We have a paradox in New Mexico— Plenty of goodwill for public schools and running room for innovation, yet little capacity to create education models that would improve achievement, engagement and productivity in our communities.  For example, the charter school law in our state calls for innovation as a condition of approval.  We have created more than 90 schools since it was passed 12 years ago and there is seemingly no cap on the number of schools that could be created in any year.  However, in the last round of applications to the Public Education Commission (PEC), the state authority that grants charters, Health Leadership High School was the only applicant that was approved (25 schools started the process).  The reviewers commented that the schools proposed were simply replications of existing programs.  We count on charters as laboratories for innovation and our law demands it, yet there has been little evidence of new ideas from the sector.

We believe that New Mexico is unique and full of talent.  However, we find ourselves without the intellectual energy and entrepreneurship that can create new solutions to stubborn problems of poorly educated citizens and limited economic opportunity.  Connecting industry and community thought leaders and national experts with school entrepreneurs would create a new ecosystem for change.  Imagine if we were to invite the community into the school design process and engage them through its development and implementation.  Schools will be “living systems” with the capacity for continuous adaption to the clients they serve (families, communities and employers) rather than a monolithic command-and-control bureaucratic system that cannot possibly keep up with a fast-changing environment.

The essence of this work is to create a new frame of reference for building and sustaining innovative, high-performing schools in our community.  We imagine that 2,000 students will be served directly by this first cohort of schools.  However, we also see our work reaching far beyond the initial Leadership High School Network.  We see a movement that engages a broad community of stakeholders in the business of education and this awareness will permeate the community at large.  We believe that change comes from the grassroots and our goal is to create a movement that can change the predominant structures.

This new set of opportunities will require that the core work of educational innovators work be focused on facilitating connections between people and organizations that can create and sustain the eco-system of ideas and organizations.  It also means educating many more people about a new, more compelling vision for schools and helping them see their role in the arena of education reform.  These are big goals that are addressed by movement politics that can change the dialogue from parochial interests to a new social contract.  The New Mexico Center for School Leadership will be the catalyst for this change with expertise in the following areas:

• Communication
• Organizational development
• Design Innovation
• Research
• Facilitation
• Critique/Commentary
• Connecting disparate actors and ideas

These are the new sensibilities of school renewal?.  We cannot solve the intractable problems in our schools with the same consciousness that created them.  A new set of actors with a passion for community and a sense of the possibilities of new design will be provided by the New Mexico Center.

The future for children in New Mexico is bright—We see an environment where low income students of color are the primary beneficiaries of the most creative thinking in the state.  The New Mexico Center for School Leadership, the professional development center housed at ACE Leadership High School, will be at the center of an ecosystem that is intentionally designed to serve the most at risk students.

Perspective:

Central to this initiative will be a new frame of reference for schools in New Mexico exemplified by the Leadership High School Network.  This new orientation engages an entirely new set of stakeholders in the success of schools and the young people served by them.  It is a new social contract built on interdependence between the formerly disparate actors—dis-enfranchised communities, employers, nonprofits, educators, and policy makers.  See the following example:

• These organizations have come together to propose a performance assessment system that can capture the sophisticated skills needed for future careers.  We have convened these groups to help create a method for evaluating student learning that goes far beyond a standardized test.

Ecosystem of Innovation:

The Center’s primary responsibility is to broker relationships—school principals (entrepreneurs), education reform experts (Intellectual Capital), and community and industry officials (Thought Leaders).  They are connected through a web of relationships rooted in the Center and innovation comes from sharing knowledge and skills across the web of relationships.  See the following example:

• The principal from Health Leadership High Schools is working with industry thought leaders from the construction and health care professions to create an apprenticeship system rooted in high school.  It will be a one of a kind credential from high school that will allow entry level employment in many different areas of the health sector (similar to a pre-apprenticeship certificate in the construction trades).      

Two Sided Network

The Center will sponsor the Leadership High School Network, a system of schools that serve as platforms that connect low income disenfranchised communities in sophisticated high skilled industries.  These schools provide the “best education for the students who need it the most.  They are networked through the Center propelling the growth of the system overall.  The vision of the school as a platform gives our community the ability to tap the unrealized potential of people students of color who are dropping out of school at a rate of 40 percent per year.  See the following example:

• The Associated General Contractors and health care industry representatives serve on curriculum development teams with teachers.  These teams develop curriculum (student projects), train teachers, and evaluate student exhibitions of learning.  Curriculum developed through the partnership is based on the most cutting edge practices in the industry which ensures that the students are prepared for the future.

