Math, Science Take Center Stage at SREB Conference on High Schools

Orlando, Fla.

Twenty years after launching a widely copied approach to improving high schools, the experts behind the High Schools That Work initiative are calling on teachers and administrators to dramatically ramp up lessons and expectations in mathematics and science.

That’s because high schools, generally, are still failing to prepare students for college-level work in those two subjects, according to data released at the 20th annual High Schools That Work conference, which drew nearly 8,000 educators from across the country to Orlando this week.

Almost one in five students from the class of 2004 who graduated from schools that participated in the program still required math remediation in college, according to a survey of 6,535 students conducted in 2005 by researchers from High Schools That Work. The initiative, started in 1987, has grown to a network of more than 1,300 schools in 43 states that are committed to strengthening their academic cores, while bolstering standards in...