Cross Case Features: Context

Evans High School: School Context

This “magnet” high school with a focus on technology draws students from around the city. It is located in a modest, time-worn neighborhood, in the central part of a sprawling city of half a million. The student population is 800-850. Although students must apply for admittance, most are admitted.

One teacher describes the ethnic makeup of the student population as, “an interesting blend of students. We have about a third Hispanic population, about 30 percent Caucasian, and then there is a mixture of Asian, African American, and a small minority of Native American Indians. Most of the Asians here are Vietnamese.”

After several teachers from Evans had attended the NCTA seminars, Debra Madison, the NCTA seminar leader and partner site director, brought the teachers together at a meeting with representatives of the China Exchange Initiative, to learn more about the possibilities of establishing school-to-school exchange programs with a partner school in China. When Evans and other schools in the state responded enthusiastically to this opportunity, Debra secured seed money to begin the exchanges from the Freeman Foundation, which funds the NCTA seminars as well as the China Exchange Initiative office. Debra then worked with the China Exchange Initiative to identify a school that would be a good match for Evans, while she worked with the Evans’s teachers to identify key individuals, including the Evans’s principal, and to travel to China on a Key Actors trip to sign exchange agreements and launch the exchange relations.