EHE News
Class in session at Metro High
By: Julia Harris 9/20/2006
Metro High School doesn't look like your average school.
Pillars in front of the building are decorated with metal tractor seats. There are no sports fields - just a freshly paved parking lot and a weedy back lot where groundhogs and rabbits roam. Inside, many of the classrooms resemble conference rooms surrounded by glass walls.
Students at the school also don't look like your typical freshmen. There are no jeans at half-mast and no bare midriffs speckled with jewelry. Here, by formal agreement, students dress like young professionals. Many of the boys wear ties, and the girls wear tailored skirts or slacks. They carry themselves with confidence, as if they know they are special.
Which is precisely what they are, says Marcy Raymond, principal of this unusual new school. "This is a great group of kids," she says - and she knows what she's talking about. She and a selection committee sifted through 500 letters of interest and 300 applications to settle on the first class of 96 students.
Metro High is an educational experiment being undertaken by Ohio State, Battelle and the Educational Council of Franklin County. With a focus on math, science and technology education, the new Metro High provides an opportunity for students from all 16 central Ohio school districts to participate in hands-on, experiential learning.
The first class at Metro High, located at the intersection of Kinnear and Kenny roads, entered the school in late August.
"Metro High School will provide an arena for research into the best educational practices to make secondary education more relevant and rigorous," says David Andrews, dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology. "It will give opportunities for personal success to students who value creativity and innovation."
In its first year of operation, the school admitted only freshmen. Plans call for adding a new grade each academic year until the school is fully enrolled. The curriculum, which covers all requisite course areas as mandated by the Ohio Graduation Test, was created by a quorum of 60 education professionals from the colleges of Math and Physical Sciences, Engineering, Biological Sciences and Education and Human Ecology. From January to June, Raymond says, the group met weekly to hammer out what students needed to know in order to succeed in college, particularly in the hard sciences.
"And that standard became our minimum performance level," Raymond says. "Our goal is that every student will be able to take college-level coursework without remediation. Their potential is our mission."
The level of academic rigor at the school is high, a challenge that most students welcome. Zachary Haynes says he wanted to attend the school because he knew it would make him work harder than he ever had.
"In my application, I wrote about how the kids at my old school didn't want to work," he says. "I figured all the kids who came here would be interested in learning and not just messing around."
Haynes' experience mirrors that of Brittany Krause, a soft-spoken girl from Reynoldsburg.
"Last year, the school I was at didn't feel as advanced as I wanted," she says. "I felt like I wasn't getting the education I needed."
To get into Metro, all students had to go through an extensive application process that included being interviewed by a committee of teachers and administrators. For some students, Raymond says, the prospect of being so thoroughly screened was enough to keep them from casting their hats into the ring. She admits the questions were tough, focusing not just on academic expectations, but on personal qualifications such as flexibility and ability to get along with others.
"We wanted to find out the sincerity level of the applicants - how badly did they really want to come here?" Raymond says. "We also wanted to find out the caliber of students we had and how we could best impact each one. We wanted to make sure Metro was a good fit for everyone."
Uneek McKnight, who rides a bus 2 hours in the afternoon to get home from the school, said his dad was his role model during the application process.
"He was real excited when I got into Metro," says McKnight, who hails from Columbus Public Schools.
Kristin Black, whose parents both work at Battelle, admits the admission process was grueling.
"I'm a real shy person, so it was hard for me to answer all those questions," she says.
Now that they're in, these four students and their 92 classmates can focus on learning. They are broken into small class units where there is a lot of group work and interaction with the teachers. Students are required to participate in service-learning projects that take them into the community. They also take part in field experiences, such as at COSI and the Columbus Museum of Art, two of Metro School's learning partners. A strong connection with Weinland Park Elementary School gives Metro students the chance to share their knowledge in a mentoring relationship with younger children.
"We're looking at the broader question of how do we augment math, science and technology understanding, from birth to college," Raymond says. "OSU has the capacity to really consider how we can impact the world through education."
Raymond has learned to appreciate the media spotlight the school has received.
"It's certainly different," she says. "But I believe we're better able to serve the kids in Franklin County if everyone knows what we're doing, so we welcome the attention. And really, I'm having more fun than I've ever had in my entire life."
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