The Model: The Center will develop strong, school prototypes, that are context-specific  that can serve the complex needs of low income students of color. It is a model that develops a young person’s talents through high levels of support, thrilling and highly relevant learning, and partnerships that provide new opportunities for young people and propel the growth of the institution.  See the following example:

• The ACE Leadership High School model attracts a clientele of young people who are off track to graduation or they have dropped out of school (at least 80 percent).  The school has a retention rate of 87 percent and has performed in the top 16 percent of schools with similar clienteles.

Leadership

Schools have historically been terrifically complicated institutions that operate through command and control systems.  They are monolithic in their design and oriented toward a central district or state authority.  It is a dynamic that is ill-equipped for the modern world.  The most significant flaw in the current system is that it is built for the industrial age and it uses the same method of production as a factory.  It assumes that students are products to be assembled rather than humans to be nurtured.  It is a well-documented phenomenon that is stubbornly difficult to solve and disenfranchised communities are harmed most by this circumstance (40 percent dropout rates, etc.).  The future demands leaders in institutions that can help grow the potential of its students through partnerships with the community and the employers that will hire them one day.   It is a new skill set that is much less about the knowledge you have and much more about your ability to connect disparate ideas to design solutions to the sticky problem public education.  See the following example:

• The Center for School Leadership will host 25 aspiring educational leaders from New Mexico.  The group will spend four days in deep dive work  into the future of education.  This experience will focus on deconstructing our notions of school to reconstruct them with the needs of local communities at the center.

Intellectual Capital:

The New Mexico Center for School Leadership will provide internships for new school leaders and training through a stable of national consultants who have the highest level of expertise in critical areas:

1. Education Resources Consortium (ERC)—Institutional and Leadership Development and student support and resiliency systems
2. New Mexico Forum Foundation (NMFF)—Positive Youth Development and Community Engagement
3. Eagle Rock Professional Development Center—Professional Development Systems
4. Buck Institute for Education (BIE)—Project-Based Learning
5. New Mexico Center for School Leadership, Tony Monfiletto—Corporate and Community Partnerships that redefine client relationships with external stakeholders
6. Ideo.org—Human centered design

Thought Leaders:

The Center will broker the exchange of ideas and resources between school leaders and industry and community experts from the community:

1. Vicki Mora—Associated General Contractors of New Mexico
2. Arthur Kauffman—Vice Chancellor for Community Health Sciences, University of New Mexico
3. Matt Cross Guillen—Bernalillo Public Health
4. Maria Guy—Vice President, JB Henderson Construction
5. Javier Aceves—Medical Director, UNM Young Children’s Health Center
6. Program Leader—Sandia Science and Technology Park
7. Andrea Plaza—Encuentro
8. Del Archuleta—Colbin Moltzen Engineering
9. Adrian Pedroza—The Albuquerque Partnership

Entrepreneurs:

The Center will cultivate a group of school leaders who can lead the new vision of highly adaptable community-based schools in New Mexico.  Below is a list of principals who will found schools in the Leadership High School Network or are connected to the Center through its outreach and convening efforts.

1. Tori Stephens-Shauger—Incoming Principal ACE Leadership High School
2. Gabriella Duran Blakey—Incoming Principal, Health Leadership High School
3. Incoming Principal, Tech Leadership High School
4. Cohort of NM Lead Members
5. Ten Principals from the New Mexico Performance Assessment Network members

NM Center for School Leadership Executive Director:

New Mexico Center Budget

It is time for us to look in the mirror and ask, “Have I challenged the conditions in my school that fail so many young people? Or, have I gotten comfortable in my classroom with my door shut doing my own thing?” The TED community is known for its passion and ingenuity.  And, I would argue that you are the privileged—the people who have found their way in the education system. You may not like the system, but being here is evidence that you have been successful. The future compels us to come together to build a community of innovators who can change the very system that has fed our success.

I’ve seen a lot of school reform in the past 25 years.  I started my career in education policy. It had a lot of sex appeal for a young idealist because in the early 90s we were just beginning to talk about public education as the new frontier for civil rights—the idea that fixing our schools could be the catalyst for social change. Public education was our best chance to end poverty and propel our democracy.  My first job was in Chicago and I learned a lot about the politics of urban school reform.  Not much about the schools themselves, but an awful lot about power and money.

