst for a major legislative overhaul of the school financing system. Currently, the Texas School Finance Project, managed by Lori Taylor and Harrison Keller, both PhDs, is trying to determine what Texans expect from their school system and how much they are willing to pay to meet those expectations. The research team is using a statistical method to determine how to get the highest performance out of the smallest investment. This is a different approach than what other states have used to investigate the cost of education. Generally, other states have asked a team of researchers to determine the cost of replicating the systems in place at a high-performing school. The approach taken by the Texas research group focuses on trade-offs inherent in adhering to a persistently tight budget.

Several options for funding are under consideration by the Select Committee, including a payroll tax, an increase in the sales tax base to include services, an increase in sales tax, a statewide property tax, splitting the residential and business tax rolls, applying the business franchise tax to more companies, and finding a new business tax. Though the exact solution is still unknown, Governor Rick Perry is expected to call a special session of the Legislature to deal with school finance this spring.

For two very important reasons, you should stay informed about this critical issue. First, without a consistent, sustainable system of financing our public schools, our high schools will fail to graduate students prepared for post-secondary education and training, and fail to provide our young people with the skills they need to be participating members of society. Second, we're talking about your money and how it will be spent.

Changes in the making

While the NCLB legislation is placing a high value on frequent standardized testing, AISD high schools are developing approaches to schooling that will both meet the new standards and provide students with the opportunity to follow their individual interests. Among these programs are the career academies at Lanier and Travis; the International Baccalaureate Program at Anderson; the Smaller Learning Communities at Anderson, Crockett, Johnston, LBJ, Reagan, and Travis; special certification programs available to any district high school student; internships; and Junior ROTC.

These programs provide students the opportunity to focus more closely on individual interests while obtaining training that will help them transition more smoothly into employment, ideally within the Austin community.

"We are interested in developing a young police and firefighter school-to-career program. We know that there are jobs in this field and that they'll stay in the community," says AISD Superintendent Pascal Forgione Jr., PhD, demonstrating the value that AISD places on keeping our young people in the community.

Rosalinda Hernandez, PhD, is the AISD associate superintendent of high schools, a position added this school year during the restructuring of the area superintendents. Hernandez visited the high schools frequently throughout the fall semester to establish relationships and gain a feel for what is really going on in the schools.

Teams of high school principals, organized by the similarity of their student population, schedule "learning walks" in which they observe students in class and the daily operation of one another's schools. These groups are then able to share observations and suggestions. Often, the suggestions focus on specific professional development needs. Hernandez notes that this is the first time that principals have been asked to visit one another's campuses with such frequency.

Hernandez has participated on many of these walks herself. "I'm finding out where we might have voids of need that are at a district level of decision-making, gaps that needed to be addressed before but which we didn't know about because no one was able to see the consistent needs."

Historically, high school has received only a fraction of the attention that reform mavens and lawmakers paid to elementary school. Hernandez says, "All teachers for example, statewide, were trained to give a certain test before we made third grade the level at which (students) had to pass the test or they weren't allowed to move on. The state pumped in millions of dollars to get to that level. But the Legislature hasn't looked at the fact that they are requiring our high school students to perform on a test that is way more rigorous than ever before. They didn't pump the dollars into it. They required that each school district find a way to fund this preparation and remediation."

The US Department of Education recently held a National High School Summit and plans to host regional and local summits as well. The overriding goal is to provide a forum for American high schools to share best practices. "There is national recognition (for high schools) coming around the bend," asserts Hernandez.

AISD has a similar, though much more focused, project underway that could very well change each high school within the district, from the way the day is scheduled to what programs are funded and how. This project, the High School Initiative, has been undertaken by a group of UT graduate students whose members are studying to be school superintendents. The group is interviewing representatives of the groups most concerned with AISD schools, including students, teachers, administrators, support staff, and community members. In February, the High School Initiative's final report will be presented to AISD's Board of Trustees. Hernandez says, "It's centered around us trying to find out what is working in our high schools and what is not working. It's a massive research (project) and when we gather all of this data they are going to finalize a report for us with findings. There might be some recommendations that we might be able to change for the following year and fund them accordingly.

