Honig Hails High School as Reform Model : Education: Pasadena program mixes academics with career skills. It embodies many of strategies urged by state curriculum task force.

Educators searching for an illustration of what state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig means by school restructuring have only to look to Pasadena High School, where innovative classes that mix academics with career skills have been under way for three years.

On Thursday, Honig underscored his support for Pasadena High by traveling to the campus to release a statewide High School Task Force report that recommends toughening curriculum, teaching job skills needed for the 21st Century work force and requiring students to pick a specialized field of study after their sophomore year.

At most California high schools, the ideas embodied in the thick report remain just that. But at Pasadena High, under the leadership of nationally recognized Principal Judy Codding, they are already becoming a reality.

“This school is on the cutting edge,” Honig said. “People at this school have tried to take a very noble idea and make it happen. And that’s what this task force is all about.”

Codding, one of 75 educators and business leaders appointed to the task force two years ago by Honig, has been a pioneer of educational reform since the late 1960s. She taught at Harvard University and was principal of the Scarsdale Alternative School in New York, where students experimented with self-government and individual study.

She came to Pasadena High three years ago and immediately began looking at ways to improve education, which led her to apply for state restructuring grants and private funding. She also began cementing ties with local business leaders to get them involved in designing a curriculum that would meet job needs.

“We had to change the way the school was governed, the curriculum was developed . . . the way students were assessed,” Codding said at the press conference. “It’s a commitment that this community, this nation has to make, not for a year but for a generation.”

Honig also stressed the need for local firms to become involved in school restructuring. “If you really want it to work,” he said at the press conference, “there’s going to have to be a significant infusion of developmental funds.”

At Pasadena, he cited the support of graphic arts businesses, which have donated about $200,000 worth of equipment to start a graphic arts academy within the school.

Codding said she has applied for every competitive state and private grant available, including a state grant earmarked for schools attempting to restructure. She said the total cost of the restructuring has been about 5% above her annual instructional budget.

In addition to learning technical skills, students work paid internships at a local graphic arts firm, earn credit toward an associate of arts degree and are guaranteed jobs after graduation. Honig said tying academics to job opportunities helps motivate students.

Brandon Greaves, 15, a sophomore enrolled in the graphic arts academy, said the new curriculum has led him to raise his grades from Cs to Bs. “Before, school bored me; I didn’t do anything,” Greaves said. “Now I’m more productive, more interested in my classes.”

While Honig pointed out that schools can restructure in various ways, he said the report recommended three areas of change: a tougher academic curriculum to engage middle-level students who aren’t learning enough; programs that would keep groups of students together with teachers for a longer period, and a network of counselors, businesses and community groups.

At 2,200-student Pasadena High, such restructuring has been under way already for three years. Ninth-graders, for instance, are grouped into “clusters” of 50 students each and work for most of the day with two teachers who instruct them in humanities, math and science.

The program allows teachers to work more closely with individual students, learning their strengths and weaknesses, and also permits students to work cooperatively and help one another.

Pasadena High has expanded the program into 10th and 11th grades and will launch it in 12th grade next fall. School officials already have seen a dramatic improvement.

A study of 9th-graders showed that attendance shot up from 68% to 96% after the first year of restructuring and scores on standardized achievement tests rose 20%, said Pasadena Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Vera Vignes.

Additionally, Codding said the school is looking at changing the way students are evaluated. Instead of tests that require students to spit back numbers and facts, the school is moving toward portfolio assessments, in which students collect their work for the semester and teachers review the body of work to see progress over time.

David Marsh, a professor at USC’s School of Education who has studied Pasadena High, says he also noted dramatic improvement in student interest and grades. Additionally, he said teachers told him they prefer working with the same students to teaching five classes with 35 different students in each.

“It’s more work, because it’s harder to get the kids to interact, but it’s worth it because you see them taking pleasure in learning,” said Ted Nabulsi, who teaches 10th-grade mathematics.

But Marsh cautioned that, in the beginning, restructuring may cause turmoil and upheaval as teachers, students and administrators adjust to new concepts.

The restructuring had drawn mainly positive response from students and teachers. But senior Desta Ronning, 17, says the clusters make students more isolated and cut down on social interaction.

George Magdaleno, 17, the president of the junior class, says he too opposed the “house” concept when he started at Pasadena High, because he believed it would take the fun out of school. But three years later, he is a convert.

“It’s a support system,” he said. “We help each other out, we have a more personal relationship with teachers. It really works, and those who don’t agree haven’t opened their eyes to the real world.”