After Chicago I spent four years working for the New Mexico Legislature. It was perfect for me—a job in my home where I could bring my skills to benefit my own community. You see, I’m a Burqueno, I grew up about a mile from where we are now.  It was a great job because when you’re a policy analyst for the legislature, you learn about the bottom line and what 27 year-old doesn’t love knowing the bottom line. How much does it cost and what’s the evidence that it worked? It is a relentless focus on the outputs of education and it’s the view of a skeptic who isn’t swayed by anecdotes or personal stories.

Here’s a snapshot of educational performance in our state since the time I did policy work.  My job was to help create the policies that would benefit young people.  Now let’s judge the outputs of my labor:

The last 20 years of 4^th grade reading scores in New Mexico are represented by the green line and the reading scores across the nation are in red:

Graduation rates haven’t budged either since we started keeping track 5 years ago:

As I said before, I come from the policy word and I’m comfortable with judging whether policies work or not. And, I am now judging that we’ve made a fundamental mistake in our policy making, especially regarding the schools where nearly half of the students drop out before graduating.  Our mistake has been that we assumed the inputs were sound:

• The five period day,
• 180 day school year,
• text book driven curriculum,
• passive learning, and
• compartmentalized curriculum in an uncaring bureaucracy.

We thought that we just needed to raise our expectations for performance.  However, we forgot one very important thing, students have ultimate veto power over any education policy. And they’ve vetoed what we’ve been offering for the past 20 years.

Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve a problem within the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.” I am not suggesting that we retreat from accountability. Far from it, I’m suggesting that we include the community in a new vision for accountability that gives them a role in creating the kids of schools that can reach the kids that we are now failing.  This means creating a climate for innovation that is much more like an ecosystem that adapts to the best thinking from the community.  To do this we must start over again to build a new frame of reference for school. Our schools must be far more personalized to the needs of young people. This means starting with support structures that assume that they are assets to be nurtured rather than problems to be solved.

Here’s one example, at my school our goal is to make it look and feel like the real world.  It is an architecture, construction and engineering school that functions like a job site or design studio.  The projects are co-constructed with industry and kids never ask “when will I ever use this skill.”  That kind of learning cannot be bound by time and place—it requires an environment that is the antithesis of the five period day and it means that our teachers have become the learners with our students.  After all, they are not contractors and they don’t know much about how to build a building.  They’ve given up control over their classroom in favor of collaboration with the colleagues.  They have also given up the proprietary nature of the student teacher relationship because an all knowing teacher who grades them has never been a motivator for our students.  Our teachers have given their power to the community. Visit my school and you will likely see an engineer, architect, or contractor evaluating a student’s work.  Imagine how the teacher’s life changes when they take the role of coach rather than judge and imagine how a former dropout’s heart pounds when they have to perform for a real person.

We have also mistakenly bought into the fallacy of IQ as a predictor of success.  IQ cannot measure the things that really matter to whether a young person will succeed.  Tenacity, creativity, and deferred gratification are the true ingredients of success.  For example, we never tell kids to follow the rules at my school.  Instead, we ask them to build their reputation because that’s the way successful people approach their career in the construction industry.  These are the ethos you would learn from your dad if he was a contractor.

The late Ted Sizer was a brilliant educational theorist, and he once said, “for one thing to change, everything must change.”  And I believe that for everything to change, we must own our responsibility to challenge the structures that oppress our young people.

I have some good news for you.  You are a talented group of people and there is a deep reservoir of good will in our community for public education.  There are many answers that we cannot yet imagine.  The talent is here in this room to deliver on the promise of education as the answer to civil rights in this century.

I will conclude with one personal anecdote, I’m a Catholic and I go to church regularly.  However, it’s been years since I’ve been to confession.  Recently, I was at mass and my priest told the congregation that we should all rethink confession.  Instead of confessing the bad things that we have done, we should confess for the things that we should be doing, but haven’t had the courage to act upon.  That makes better sense to me because it compels me to examine my own role in perpetuating a system that may serve me, but not the young people who need it the most.

At ACE Leadership High School we’re determined to transform career and technical education, and we’re not going it alone. Partnerships with industry are key to our mission of preparing students to be leaders on any path they choose.