"It might be very provocative information for the board. This information will allow them to look at maybe funding high schools differently," says Hernandez.

Safe, orderly, caring campuses

Last May, Austin was shocked by a tragedy few of us expected could happen in one of our schools. The fatal stabbing of Ortralla Mosley sent a jolt of grief and anguish through the greater Austin community.

A Reagan High School Safety Review Team was formed, comprised of lawyers Sara Hardner Leon, a school and public law specialist; Ken Oden, former Travis County attorney; Rafael Quintanilla, a former AISD board trustee; and Leonard Woods, a shareholder at Davis and Wilkerson PC. The team was tasked with determining whether Mosley's death could have been foreseen, and therefore prevented, and with analyzing current systems of crime and violence prevention and crisis management at Reagan and in the district.

The Safety Review Team found that Reagan, like many of our high schools, would benefit from increased parental involvement, a stronger sense of community throughout the school, and a crisis-prevention plan potentially modeled after the system in use in Dallas ISD.

The report demonstrated that Reagan is not uniquely prone to acts of violence and crime. In fact, it is similar in almost all respects to other AISD high schools. The data presented in three accompanying charts (AISD High School Seriously Violent Conduct, AISD High School Drug & Alcohol Incidents, and AISD High School Aggressive Incidents) was drawn from the report. As reflected in the charts, all campuses could benefit from increased attention to prevention plans and constructive action in creating a safe environment built on trust.

When asked how the Review Team's recommendations will manifest at Akins-which led all AISD high schools in serious violent conduct as well as drug and alcohol incidents-Akins Principal Deike said, "School is a nurturing environment and (while) kids have to behave socially and civilly and all those things, school should be a safe harbor for all kids, where they feel respected and loved. And in many ways, the staff have to feel respected and cared for in school. Achieving that kind of climate is the challenge. It takes time."

Teams have been formed to develop specific strategies to implement the recommendations of the Reagan High School Safety Review Team. These efforts will be overseen by Hernandez. Superintendent Forgione's intention is that the recommendations be implemented gradually. Concurrently, individual campuses are developing their own Campus Safety Plans.

Throughout October, November, and December of 2003, Town Hall Meetings were held by the Greater Austin Crime Commission to discuss both the findings of this Safety Review Team and the actions that the school district and the community are undertaking in response to its recommendations.

During the October 12 Town Hall Meeting, Superintendent Forgione summarized the spirit of the Safety Review Team's recommendations when he said, "It's not just doors and locks and cameras, but it's morality and morale, and it's caring and it's cultural sensitivity."

A community Safety Task Force meeting is scheduled for February 3, 2004, to check on the status of campus implementation of plans. (The time and place of the meeting had not been set at press time.)

Quality of instruction

Finding qualified, dedicated teaching staff is a struggle for each of the twelve AISD high schools. Training and maintaining an engaged and experienced staff is a challenge that may only get worse. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, 82,000 new teachers will be needed in Texas by 2008.

"I hired fifty people last year. That's one-third of our staff. So, we're starting from square one. Every other week, we do a book study together," says Akins Principal Deike, explaining the challenge at AISD's newest high school. "We don't have any big faculty meetings, because you can't do staff development in a group of 150 staff with all varying levels of ability and interest."

Many of our lowest performing schools have a difficult time maintaining a steady teaching faculty, with new teachers leaving after only a few years.

During the 2002-2003 school year, Integrated Planning Guides were developed to ensure that teachers in all high schools in any given topic were on the same page at about the same time. As implementation of the NCLB legislation gained momentum, AISD saw this as a way to prepare the ground for greater consistency between teachers across campuses. One benefit of this system is that when a student transfers from one campus to another, she is able to make a smooth transition.

Teachers are also encouraged, and sometimes provided opportunities, to discuss vertical alignment of course curriculum. The goal of vertically aligning with other teachers from other grade levels is that there is less redundancy in the skills and knowledge addressed. It is also a useful forum for teachers to explore their tendency to place blame on the next lower grade level for the students' lack of achievement.

Student achievement

What happens when students don't make the grade? High schools have a plethora of safety nets in place. Some of these are community support structures while many others are grant-funded, school-based programs. Each program deals with a particular group of students, with the goal of increasing the students' academic achievement, pride in that achievement, and opportunity to pursue post-secondary education.

