High School Redesign
VUE Number 8, Summer 2005
An interview Constancia Warren 
Audio Clip 2
Former senior program officer and director of urban high school initiatives at Carnegie Corporation of New York.
What do districts have to do to create portfolios of schools?
Click on the 
bar below to start the audio.
TRANSCRIPT:
First of all, it's not districts just by themselves. Let me reframe that and say that it's what districts and communities have to do to create and to sustain a portfolio of schools. First of all, districts and communities need to work together guided by a set of core values of excellence, or high standards and rigorous coursework for all students; of equity, to make sure that all students get the supports that they need in order to be able to achieve at high levels; the core value of diversity that embraces and responds to differences in learning styles, aspirations, interests, and challenges for both students and teachers; and a core value around supporting choice, as I talked about before.
The district then plays a central role, along with the community, in developing and managing a portfolio. But that partnership is really critical to success. The district in partnership with the community really has to develop a vision and a planning process to figure out what schools are needed to complete the portfolio, in addition to those that they are already operating and working to improve. They need to figure out together a school-development and -support strategy–whether that's creating an office of new small schools or technical support team or tools to help planners of new schools–they need to attend to that.
Once the schools are up and running–and that means new schools but also restructured existing schools–the district and the community need to work really hand in hand on scaffolding that choice process. Providing lots of information and guidance–not just once a year, but on an ongoing basis to really help students and their parents understand the choice process and what kinds of choices are available to them.
The district needs to monitor on an ongoing basis what's going on in those schools, looking both at the schools' performance and the equity within those schools of its results, but also at the equity and excellence dimensions if you look across the schools in the portfolio as a whole.