ACE stands for architecture, construction and engineering and it’s a place where kids get their hands dirty in a purposeful–if sometimes a little disorderly–environment.  A place where they learn through projects like using ancient building techniques to build adobe ovens that have come into vogue for their sustainability benefits for residential and commercial buildings. The project, developed with the help of Associated General Contractor (AGC) partners, rolls Science, New Mexico History, and Geometry into one productive hands-on experience.  To an outsider, though, building adobe ovens might not seem to be the best way to prepare kids to go to college and/or work.

Education thought leaders have overlooked a critical leverage point in the quest to improve our high schools.   Partnerships with industry have the potential to renew secondary education by changing our schools from places that grant too many hollow diplomas to engines that can power our students’ growth. Here at ACE we have invited public school educators and the Associated General Contractors into a far-reaching partnership.   This deep relationship extends beyond typical parochial institutional interests and finds common ground among the ACE professions, our community, and institutions of higher education.  ACE Leadership planted its roots in the needs of our neighborhoods and aims to help our city and our students grow.

For decades our schools have dabbled in partnerships with the private sector by asking them to play an “advisory” role.  Companies have looked through the windows of our schools but have rarely been invited inside hallways and classrooms.  Building and managing partnerships between industry and schools has not been a priority and traditional programs focus mostly on “employability” and whether students can read, write, compute and use the tools of the trade.

We can dig deeper. If schools and industries are willing, they can create learning environments that cultivate character traits–integrity, ingenuity, selflessness and collaboration–that can propel students into careers which create prosperity..  We have included AGC members at every level of the school—identifying cutting-edge projects, re-interpreting the state standards through the ACE lens, educating teachers about the inner workings of the industry, judging student projects, and informing our student culture with the ethos of the professions.

A Workforce of Problem Solvers

Our country has seen a proliferation of career and technical academies and schools which have invested heavily in “relevancy” with theme-based education.  However, the structures and cultures of those schools have not fundamentally changed.  They add career-focused electives while retaining the basic blueprint of traditional core classes and a few exciting electives.  At ACE Leadership, we have chosen to re-engineer “school”, starting with the premise that intellectual rigor is the root of an excellent education and the future of the ACE professions.  One might say we’re STEM focused, but the industry relationship frames our curriculum and STEM is a means, not an end.

Problem-solving is our main focus, and the ACE professions provide an ideal context for challenging and relevant learning.  ACE professionals brag that if you are successful in construction you can work in any industry.  People who can design and build a project on time and under budget and meet the myriad of governmental regulations are terrifically creative and critical thinkers.  They are the people who excite business owners.  The people who can run a business

Intellectual growth requires high levels of social and emotional support.  We must create a culture of care and concern for adolescents, and promote the development of their emotional IQ and, ultimately, their leadership potential.   Careful cultivation of our students’ abilities to collaborate, communicate and meet a client’s needs, will hone the bedrock social skills that allow a person to be successful in any field.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Together, educators and industry leaders have set about weaving a new social contract and a new vision of Corporate Social Responsibility.  We are partners who are investing in improving the social conditions that affect the competitive future of companies.  Industry  depends on innovation and the companies with the most creative problem solvers will be successful.  Until now, more than half the people who work in construction have not graduated high school and many are from poor immigrant backgrounds.  They are the backbone of the workforce, but lack the preparation to adapt to the new environment that their companies will face.  Workforce needs and the skills they demand are becoming increasingly sophisticated and we must reverse the stagnation of school performance for our companies to succeed.

There is a growing awareness among corporate leaders that their companies can do phenomenal good by sharpening the focus on specific education initiatives that can have significant impact on the prosperity of a community.  We at ACE Leadership have chosen to join these initiatives because they pave a better future for our students and our community.

Investing the Time to Get it Right

For two and a half years educators and industry leaders worked to create ACE. We learned how architecture, construction and engineering industries work, and where they are headed in the years to come. A national team of experts–from the Buck Institute for Education, Education Resources Consortium, the New Mexico Forum Foundation, and Eagle Rock Professional Development Center–helped us build a blueprint for teaching and learning that could do justice to the complexity of the industry.

Every class at ACE is taught through the lens of architecture, construction, and engineering.  This is terrifically complex business and working with industry partners at the table ensures the learning is deep and the problem-solving is real and delivered in a rich, project-based context.

