Choice in Quincy

The sleepy Mississippi River town of Quincy, Ill. (pop. 45,288) is an unlikely place for an educational mecca. Yet school administrators from as far away as Berkeley, Calif, Los Angeles, Boston and New York frequently tour the city's sprawling Senior High School II. For the past few years the school has been the site of conferences on educational alternatives that have been attended by 2,000 delegates from all over the country. What attracts the educators is Quincy's Education by Choice program, in which the high school is divided into seven separate subschools, each with different courses and styles of teaching. Quincy's 1,500 juniors and seniors can choose any one they wish.

With classes ranging from highly structured to almost totally free, Quincy probably offers more choice than any other high school in the U.S. At one end of the spectrum is the Traditional School. There, teachers hand out conventional assignments, deliver lectures and give grades; students sit in rows, take mostly required courses and call the teachers Mr., Mrs. or Miss. At the other extreme is the Fine Arts School, where students make their own weekly schedules, work at their own pace, call teachers by their first names, and have a choice of more than 50 courses, 28 of them arts-oriented. Among the others are such offbeat courses as Coping with Death and Organic Gardening. Some Fine Arts students are writing a blues rock musical; others tour the city in an old school bus and give free performances as a "School of the Street."

Quincy's other alternatives:

> The Flexible School. Similar to the Traditional School, but students can leave after the lecture each period to pursue individual projects if they have the teacher's permission.

> The Project to Individualize Education (PIE). Students select their own courses and determine how often they will attend classes. (As in the other schools, counselors are available to help students make their choices.) Students also may schedule themselves into encounter groups and independent studies.

> The Career School. Designed for students who will not go to college and plan to find a job after graduating from high school. They attend regular classes half the day and work part time.

> The Work-Study School. Structured for students who are on the verge of dropping out and need extra help in academic subjects. The curriculum is divided into eight abbreviated periods to fit the students' shorter attention span, and students have part-time jobs after the regular school day.

> The Special Education School. For slow learners. It emphasizes vocational training, with courses in cooking, carpentry, masonry, auto mechanics, gardening and child care.

All in all, Education by Choice seems to be working. School Superintendent William Alberts says, "The community is happy with the way the alternative program has evolved." The students also seem to be pleased. Junior Sue Eaton, for example, was tempted by the PIE alternative, but recognized that she needed more discipline than it offered. On the other hand, she felt that she would quickly get bored in the Traditional School. "I needed a push," she says, "so the Flexible School seemed like a good middle ground for me. Every Wednesday we do a lot of different things out of the classroom. I can participate in community workshops or field trips or set up a rap session with a teacher. I like that variety."

Kelly Rupp, a straight-A senior, had taken so many courses in the PIE alternative that he could have gone to college after his junior year. Instead, he stayed in Quincy because "I couldn't learn as much in the first year at most colleges. Here I can go as far as I want."

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