Chapter 23 Liz Cooley (in progress)

A one-size-fits-all system of education works for about 40 percent of secondary school students, it is based on the idea that all kids learn the same way. This pipeline is so narrow it allows less than half a chance at exiting the university pipeline at the other end. Those succeeding in this half-masted system go on to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of California and other colleges across the country. The others remained too long ignored.

But what can be done for the 40 to 60 percent of secondary school students overlooked by this one-size-fits-all system of education.  

Accolades to Montebello Unified School District in southern California for recognizing these underserved students and engineering a program to fit their learning needs.  

Futures High School was established in _____ as an effort to correct this long standing oversight.  FHS became an exceptionally successful school-within-a-school,  serving southern California students at risk of falling short of graduation because of institutional inability to recognize students outside the one-size-fits-all design of education. 

But such a widely inclusive program would require a very special and highly evolved staff.  Liz Cooley was one of its founding teachers.

Here is her inspiring story.