When we created the school, we borrowed industry’s “design build” model which involves contractors, designers and owners from day one.  Planning time upfront–with all the stakeholders–leads to a better product. Our “design build” plan brought clients (industry and community), builders (the school leaders), and designers (national education experts) together from the beginning.

Finally we opened a school with a unique blueprint.  It’s built on a solid foundation of strong partnerships that ensure the school can work for its clients:  students, community and industry.

I have been reading a lot about the future of Career and Technical Education (CTE) lately and I must say that I do not understand where this sector of our public education system is headed. Maybe that is because I don’t know much about that world from personal experience. I never took shop in high school and the “Industrial Arts” classrooms were in a different wing of the comprehensive high school from where I used to teach. Yet, one could argue that I am now the founder of a CTE school. How is that possible for a guy who has to remind himself of the “lefty loosey and righty tighty” rule when using a screw driver?

About three years ago I had the great fortune of sitting in on board meetings of the education foundation for the Associated General Contractors-New Mexico Building Branch. They were struggling with their workforce development challenges, in particular, the sense that they were among the employers of last resort in New Mexico. It was ironic, because they believed their profession required them to be among the most facile business men and women in our community. They spoke about the mental agility it takes to work with owners, architects, engineers and the myriad government agencies in order to build a project on time and under budget. They also proudly spoke of the ethos of an industry where you are only as good as your word and hard work and perseverance make you a success.

In that board room we created a vision for ACE Leadership High School, a new school that could serve the very complex future work force development needs of the entire sector of the economy. I was optimistic we could solve their workforce development problems and design a school that would create a bridge that could cross the education and poverty divide. The school would be a way forward in breaking down the barriers between community and industry and help to overcome the challenges low income students of color face when they attend schools that are built for another era and another kind of worker.

I set out to read the industry trade journals and forecasts for labor force development and I discovered that the needs in the ACE professions were like those of most dynamic industries. The ability to think and adapt to new circumstances were the prized intellectual traits and that was familiar territory for an educator like me. I visited other AGC sponsored schools around the country and found them largely wanting, despite their high profiles and substantial industry investments- because of their focus on developing narrow skill sets (plumbing, diesel mechanics, etc.) In response, we set out on a quest to build an institution that could use the ACE professions as the context for a compelling and supremely relevant learning experience for young people. ACE Leadership is a sharp contrast to the trade school model because it asks students to think deeply about complex problems that are rooted in reality. As a result, we created a school that stresses nuanced thinking built upon excellent communication and collaboration skills—the definition of a modern education.

Prosperity
Although we are preparing our students for prosperous careers in the ACE professions, some worry that when the rest of the country comes out of the “Great Recession,” we New Mexicans may be stuck in a downward spiral. Mark Lautman, an economic development expert from New Mexico tells employers that everyone you are going to hire in the next 25 years has already born and since the baby boomers are getting older, many of the people we counted on to be highly skilled will soon be retired. Meanwhile, the skills expected from new workers are increasingly more sophisticated. He also warns people that if they are paying attention, they ought to be worried about a 60 percent graduation rate because it does not bode well for our prosperity. It used to be that the dropout rate was a problem for poor communities because there were plenty of middle class children who would graduate and go to college and ultimately fill the new high skilled jobs. However, the demographic trends forecast that there are fewer middle class children around who can be depended upon to power our economy forward. In other words, we cannot afford to disregard the potential of any of our young people.

One would think that our communities would make a deliberate effort to create a strategy to engage students who are in danger of dropping out of high school so that they can have rewarding careers in industries where there will be shortages. However, the study found that career academies are likely attracting students who are better prepared than most students and more motivated to graduate from high school and attend college. Also, these young people earn significantly more than their peers after graduation. Therefore, the young people who benefit from a career academy education are the same young people who were already well positioned to graduate, attend college, and earn a good living the education self-motivated students receive is the education that disengaged students need if we want our community to thrive.
Career academies are a missed opportunity for the children who need them the most. One could argue that they further exacerbate the inequity in our communities between students with many options and students with few options. Why have we not provided the best career focused education to the students that our community desperately needs to be productive?

