CHICAGO — At a time when public education faces mounting challenges ranging from funding inequities to political pressures and competition from charter schools, education researcher Erika M. Kitzmiller argues that meaningful change can emerge from within public schools themselves.
In her new book, Unchartered: How One High School Transformed First Generation College Success, Kitzmiller examines how a public high school serving largely first-generation and immigrant students dramatically increased college access and degree attainment through a series of targeted reforms developed by educators, students and community partners.
The book is based on a multiyear study that followed efforts to improve educational outcomes through structural and instructional changes rather than through large-scale school closures, privatization efforts or externally imposed reforms.
“So my book is Unchartered: How One High School Transformed First Generation College Success and it’s a multi-year study that looks at how small structural and instructional changes can increase the number of children who graduate from high school and go on to earn their four-year college degrees,” Kitzmiller said.
Asked about the title, Kitzmiller explained that the project was intended to challenge conventional approaches to school reform.
“Because I think it’s a playbook that hasn’t been used before,” she said. “So I’m curious about the ways in which reform has often been placed upon schools rather than done within them. And this is a different way of thinking about how schools could be not destroyed and rebuilt, but they could be created within.”
Kitzmiller, a research associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and affiliated with Teachers College at Columbia University, has focused much of her scholarly work on the historical and contemporary causes of educational inequality.
When asked about the most pressing challenges facing under-resourced schools, Kitzmiller pointed directly to funding disparities.
“I think inequitable school funding, not enough government resources,” she said. “I’m a historian so I think that’s a perennial and persistent problem in public education.”
She argued that more equitable funding formulas are essential to improving educational outcomes.
“We need more equitable state funding formulas and we need more tax dollars to support public education,” she said.
Drawing on examples from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Kitzmiller noted that efforts to direct additional resources toward lower-income districts have often encountered political resistance.
“I think school funding could be done in a variety of manners, but schools just need more funds to operate and they always needed more funds to operate,” she said.
At the same time, Kitzmiller stressed that schools cannot simply wait for new funding streams before beginning reform efforts.
“The biggest problem is financial,” she said. “We did not have millions of dollars or new school funding formulas when we performed the school. So I also think that like we can’t wait for the money to come to start retraining schools. I think we need to really think about the strengths inside schools and what their weaknesses are.”
The reforms highlighted in Unchartered focused on expanding opportunities and support systems for students.
According to Kitzmiller, the school increased access to Advanced Placement and elective courses while creating new support structures for students navigating the college admissions process.
“We expanded the number of advanced placement courses and elective courses that students had options for,” she said. “We also created a senior seminar course, which was CAPTA 15 to really help students get more support with their college application and matriculation process.”
The school also broadened extracurricular opportunities and strengthened partnerships with community organizations.
“We expanded extracurricular clubs and activities and partnerships with local nonprofits and volunteers who offered to support the school,” Kitzmiller said.
She credited educators with maintaining high expectations while creating engaging learning environments.
“We had remarkable teachers who were doing wonderful work inside their classrooms, really keeping standards very high and making sure that the curriculum was interdisciplinary and project based,” she said.
Kitzmiller was deeply involved in the project, spending years working directly inside the school rather than operating solely as an outside researcher.
“I was working inside the high school,” she said. “I was there every other week for three and a half years.”
Reflecting on the experience, she described a combination of challenges and rewards.
“It was great fun and hard work and I loved it,” she said.
A central theme of the book is the challenge facing first-generation college students both before and after they arrive on college campuses.
“I think college is supporting them is actually the biggest barrier,” Kitzmiller said. “I say that as a first gen college graduate, I think colleges need to do more to actually retain and attract first generation college students and think very deliberately about the kind of supports that all children need, but particularly first gen students.”
Kitzmiller’s perspective is informed by her own experience as a first-generation college student.
“I think that first generation college graduates come with all the success they need when they get to campus, but just like every student, they need to have people who believe in them,” she said.
She recalled attending a rural Pennsylvania high school that ranked near the bottom of the state in school funding.
“I went to a rural high school in the state of Pennsylvania that was ranked 477th out of 500 for school funding in the state,” she said. “So I didn’t have the same resources that my peers had and I didn’t have the same kind of study habits and kind of dispositions that they had.”
Despite those limitations, Kitzmiller emphasized the importance of teachers and mentors who encouraged her ambitions.
“My high school counselor and my high school teachers really thought I should dream big and think about taking a risk,” she said. “I would have never applied to Wellesley College without them.”
She contrasted her educational experience with that of students attending wealthier schools.
“Like many Title I low income high schools across the United States, I did not have science laboratories, I did not have new textbooks, I did not have PAs, parents and teachers associations that were wildly funding spring break trips or mentorships and internship programs,” she said. “I just didn’t have those things.”
For Kitzmiller, educational inequality extends beyond school resources to broader social and racial disparities.
“I also think that that’s part of the package is racial inequities,” she said. “I’m a white woman, I never experienced those things and I never had someone tell me no that I couldn’t try.”
She rejected narratives that place blame on families or communities for educational challenges.
“I don’t believe in a culture of poverty, nor do I blame families or communities for the challenges that we face,” Kitzmiller said. “I’ve never met a parent who doesn’t want their child to have a better life than they do and I’ve never met a child who if college was free and accessible, they wouldn’t want to go.”
Instead, she views those challenges as manifestations of broader systemic inequalities.
“I think those are part of the structural inequities that are baked into American democracy, unfortunately,” she said.
One of the most important lessons she drew from her years inside the school was the commitment demonstrated by students, families and educators.
“I was always re-energized and excited about the commitment that educators and youth and families bring to their schools and how much they really want them to be places where people can be included and seen and valued for who they are,” Kitzmiller said. “And I think that’s often missed in today’s rhetoric around education.”
Asked what advice she would offer educators working under difficult circumstances, Kitzmiller emphasized collaboration and creativity.
“I think educators do as much as they possibly can to deal with these problems every day,” she said. “Thinking creatively about the resources that teachers have within their power, within their schools, and to think about families and youth as partners of that work.”
Ultimately, Kitzmiller said she wrote Unchartered to highlight a side of public education that often goes unnoticed amid debates over failure, accountability and reform.
“Because I wanted to talk about what is good in public education,” she said. “I’m a public school graduate and a first generation college graduate and I wouldn’t be talking to you without my education. So I wanted to write about what was possible in a moment where so many people don’t think much is possible.”
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