GEAR-UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) intends to follow a single group of students from seventh grade to graduation. The first group of Gear-Up students is now in its sophomore year in eight AISD high schools: Akins, Crockett, LBJ, Johnston, Lanier, McCallum, Reagan, and Travis. This program seeks to increase the likelihood that its students apply to and attend college.

Another grant-funded program, DELTA (Diversified Education through Leadership, Technology and Academics) is designed to assist at-risk students. It provides self-paced, software-based, school-credit-recovery opportunities to students from all Austin high schools.

Ultimately, the true measure of a school's worth is its ability to prepare students for life after public school. Using The New York Times' critique of Houston ISD as a guide, it is difficult to say how reliable an indicator TAAS or TAKS scores are of post-secondary success.

By comparing Houston ISD student performance on the TAAS test to scores these same students had earned on the national Stanford test, Times reporters called into question how much progress has truly been made in raising academic standards in Texas. They went on to critique the ability of Houston ISD to prepare students-particularly minority students, who account for eighty-eight percent of the district's student body-for success after high school.

AISD is working to find a better way of tracking student performance in post-secondary school using the services of the National Student Clearinghouse. This company has access to student files at ninety percent of the universities in this country and provides data that will show more clearly how well we are preparing our students.

For students who struggle with graduating in the four years as the state mandates, AISD has begun to develop personalized graduation plans. By working with the students to identify their needs, counselors hope to accelerate the pace at which these struggling learners complete school. Students are identified for this program if they scored poorly on the TAKS test.

Showing up half the battle

Many link attendance to academic success. Campuses with historically high dropout rates and low attendance rates are assigned a dropout prevention and attendance specialist. Cindy Swaim, PhD, serves in this capacity at Reagan High School. Swaim identifies key strategies that Reagan has found successful in the past year and a half, as well as behaviors of at-risk students. She emphasizes the need for understanding and accessing community resources available for at-risk kids.

At Reagan, dropout prevention is a key issue. After experiencing high dropout rates throughout the nineteen-nineties, Reagan was given additional funding and staff to reduce its attrition rate. Swaim attributes Reagan's success in cutting attrition to getting the teachers more involved in calling absent students and to positive encouragement. "Students are rewarded for perfect attendance and improved attendance with gift certificates, etc.," Swaim says. "Every day, teachers with perfect attendance in their classes are mentioned on the announcements. Every day we try to reinforce and model attendance.

"A big part of this is catching kids, supporting them when they are not coming to school," she says. Along with sending letters home, visiting homes, and holding one-on-one problem-solving sessions with the students, Reagan has provided training to its teachers so that they are better able to adjust to a student entering after a six- or twelve-week absence. "It is often that first person the returning students sees who shifts the balance from that kid thinking about attending and actually attending regularly," Swain says.

Swaim says the type of dropout has changed in the past decade, from older kids nearing completion of school to younger students, who often decide to leave after receiving failing grades for the first six-week-grading period.

Regardless of the age of the student, pregnancy and other family issues are still major causes of dropping out. To address that problem, Reagan, along with Crockett, Johnston and Travis, provide childcare and support services through the Pregnancy, Education and Parenting (PEP) program. PEP grants support childcare centers, providing young mothers with the resources they need to stay in school and on track with their post-graduation goals.

Reagan senior Tanara Landrum is one who benefits from these support services. She says, "It would be hard for me to go to school and find someone to care for my baby and then go to work after school." Though Landrum misses her friends in Waco, she is getting adjusted to life in Austin. And while her life has changed since the birth of her daughter, Airanee, Landrum has made the transition to a new school during her senior year with few mishaps. She says that the parenting classes she has taken at Reagan have helped her to make friends and feel more welcome. Landrum looks forward to graduation when she might transition slowly from her after-school job to classes through Capital IDEA, a nonprofit joint venture between Austin Interfaith and leaders of the business community, which her counselor has recommended she look into.

