Current Models and Organazations Supporting My Reform

There are currently several models that support my reform ideas and beliefs. Two of these organizations that model my reform attempts are The American Diploma Project and Achieve. Both of these organizations stress the problems our current schools and educational facilities are facing and stress the importance and need for change. These two organizations support my reform plan by stating that we must enforce a rigorous curriculum that students nationwide are expected to successfully complete. The American Diploma Project states that too few of high school students are currently taking challenging courses, and although most states require students to take a certain amount English and math classes these schools cannot ensure that the content of these classes reflects the knowledge and skills that both colleges and future employers demand. Achieve, part of Barack Obama’s Race to The Top, states that simply accepting career and college ready standards will not assure all students will be enrolled in classes that guarantees students will adequately obtain the skills and knowledge needed for success after high school. It then explains that we must require students to complete courses of study that accurately reflect the thorough content included in the standards (Achieve, p. 3).
In addition to The American Diploma Project and Achieve, there are current schools forcing students to take advance placement and college level courses that challenge students and effectively teach them the content and knowledge needed after high school. One example of these schools is Homewood-Flossmoor High School. Homewood-Flossmoor (H-F) is a public school located in Flossmoor, Illinois, in the Chicago metropolitan area. H-F has adopted a challenging curriculum consisting of Advanced Placement, Honors, and College Prep classes. Their goal is simple. They want to push students into challenging courses and pull them through each course with the best experiences possible. This philosophy is known as the “Push/Pull Philosophy”. Homewood-Flossmoor has seen great success from this philosophy and from their challenging curriculum. Homewood-Flossmoor graduates 90 percent of their students, and their students graduate with 21.5 ACT score, among the best for public schools located in the Chicago metropolitan area (Homewood-Flossmoor, p.1). Due to their success H-F has appeared in Newsweek’s top 1,000 schools in the past several years. Schools like Homewood-Flossmoor show that with a challenging curriculum student success is more than possible.