The HiPass Model

http://www1.oise.utoronto.ca/documents/scheurich.pdf

The above URL links to an article I recently came across that provided the inspiration for my blog's name. While I encountered this paper outside my activities for EDU140, its relevance to the class was timely. The article, called "Highly Successful and Loving, Public Elementary Schools Populated Mainly by Low-SES Children of Color: Core Beliefs and Cultural Characteristics," (a mouthful) outlines a school model - the HiPass model - that has proven highly successful for children who have been historically perceived as destined for failure. After hearing the principal of St. Martin de Porres come to our class and speak about his school, and after going to the school myself for the first time, the setting immediately brought to my mind HiPass. Here was a school, located in one of the most economically devastated, crime-ridden parts of the country, providing a different option for the neighborhood's children, a college prep option. The school's goal is clear - success and a positive future for all its children. And if you read the article, you will know that this is Core Belief 1 of 5 of the HiPass model. The HiPass is refreshingly new to someone like me who takes classes in college where grades are regularly curved, meaning some are destined to succeed and some fail. Also, throughout my primary and secondary education, learning often felt like a scramble to the top, because there was only limited space at the mountain peak. In middle school, there were three different hierachical tracks of math students tested into. At my high school, the nation's 4th largest pool of AP test takers, pressure was an understatement. School was, and still remains for me, a competition. And though this environment has helped me for the most part, I wonder how my K-12 education, and life, would have been changed by the HiPass model.