These statistics can be more staggering in our nation’s poorest or lowest-performing communities.

EdisonLearning developed Alliance High School to help change these statistics. The model is a proven solution designed to increase achievement in all high school students, specifically targeting the needs of low-performing schools.

With Alliance High School, EdisonLearning partners with schools, giving them the tools, resources and support to create a high school environment of respect; where students are engaged in their own learning, there is order and safety, academic expectations exist with a curriculum to support it and college is believed to be an achievable goal for any student who wants it.

With Alliance High School, EdisonLearning works with you to achieve these ultimate goals: increased student achievement, improved graduation rates and students prepared to meet the challenges of college and the 21st century workplace.

A comprehensive approach to turn-around in high schools

Alliance High School provides a comprehensive approach to high school turn-around. Built on EdisonLearning’s Four Cornerstones of highly effective schools: Top Talent; A Culture of Achievement and Engagement; Demanding Content and Customized Instruction; and Achievement-Driven Management, the model utilizes the proven methods, best practices and research-based tools from EdisonLearning’s 20 years of success in increasing student achievement in schools across the United States.

A dedicated on-site team, the Alliance Achievement team, becomes your partner in planning and implementing the Alliance High School model. The team comes with special expertise in high school curriculum, instruction and leadership, helping to create the capacity at your school for teachers and leaders to continually implement the principles of Alliance High School into daily school life.

Making the change to a culture of achievement and engagement

A culture with high expectations where all students believe they can succeed is a vital component of all great schools. In high school, a school’s culture is even more critical to how students interact, learn and ultimately succeed. Do students feel safe? Do they feel connected to their own learning? Do they feel there are opportunities for advanced coursework? Do they believe that if they want to attend college they can?

The Alliance High School model addresses these questions, establishing a culture that builds strong teacher and student relationships, engages students in their own learning and gives them both the encouragement and resources to believe they can succeed. EdisonLearning has developed programs specifically for high schools that helps create this culture.

The Alliance Achievement team works with you to create your school’s Learning Environment Plan, a framework to how your school will achieve its vision. The plan covers a wide range of topics, including:

• Foundational principles for effective high school design

• Student advocacy and efficacy programs

• Character and Ethics education

• School and Classroom Management

• Physical Learning Environment

• Emergency Procedure and Safety Plan

This plan serves as the basis on how your school will operate to achieve its goals.

Another aspect of creating a culture of achievement is setting up a learning structure that most engages students in their own learning. In the Alliance High School model, this is achieved through small learning communities. Small learning communities provide students and teachers the means to form closer working relationships that fully

Many students enter high school unprepared academically to perform at grade level. Statistics show that two out of three students either drop out of high school or graduate without the skills they need to succeed in college or at work.*

Alliance™ High School

engage students in their own learning, goal-setting and an achievement plan for graduation. Students learn to believe that someone values their work, is intimately involved with their learning and cares about their success.

The Alliance Achievement team assists you in setting up a small learning community environment in your school, using the best practices from EdisonLearning’s years of successful school design built on the following principles:

• Organizing schools into houses with small teams of teachers linked to groups of students

• Creating an environment where teachers get to know students as individuals and be able to respond to their specific learning needs

• Building a supportive environment where teachers can collaborate for more effective student learning

The design of these communities is flexible, based on the needs and structure of your school.

One of the most difficult parts of a culture shift, particularly in low-performing schools, is making students believe they can aspire to high achievement. Many students in these schools lack the belief that they have a chance to attend college. Schools don’t have the resources to support a rigorous curriculum and a robust guidance system. Students lack the encouragement from parents who don’t understand the college preparation process.

College NEXT! is a program designed to change that mind set. The program is comprehensive in that it addresses all aspects of college preparation, including attitudinal shifts, social changes and curriculum enhancements. With College NEXT!, guidance counselors are provided with numerous resources to engage both students and parents in the college planning process as early as 9th grade, including the Academic Guidance Tool, a quarterly checklist to help school counselors monitor student’s four year academic plan and the Master Schedule, a curriculum plan, driven by student need, which includes rigor and AP course access, preparing students for college.

Providing demanding content and customized instruction

In order for students to believe they can aspire to high achievement, they need a rigorous curriculum to support it. The Alliance Achievement team, with its high school curriculum specialists, will work with your school to design a curriculum that fits the students’ needs at all academic levels.

With the College NEXT! program, a curriculum is designed to provide access to rigorous course, including AP courses.

In addition, special programs are infused in the daily curriculum to help all students succeed. Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum is an online program that shows all teachers (Math, Social Studies, etc.) how to embed literacy and writing strategies and skills into the content they teach. Students are continually exposed to essential literacy skills and comprehension that they need for success on high stakes tests and college entrance exams.

The College NEXT! program focuses on the following key areas:

• Academic Guidance

• Master Scheduling

• Learning Environment

• Parent support and training on “Getting Students Into, then Through College”

Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum uses three strategies to ensure student success:

Note-taking Strategies: Students learn to more easily review and understand what they are reading.

Vocabulary Strategies: Through the use of definitions, illustrations, games and activities, vocabulary development is enhanced.

Summarization: Students learn this important skill, critical to success in college and the work place where people are asked to understand, interpret, and act on information they’re given.

The Alliance Achievement team takes every step to ensure your curriculum meets the needs of all students. In preparing your plan, gaps in the curriculum may be identifi ed. To ensure there is content and courses to meet all students need, eCourses, self-paced online courses, are offered as an optional component to Alliance High School. eCourses may provide a fl exible option to fi ll these gaps through summer school, after school or other intervention programs. Or if a core group is excelling above all students, eCourses can provide a way for these students to be challenged and keep progressing in their learning.

Ensuring effective leadership and teaching with top talent

Strong leaders and teachers are crucial to an effective high school environment. As part of Alliance High School, principals take part in professional development based on EdisonLearning’s research-based frameworks for effective principals. The frameworks help principals understand what highly effective principals do, refl ect on their practices and set goals and strategies for personal development to grow their leadership skills over time. Principals and leadership teams receive intensive coaching and training including national conferences, local meetings and on-site one-on-one and team sessions with Alliance Achievement Team specialists in high school leadership.

A program for improving teacher quality – the single greatest factor in driving student achievement gains – provides teachers with intensive coaching and training in local and on-site training to address specifi c professional development needs as identifi ed using EdisonLearning’s research-based teacher frameworks.

Embracing achievement-driven management

EdisonLearning’s eValuate™ system is fully utilized in the model. eValuate is an online formative assessment system that provides monthly benchmark assessments aligned to individual state standards, combined with powerful reports and analysis tools to monitor student progress. The Alliance Achievement Team with support from EdisonLearning’s Research and Assessment Center of Excellence helps schools analyze the eValuate data, as well as student achievement data from other sources, to drive decision making and adjust instruction to improve learning outcomes.

At the high school level, assessments are designed to match the method in which a state’s high school high stakes assessments are designed and delivered (comprehensive vs. end-of-course). Assessments are provided up to the year that the state’s assessment is administered (9th, 10th or 11th grade).

Alliance High School is your comprehensive solution to meet the challenges of under-performing high schools, preparing students for the challenges of college, work and life in the 21st century.

Find Out More

For more information, email us at information@edisonlearning.com, call us at 1-877-I-CAN-LEARN (1-877-422-6532), or visit www.edisonlearning.com/alliance.

Working together for student success™

* Source: Alliance for Excellent Education

eCourses:

are self-paced courses taken online

include a full catalog of modular, standards-based subjects including both core academics and electives

give students the opportunity to be exposed to content otherwise not available at the school

prepare students for higher education where online courses are increasingly being used