The middle college high school: a case study

UnrestrictedUnrestricted This descriptive-analytic case study was conducted in one Middle College High School in a large K-12 school district located in a higher Socio-economic status community in the western portion of Orange County, a large metropolitan suburb of Los Angeles in Southern California. The district and school were selected on the basis of: (a) A district and school that has a Middle College High School option available for students (b) A district and school that has a relationship with a community college which supports its mission through the shared use of resources and facilities and (c) A district and school that has the capacity in funding, infrastructure, people and professional development to support this alternative offering. ❧ The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership and organizational structure, processes and student level resource allocations at an alternative learning design high school, which provides a wide variety of learners the opportunity for concurrent enrollment in both high school and college level courses, and its perceived causality with regard to student achievement. The focus was to better understand the relationship between the variables of leadership, organizational structure, financial and human resource allocation and student achievement, with a special focus on graduation rates and college going rates for the non-traditional, at-risk or minority student.; This study used conceptual frameworks developed to guide data collection and analysis for four research questions: (a) How is this school organized to maximize student achievement? (b) How does the school choose to allocate financial and human resources in order to maximize student achievement? the How is the structure funded? and (d) How would this program be brought to scale in other settings?; The data indicated that the district and school were not adhering completely to the National Middle College Consortium rubric in that students accepted into the program are not ethnically diverse or first generation college students. The students are not making as much academic progress as might be expected due to their comparatively low mathematics scores on both state standardized assessments and on college readiness assessments such as the S.A.T. In contrast, their graduation rates and drop out rates are impressive with all students graduating and no students dropping out of school. With regard to resource allocations, the program is costly for the K-12 school district compared to the cost of educating students at the traditional comprehensive high schools, yet more than pays for itself with regard to the costs incurred by the community college