A New Frame of Reference
We started ACE Leadership High School is focused on educating low income students of color. AGC understood that their future was tied to a work force that was nearly 90 percent Latino, of which, 50 percent had no high school diploma. It was founded on the principle that all our graduates would transition to college, or an industry apprenticeship, giving a diploma from ACE Leadership currency in the marketplace. That notion has hooked many of our students who need tangible results from their efforts. With the help of our industry partners, we re-imagined the content and activities of every class so that teaching and learning occur forcefully in and through the ACE context. We did not save the Architecture Construction and Engineering (ACE) lens for our electives like most other trade schools or career academies. This meant re-designing the school schedule to serve our instructional priorities. Most CTE focused schools stack their curriculum, having students to take a series of core content classes and then attend a different block of career-oriented “elective” classes. Simply put, under those circumstances, the career focus is an add-on to the regular day. At ACE Leadership, all classes are career focused because Math, Science, Humanities, and Spanish all must and do apply to the ACE professions. In essence, we have rejected the current paradigm that expects students to eat their vegetables before they get desert.

MDRC, a nonprofit social policy research organization, and the Association for Career and Technical Education have both recommended that the separation between career and core classes be eliminated and that they become one in the same. Both organizations know that the distinction is a barrier to effective schooling. According to a study of career academies, MDRC stated that “. . . although the Academies were more likely to expose students to applied and work-related learning activities, they typically did not truly integrate academic and career-related curricula and instructional practice . . .” However, the authors stop short of acknowledging why the integrated approach is so difficult to implement, possibly because it requires fundamental restructuring of the prior notions of the school day. No longer would we accept the current structure where students first take a series of core classes and then attend career focused electives. It also means that we must revision the distinction between the universal core curriculum and career focus electives. Instead, they should be one in the same. Currently, when schools are able to integrate the core curriculum with career focused electives in traditional CTE schools, it is a situational variation from the traditional practice.

Less is More
The literature about the future of CTE stresses the need to provide a variety of experiences for young people to explore careers. It describes job shadowing, internships, and dabbling in many different industries to understand career options. In other words, it stops short of asking students to commit to a career while in high school. In fact, one of the values of a career academy model is that it allows for variety so that students can transfer in or out of the program and according to a recent MDRC study only 55 percent of students stayed in the career academy where they had enrolled. Inherent in the career academy design is that breath is superior to depth. The role of CTE is to retain the core curriculum, and then expose students to a breath of careers through the electives in the academies which is encouraged by allowing transfers in and out of the program. While I agree with the general theme that choices are good, I disagree that the core curriculum and elective system with easy entry and exit actually serves the students.

A school that focuses on a single sector (ACE, Health Care, Information Technology, etc.) promotes deep thinking and nuanced understanding. For example, at ACE Leadership students encounter problems through the lens of architecture, construction and engineering. They learn the entire scope of a project and when they choose a career focus because they understand the way in which it relates to an overall project. The ACE context ensures that students are capable of becoming leaders whether they choose to work in the field or in a design studio. We embrace the complexity of the industry and by doing so we give our students the opportunity to think about nuanced problems which opening the door to more learning.

“Less is More” is one of the common principles promoted by the Coalition of Essential Schools and Cathleen Cushman describes it in the following way, “This commonsensical observation holds true in extensive research findings about how humans learn. In the last few decades cognitive theorists have firmly established that we come to know things . . . by thinking them through. This is an active process; it puts information into a meaningful context and asks us to struggle with its complexities and contradictions. When we use information to serve our real needs in this way, research shows, we remember it.”

Conclusion
We should create career focused schools that rooted in deep intellectual rigor and relevancy. Adaptable, problem solving workers who are capable of thinking deeply about challenges is what is needed to meet our future workforce needs. That fact demands that we provide our young people an excellent education, one that prepares them to adapt to an unknown future. We think the model described above does just that.

New Mexico Performance Assessment Network

Participating schools in the Performance Assessment Network believe that students should be assessed in the way in which they were taught. Students should have the opportunity to choose how they demonstrate mastery with the guidance from the professionals who know them well as learners. These schools commit to the following:

Core Values:
We are committed to furthering the work that we have started.
We are deliberate in the work we are doing.
We are committed to accomplishing our work through partnership.
We are committed to our vision and mission and are collaborative in our work.
We are accountable to those we serve.

Guiding Principles:
Our work is asset based.
Our approach to the work is to support all youth intellectually, socially and emotionally.
Our work is holistic and developmentally appropriate as it relates to teaching, learning, and demonstration of mastery.
Our strategies are informed by youth for youth.
Our work requires broad and diverse stakeholder input and support.

