SLC School Information - Narrative Profile

School Demographics

African American	Anglo	Asian	Hispanic	Native American	Other Ethnicity	Economically Disadvantaged
0.0%	98.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	13.0%

Demographic data collected from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data.

Cabot High School Aims to Create Nurturing Environment

Cabot High School in Cabot, Arkansas, will implement smaller learning communities (SLCs) to provide a nurturing, safe environment for all of its students. By restructuring the high school of more than 1,500 students into SLCs, Cabot will address behavioral problems, low achievement, and high dropout rates.

Background

Cabot is a rapidly growing rural community approximately thirty miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas. Over the last three decades Cabot has become a bedroom community for Little Rock and larger surrounding towns. Eighty-five percent of the town’s workforce commutes to work, leaving students at home alone before and after school.

Cabot serves students of widely ranging socioeconomic backgrounds as well as a large military population. Teenagers arriving at Cabot High School feed from several small, rural towns, and schools that provide smaller learning communities. Cabot High School includes grades 10-12 and is housed in 25 buildings on 44 acres. The school presents a daunting environment to sophomores for whom the dropout rate is almost 20 percent.

Expected outcomes of Cabot’s SLCs include the following:

• Higher achievement
• Increased student affiliation with the school community
• Greater safety and order
• Fewer dropouts
• Higher levels of extracurricular participation and parent/community involvement

Planning

In August of 2001 the Cabot school board voted to proceed with SLC planning and implementation. Teachers supported the project and voted to proceed also. A peer leadership committee (composed of community leaders, parents, students, school board members, central office personnel and high school administrators) was formed. The team visited other SLC sites and formed a partnership with The University of Arkansas Medical School. Student advisory groups were formed to foster ownership and a sense of belonging to the project.

The school improvement team collected and analyzed three to five years of school data, and studied research from such sources as the U.S. Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities: Strategies (2001), Carnegie Corporation’s Turning Points (1990), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Breaking Ranks (1996).

Cabot High School received an SLC Planning Grant for the 2002-2003 school year. After extensive research, planning and examining best practices in secondary education, the High Schools That Work Program, sponsored by the Southern Regional Education Board, was selected to provide an overall framework for systemic reform.

Professional Development

Professional development is designed to provide the skills needed to implement SLC goals and objectives. Training is aligned with research based instructional practices and will be facilitated by the Cabot School District and High Schools That Work consultants.

Staff development focuses on the following topics:

• Research-based information on SLCs
• Best practices teaching methodologies (teaming, cooperative learning groups, integrating curriculum, student/adult advocates, and differentiated instruction)
• Site-based management
• Leadership and decision-making skills
• Interpreting data

Cabot’s sophomore class will be restructured into three houses of 166 students each, and one career academy called the Medical Academy, or MACH I. Assignment to the houses will be random and heterogeneous, while placement in the career academy will be according to parent and student interest. All sophomores will be located in a separate building.

Eleventh and twelfth grades will be divided into two career academies that center around the themes of information technology and business/finance. Separate houses will be provided for students not wishing career academy enrollment.

SLC Strategies

To support its smaller learning community reform, Cabot High School will implement these strategies:

• Alternative scheduling in the form of a five-period contiguous block for all but the MACH I Academy
• An adult advocate system, ensuring that at least one adult knows each student well
• Academic teaming, in which teachers work together with a common planning time
• Increased parent and community involvement
• Pyramid of interventions so that failure is not an option
• Integrated and differentiated curriculum
• Targeting appropriate academic skills

Funding and Leveraging Resources

On behalf of Cabot High School, Cabot Public Schools was awarded a three-year U.S. Department of Education FY2002 Smaller Learning Communities grant in the amount of $491,361.

Restructuring activities receive technical assistance from The University of Arkansas Medical School, High Schools That Work, and the Southern Regional Education Board.

The preceding profile was constructed from the awardee's application for SLC funding and any available annual performance report.

• important facts often change during the 3 years of the award
• the grants are awarded for a 3-year period and their performance period ends at the end of the first year (barring extension)
• for up-to-date accuracy, please contact the school directly.