Alternative school of choice

AISD has yet another innovative program specifically designed to provide a high degree of specialization for students. Students choose to attend Gonzalo Garza Independence High School for a number of reasons. When a student applies for transfer or admission to Garza, he is interviewed by a panel of faculty members. Responsibility for the choice begins to shift to the student in this interview. Randy Atchinson, a classroom facilitator, says, "Students want a place where they can start fresh. Not all of these students come for attendance or academic reasons."

In the training manual developed to help other high schools understand and implement a solution-based model similar to that in place at Garza, describes the motivation of many of the high school's transfer students. Some, like Keith Mannix, enrolled in Garza to escape the size and stress of larger high schools. Other students, like Priscilla Cardenas transferred to Garza after missing too much school to be able to catch up at her home campus.

Paul Lice, a counselor at the school, says, "No one originally expected that Garza would be a place for the academically gifted. I don't think that we considered that would be a drawing card and yet we very often get kids from the (AISD) academies. They indicate to us that they were better challenged here because of the independent way that we teach. It is a challenging curriculum. It is as good a place to get an excellent education as the academies and other places that are thought of as high-achieving."

Cynthia Franklin, PhD, a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Austin, says that Garza Independence High School implements the best practices for dropout prevention.

Armandina Garza, a college advisor at Garza says, "One of the things that research supports is that students need extended learning time. If you look at Garza, extended learning time; high standards; individualized, self-paced learning; and small learning communities are some of the things done here" that reduce attrition.

According to Franklin, Garza is the only high school in the nation to use a relationship-building process called, among other things, solution-based counseling. Lice explains how this works: "Basically it is looking at strengths rather than constantly telling students what they are doing wrong. Catch them doing something right. What that felt like is a little like enabling behavior, because we are really trying to turn the blind eye to what they are doing wrong and searching for what they are doing right. It feels awkward, but it sort of bears out when you do look at their strengths and you do catch them doing right. It is encouraging and not discouraging. So much of what we have done in schools before is telling them what they are doing wrong."

Each Garza faculty and staff member has received solution-based training. Everyone is involved in fostering healthy relationships between all members of the Garza community. This concerted effort has paid off. According to Franklin, "Garza puts a family, support, and structure around the students. The goal-directed student learns to set goals and move in small steps toward those goals. That's how life itself works."

Parent and community involvement

Parents have immense power in the life of their child, no matter how old the child or how stubbornly independent. Tamara Vannoy, president of the Austin Council of PTAs, encourages parents to remain involved in their child's education beyond elementary school. "If you think about how you're going to be living with neighbors in a few years who just went through school, how people come out of our education system is how we are shaping our society and the atmosphere of what surrounds us. It is worth it for everyone to have their money and their energy go into the public school system to help improve and ensure the quality of education."

High school campuses have a variety of needs specific to the school's campus improvement plan. Many campuses have parent support specialists who organize parent meetings and work to recruit parent involvement. All campuses have either a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) or a Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), which can wield significant influence within its home school.

Vannoy says the Austin Council of PTAs meets monthly with Superintendent Forgione to communicate parent concerns. Often, parents are privy to information to which no one else in the district has access. Parents can also influence their children to do something very important in school-speak up!

There are some key issues for parents to talk about with the high school teacher. One of them is the set of expectations that the teacher has established for her classroom. High school teachers can be wildly divergent in their classroom strategies, something that will probably not change even as the curriculum becomes increasingly more standardized. What is the teacher's particular philosophy? How might you be able to help your child succeed in this subject? What does success look like in this class?

AISD high schools are not perfect-not by a long shot. Nevertheless, within each school rests the potential for a young person to gain a valuable jump on life, a chance to open opportunities far beyond secondary school. The key to accessing this potential lies in a vigilant community that is willing to commit the energy and resources to help the people who will one day be the decision-makers in our community.

In a few short months, two unrelated events may significantly alter the face of our city's public high schools. The High School Initiative will issue its report in February, the contents of which could be important in making improvements. Coupled with the renewed debate over school finance leading into the expected special session of the Texas Legislature, the time for change within Austin ISD high schools has arrived.

Monica Anne Brown had a wonderful time as a teacher. She lives in a small house with the modest hope that one day, she'll hear about all the wonderful things her former students have experienced in their lives. Until then, she'll content herself with writing about education and volunteering in the high schools. You may e-mail Monica at mabrown@goodlifemag.com.