In every network school you will find:
• Students and teachers engaged in active learning
• Formative and summative documentation
• Strategic corrective action
• Multiple ways for students to demonstrate mastery that is aligned with learning standards
• External evaluators of student performance
• A focus on professional development that is regularly held, ongoing and collaborative
• Advisory board of the ACE Leadership Professional Development Center will also serve as the Advisory board to the NMPAN

Performance assessment key components:
• Utilize Network rubrics for summative evaluation which include the Communication, Collaboration and Client Driven rubrics
• Allow students to have purpose and need in their assessment choice
• External reviewers
• Aligned to learning standards
• Comprehensive in core skills and behaviors
• Time intensive and in-depth
• Informed by best practices from performance assessment experts, states and schools around the country

A Closer Look at the ACE Leadership High School Grade

On July 15 I received an email from the Public Education Department (PED) informing me that our school had received an F on its annual report card.  We appealed and were upgraded to a D.  Since that time, we have tried to understand how the state makes such determinations.  We’ve read all the manuals, participated in all webinar trainings, and attended a two day summit for all poor performing schools.  We’re pretty sure we understand how the system works, and more importantly, the intentions behind the overall grade and all of its component parts.

I’m proud of the way we do business at ACE Leadership High School.  We have hundreds of visitors every year and we invite the public join us in our classrooms, design studios, and assemblies.  Our work is transparent and we are not afraid to share our challenges and successes with the people and organizations that have invested their time and energy in helping our students and teachers reach their potential.  In that spirit, I believe it is vital that I share what we have learned about our grade, the way it was calculated, and a why we believe it does not reflect progress we have made.

Mission Driven  Success

One of the most hopeful things we found while learning more about our grade is our remarkable success with students we are designed to serve.  Closer examination of scores for students with low English and Math skills (at least 90 percent of our students) indicates that ACE Leadership has more than doubled the growth that PED considers to be exceptional. According to the PED, two point gains would be remarkable and our students gained 3.7 points in Reading and 5.7 points in Math.  In addition, PED has examined our success compared to schools that serve a similar clientele.  They grouped us together with 30 other schools from across the state and ranked us in the top 84 percent of our peer schools when it comes to educating students with low skills (5^th out of 30).  That is something for us to celebrate especially since we are only two years old.

The Challenges:

• Unfortunately for ACE Leadership, the grading system gives equal weight to growth for higher skilled students (those in the top 75 percent of all students in the state).  This is unfortunate because only about 5 percent of our students fall into this category and we received an F for this component of the grade.  Most of our students transfer to us from other schools where they have been unsuccessful or they are returning to school after dropping out.  This is a problem because our school has very few students in this category, yet the state gives it a great deal of weight when they compute our grade.  If the state were to judge our success based on the students who actually attend our school, our overall grade would be much higher.

Similarly, the school received an F for the component of our grade that focuses on the number of students who passed the SBA exam.  This is also unfortunate because we have had very few of our students for any length of time.  They come to us after failing in in their prior schools and it isn’t reasonable to expect that they would pass the SBA after only eight months of being a student at ACE Leadership High School.

The Successes:

• Our school received a B grade for the way students are taught.  The score is based on student surveys of their teacher’s performance.  This is remarkable given the fact that most of our students with bad experiences in school and it indicates that they are now happy with school.
• We received an A grade for doing a great job of graduating students from our Re-engagement Center (young adults who have previously dropped out of school).  These students represent about a third of the students enrolled at our school and we have had terrific success at working with them.
• College and career readiness is another goal of our school and the grade reflects the fact that we have transitioned 35 of 36 graduates to college or work we are very proud of our success in this area.

While I appreciate the goals of the school grading system, I also believe it is critical for our community to understand that we are achieving our mission.  While the grade given by the PED is part of an overall system of evaluating school performance across the state, it does not reflect the success we have had in working with the young people we are designed to serve.  I’m compelled to write about our grade because our partners should know that we are doing what we promised—preparing young people for prosperous careers in the Architecture Construction and Engineering professions.  More importantly, we serve an ever growing niche of students who cannot cope with traditional school (40 percent of Latino boys who drop out in Albuquerque).  These young people deserve more relevancy, more nurturing, and more respect for the unique assets they bring to school.  I am confident that upon closer examination of our performance, we are delivering on our promises to provide “the best education for the students who need it the most.”